Swedish actor Alicia Vikander has a fairly low profile for an A-list actor. We know her for her big roles – the Oscar-winning performance in The Danish Girl, her chilling role as an android in Ex Machina, playing the iconic Lara Croft in the 2018 remake of Tomb Raider and acting alongside her real-life husband Michael Fassbender in sweeping romance The Light Between Oceans or opposite Kit Harington in Testament Of Youth. 

We don’t tend to see much of her if it’s not on our screens or promoting her movies on the red carpet, and we don’t hear her open up about her personal life often either. But in a recent interview with The Times, Vikander, who is promoting her new TV series Irma Vep, spoke candidly about fame, loneliness, raising her child with another actor and having a miscarriage.

Speaking to journalist Jonathan Dean from a café in Lisbon, where Vikander and her family now live, she spoke about how she and Fassbender do “every second job” to ensure one of them is always with their young son.

She goes on to discuss an Irma Vep storyline that revolves around a pop star who has a miscarriage but is made to perform the same night. The subject matter is one Vikander can relate to having suffered a miscarriage herself in the past. “We have a child now, but it took us time,” she told The Times. 

Speaking about how her own experience of losing a baby mirrored what was endured by her character in The Light Between Oceans, she said: “[The miscarriage] was so extreme, painful to go through and, of course, it made me recall making that film… That film has another meaning now.”

Speaking about the pressure that comes with the spotlight Vikander said: “Sometimes you go through things that are tough in life and if you have an office job you can step away for a bit. But there are times that myself or colleagues have been through something and, well, I can’t understand how they went on to the red carpet afterwards. To be met by people asking, ‘How are you doing?’ Given what they had just been through? Most people would not be able to step out of their house.”

The actor also described an intense loneliness she felt in her 20s, with her career taking off but often finding herself miles away from friends and family. “It was very lonely, if I didn’t have my friends to call, it would have been difficult. I’ve seen what can happen to people in my industry.”

“But there was juxtaposition,” she continued. “When, in other people’s eyes, I was at my height of fame, I was the most sad. I kept telling myself, ‘Take it in. It is incredible.’ But I didn’t know what to do. There were all these first-class flights, five-star rooms. But I was always by myself. I was by myself.”

Vikander’s latest project is the American-French comedy-drama miniseries Irma Vep, written and directed by Olivier Assayas, based on his 1996 film of the same name. 

It premiered at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival and in June on HBO, it will be shown on Sky Atlantic in the UK in August.

In Irma Vep, Vikander plays a young American movie star Mira who is bored of playing superheroes in blockbuster movies. disillusioned by her career and following a recent break-up she struggles as the distinctions between herself and the character she plays begin to blur. 

Watch the trailer below… 

Irma Vep is on Sky Atlantic from 2 August 2022. 

Images: Getty