Alicia Vikander Bio: In Her Own Words – Video Exclusive, News, Photos

Alicia Vikander (October 3, 1988) is a Swedish actress and dancer. She was a presence in Swedish short films and television before breaking out in the film with the Swedish film Pure in 2010. Since then, she’s starred in internationally renowned films such as A Royal Affair, The Fifth Estate, Testament of Youth, and Ex Machina.

Alicia Vikander Bio

Alicia Amanda Vikander was born on October 3rd, 1988 in Gothenburg, Sweden to psychiatrist Svante Vikander and actress Maria Fahl. Her parents separated when Alicia was just five months old.

Vikander’s early years were focused on dancing. She attended the Royal Swedish Ballet School in Stockholm for nine years and appeared in many musicals at the Gothenburg Opera. After being hit with injuries, Vikander shifted her focus from dancing to acting.

Alicia Vikander Career

Alicia Vikander’s acting career began with small television roles and short film works in her native Sweden. In 2008, Vikander became a well-known actress in Scandinavia with a role in Andra Avenyn, one of Sweden’s most popular television dramas. Alicia’s character, Josefin Björn-Tegebrandt, appeared in 39 episodes, mainly in the show’s first season.

Vikander’s star flew to new heights in 2010 in the Swedish film Pure. In the film, she plays Katarina, a troubled secretary of a concert hall who is looking to escape her troubled life. The role was a big success for Vikander, as she not only won the Rising Star Award at the 2010 Stockholm Film Festival and the Shooting Star Award at the 2010 Berlin Film Festival but also the Guldbagge Award for Best Actress, the highest honor in the Swedish film.

In 2011 Vikander starred in another Swedish film, The Crown Jewels. She played the lead of Frangancia Fernandez, a woman accused of attempted murder against the son of a powerful factory owner.

Soon enough Vikander began to grab the world’s attention in her roles in English-speaking films. She took on the role of Kitty in the English adaptation of Anna Karenina in 2012, which is based on the Russian literary legend Leo Tolstoy’s novel from 1877. Vikander played her role alongside Keira Knightley and Jude Law and the film received nominations at both the Academy Awards and the BAFTA Awards that year. Vikander was also nominated for BAFTA and Empire Awards for her breakthrough role.

Vikander also took on a Danish role in the historical drama A Royal Affair as Queen Caroline Matilda, the British-born Queen of Denmark who marries the mentally ill King Christian VII but has a romance with royal physician Johann Friedrich Struensee. Both the film and Vikander’s performance were well received, as the film was nominated for both an Academy Award and a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film and took home two awards at the Berlin Film Festival. After A Royal Affair and Anna Karenina, Vikander was named one of the 10 Actors to Watch at the 2012 Hamptons International Film Festival.

Vikander bounced around between English-speaking and native Swedish roles in 2013. She starred alongside Benedict Cumberbatch and Dan Stevens in The Fifth Estate. Vikander plays German Pirate Party politician Anke Domscheit-Berg in the thriller that centers around the saga of Julian Assange and his WikiLeaks website. She also returned to Sweden to star in Hotell as the character of Erika. The film was well received in Sweden, with the film receiving four nominations at the 2014 Guldbagge Awards. Vikander also won the Marrakech International Film Festival award for Best Actress for her performance.

In 2014, Vikander appeared in the Australian thriller Son of a Gun alongside Ewan McGregor. Although the reviews for the film were mixed, critics praised Vikander’s portrayal of Tasha. She also took on a starring role in Testament of Youth as the renowned British pacifist Vera Brittain. The film won plenty of praise in Britain and Vikander reaped the rewards. She was nominated for a BIFA Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a British Independent Film as well as a National Film Award for Best Actress.

In 2018, Vikander was cast as the lead in the action film Tomb Raider, in which she played the fierce daughter searching for her missing father.

Alicia Vikander Video Interview

Vikander’s biggest headlining role came in Ex Machina. Starring alongside Domhnall Gleeson and Oscar Isaac, Vikander played the pivotal role of Ava, an artificial intelligence who becomes self-aware. The film was seen as a breakout hit in the science-fiction community and netted Vikander a nomination for the Empire Award for Best Actress.

Prior to its release, Vikander joined Isaac to talk with uInterview in an exclusive interview about Ex Machina. “It was a lot of physical preparations to find the way she moves and the way she talks and creating something that isn’t human – which is normally, at least, what I know about the characters that I‘ve taken on before,” Vikander said about playing a robot. “It was a lot of fun.”

“It was a lot of physical preparations to find the way she moves and the way she talks and creating something that isn’t human,” Isaac added about Vikander’s role, “which is normally, at least, what I know about the characters that I‘ve taken on before. It was a lot of fun. We don’t really know. Nathan [played by Isaac] is the only one who really knows how Eva was made, but I saw a lot of pictures and I kind of got an idea of what the special effects guys had created for her to look like and I knew I had that body shape and I was going to be in this suit. So I worked from that.”

Vikander also praised the work Alex Garland did in directing and screenwriting the film. “It’s very rare to have an intelligent sci-fi action thriller, which is kind of like you said, it only comes out of (the dialogue),” she said. “I did feel all of those, those fears that tried to find out the plot didn’t know what character to follow or trust. And still, it’s only three people, in one very contained space.”

“Well, I wouldn’t say he steps on with such calmness and confidence knowing exactly the ideas of this vision,” added on about Garland. “This film, he had in his head, and he was still being extremely open to letting us try whatever we wanted. All those things don’t, in my head, go along with being a first-time director.”

Earlier in 2015, Vikander played a half-human/half-witch in the fantasy film Seventh Son, which also starred Jeff Bridges. The busy year will continue for Vikander with a starring role in Guy Ritchie’s The Man from U.N.C.L.E., which is scheduled for an August release date. She also had roles in The Danish Girl, Tulip Fever, The Light Between Oceans, and Adam Jones in years after.

Vikander also took on a role in the film adaptation of The Circle. Vikander joined the cast of a film adaptation of the video game Assassin’s Creed and the fifth film of the Bourne series in 2016.

Alicia Vikander Personal Life

Alicia Vikander currently lives in London. She married Michael Fassbender in 2017, who she co-starred with in the film The Light Between Oceans. The two began their relationship in late 2014.