Entertainment

From Fangs To Swinging In The Trees For A.Skars

by Ariel Kay

It's hard to believe that this guy hasn't been a star for decades. True Blood star Alexander Skarsgard looks good naked (he's naked a lot on the show, OK?) and has the charisma to easily win over fans (plus, the Skarsgard family is movie royalty back in his native Sweden). But before True Blood premiered just seven summers ago, Skarsgard was basically an unknown outside Europe. All that changed when HBO audiences met his character Eric Northman, the thousand-year-old vampire who immediately became a fan favorite (and who, seven seasons later, is one of the few enjoyable characters left on the show). But True Blood's August 24 series finale is almost upon us, so now that he's done playing our favorite fanger, what movies or TV will Alexander Skarsgard do next?

Though he got his start on TV (both in Sweden, and later the US with the HBO miniseries Generation Kill), Skarsgard has stuck mainly to supporting film roles when he's not playing Eric. But now, Skarsgard is going all out on the film side of things.

The Giver

Now Playing

Skarsgard's latest movie is The Giver , in which he plays Father. (Avert your eyes now if you don't want The Giver spoilers.) If you read the book you'll remember Father seems like a nice guy until his son, the protagonist Jonas, finds out he actually murdered babies for a living. Rough.

Over the past several years, Skarsgard has made plenty of appearances on the big screen in movies like Battleship, Melancholia, and Straw Dogs, but none have been huge at the box office or won him much critical acclaim. However, he's got three films rolling out over the next three years, so don't count our boy out just yet.

Hidden

Set to open in 2014

A horror film from first-time writer-directors and twin brothers Matt and Ross Duffer, Hidden tells the story of a father Ray (Skarsgard) who, along with his wife and young daughter, hides in an underground bunker for 301 days after some sort of epidemic sweeps across America, per a Warner Bros. press release.

Skarsgard, who's 6 foot 4 inches and normally quite muscular, shed significant weight for the part (I'm guessing there's not too much room for food in Ray's bomb shelter). In a video interview with Collider.com, Skarsgard says his character is "emaciated." Plenty of other actors, including Matthew McConaughey, Christian Bale, and Michael Fassbender have found that losing weight is a surefire way to make critics take notice and see them as a "serious actor." Horror films don't often garner significant awards buzz, however, so we'll have to wait and see if Skarsgard's diet gives his career the same boost as those other leading men.

The Diary of a Teenage Girl

Set to open in 2015

This drama, written and directed by Marielle Heller (yay women directors!), is based on the graphic novel The Diary of a Teenage Girl, an Account in Words and Pictures by Phoebe Gloeckner. The 1970s set film tells the story of Minnie (Bel Powley), a teenage girl who begins an affair with her mother's (Kristin Wiig) boyfriend (Skarsgard), according to Variety. True Blood often includes flashbacks to Eric's life over the past thousand years, and seeing Skarsgard in ridiculous period costumes is often the highlight of these episodes. The film's production company Caviar Content released some stills from Diary of a Teenage Girl that are pretty hysterical. Skarsgard rocks a handlebar mustache, of course.

It will be exciting to see the actor in a regular, non-supernatural role, where he can shine as an ordinary person — albeit one who's having an affair with his girlfriend's daughter — instead of fighting aliens or experiencing some sort of apocalyptic future.

Tarzan

Set to open in 2016

A pale, blonde Swede might not be the first person you think of when considering the role of Tarzan, a man who was raised in a tropical rainforest. But in this Skarsgard version of Tarzan , the story begins once Skarsgard's Tarzan leaves the jungle and is reintroduced to late-1800s London society. He eventually goes back to the wilderness where he grew up, but we'll hopefully get to see Skarsgard donning a top hat and tails, as well as Tarzan's signature um, lack of clothing. Margot Robbie (of The Wolf of Wall Street) will play Tarzan's love-interest Jane, and Samuel L. Jackson and Christoph Waltz are also in the cast.

It looks like even though Skarsgard will be absent from our small screens after True Blood ends this week, we'll still have plenty of opportunities to see him in 2014 and 2015. For now, enjoy the promo for the TB finale, which teases plenty of screen time for the actor, as well as at least one more scene between Eric and Pam, the greatest platonic TV relationship of all time.

Images: John P. Johnson/HBO; The Weinstein Company; FYeahTarzan/Tumblr