Stellan Skarsgård opened up about working with Ingmar Bergman at Karlovy Vary Film Festival.
“My complicated relationship with Bergman has to do with him not being a very nice guy. He was a nice director, but you can still denounce a person as an asshole. Caravaggio was probably an asshole as well, but he did great paintings,” said the Swedish actor.
“Bergman was manipulative. He was a Nazi during the war and the only person I know who cried when Hitler died. We kept excusing him, but I have a feeling he had a very weird outlook on other people. [He thought] some people were not worthy. You felt it, when he was manipulating others. He wasn’t nice.”
Skarsgård, in town to present “Sentimental Value” and pick up Crystal Globe award at the festival, also discussed Joachim Trier’s latest film.
“I’ve seen him really see the actors he’s worked with. He’s become more skilled with each film and there’s this playfulness that’s very generous.”
In “Sentimental Value,” two sisters reunite with their estranged father, Gustav, who used to be a known director. He offers one of them a role in his comeback film.
“This is a director who’s not a very good father. I started to think about other directors I knew and then thought: ‘Don’t go there – you don’t have to. Look at yourself instead.’ I’m an artist, and sometimes I’m a good father, and sometimes not so good. We are all flawed. You can be a good parent but not a perfect one, and you will be accused of something by your kids anyway.”
Awarded the Grand Prix at Cannes, it has since become an Oscar contender.
“I know this business; I know how short-lived that fucking fame is. But it’s fun to be surprised by yourself. I am surprised – by me – and that’s fun. I’ll be dead soon, so I have to take care of the moments that are left,” said Skarsgård.
During a masterclass, he recalled some of the biggest films of his career. As well as humble yet blissful beginnings, including romancing Juliette Binoche in “The Unbearable Lightness of Being.”
But it was Lars von Trier’s “Breaking the Waves” that really put him on the map: a harrowing drama about a woman who starts prostituting herself after her husband is paralyzed. Helena Bonham Carter was considered for the part ultimately played by Emily Watson.
“I’d seen Lars’ first films, and they were extremely cold. They didn’t touch me. He noticed it himself, that’s why he did the whole Dogma thing. He took away his own tools. I read it and went: ‘Oh fuck, finally a love story I can relate to.’ It’s about the essence of love. The purity of love,” he noted.
“Lars was so shy. He said: ‘I don’t like physical contact,’ and I hugged him, of course. Then I let go of him and he became normal again. That was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. I said to Helena Bonham Carter: ‘If you are smart, you’ll do it.’ And she turned it down! She didn’t want to be naked with a strange Danish director she didn’t know, and a strange Swedish actor she didn’t know. I saw her later, at Cannes, and just looked at her. She said: ‘I know! I KNOW’!”
Later, he reunited with Trier on “Dancer in the Dark,” featuring Björk as a factory worker suffering from a degenerative eye condition. She famously fell out with the director.
“I was busy and I could only do a small role, but Lars had some problems. He didn’t get along with Björk and she didn’t get along with him. They were two control freaks, used to getting what they wanted. When I finally came to the set, the producer just started crying. I knew something was wrong,” he said.
“I don’t think they hated each other – he didn’t hate her, at least. But they definitely didn’t get along.”
“Dogville” and “Melancholia” – with son Alexander – followed.
“I already worked with him when he was 7 years old, and with my other son Gustav. People want us to do something together – well, show me something! They don’t come up with anything good except for a marketing idea,” he said about their acting clan.
“Melancholia” was eclipsed by a Cannes press conference that went terribly wrong for von Trier, and for a while turned him into the French festival’s persona non grata.
“Everyone in that room knew he was not a Nazi, that he was the opposite, and yet they all used it as a headline. And then people who only read headlines thought he was a Nazi. He just told a bad joke. Lars grew up with a Jewish father and when his mother was dying, she told him he wasn’t his real father. It was her boss, who was a German,” explained the actor.
“When I meet people, especially in the U.S., they still [ask about it]. You have so many banned words over there. My kids can say any words they want – it depends on what their intention is.”
He praised von Trier for the female roles he’s written, also in the controversial “Nymphomaniac.”
“He’s not a misogynist. It’s really about him – he’s the female roles.”
He added: “I love the man, I love the work, and that doesn’t mean I agree with everything he does. You don’t agree with everything your wife does, either. [Before ‘Nymphomaniac’] he called me, saying: ‘My next film will be a porno. I went: ‘Ok, Lars.’ He added: ‘And I want you to play the lead, but we won’t show your dick until the last moment. And it will be very floppy.’”
Skarsgård started his career as a child star in popular show “Bombi Bott och jag”: “It was like a Swedish Huckleberry Finn, about a wild kid living freely. My younger brother sent applications for him and me, and I got it. I think he was very pissed off. Everyone saw it, including 14-year-old girls. That was a positive for me,” he recalled.
Over the years, he’s worked on “Good Will Hunting,” Spielberg’s “Amistad” and “Insomnia,” later remade by Christopher Nolan. “Pirates of the Caribbean” – “Gore Verbinski poured buckets of water on me, and he enjoyed it” – and Marvel films followed. As well as “Mamma Mia!”
“We were the only three men and we were the bimbos. No background, no anything. We were cute and stupid. I finally understood what they meant when they talk about what women usually experience,” he laughed.
He also played the ultimate villain Baron Harkonnen.
“You have to know what kind of film you are working on and what’s needed of you. Big Hollywood picture where you play the bad guys? Sometimes all you have to do there is just being bad, like in ‘Dune,’” he said. Recently, he was seen in Disney+ show “Andor.”
“Thankfully, I didn’t have a stroke before that huge monologue,” he deadpanned, referencing his health issues. “I’m not totally recovered and that’s terrible: I don’t remember my lines, and I had a prompter in my ear,” he said.
Still, he’s not done quite yet.
“Is there something I would still like to try [in the future]? Certainly. But I don’t know what.”