Scene Stealer: Stellan Skarsgård
'Pirates of the Caribbean's' Bootstrap Bill recalls some of his past feats of acting derring-do.
By Jason Matloff
BREAKING THE WAVES (1996)
Surprisingly, Skarsgård had a blast making this tragic love story about a married couple whose happiness turns to horror.
STELLAN SKARSGÅRD: "It of course demanded a lot of emotional input from the actors, but at the same time, even as the film is brutal and sometimes very dark, the shoot wasn't. Even if you make a very dark picture, you don't have to walk around being dark all the time. That doesn't help or make anything easier. I laughed a lot and loved working with [director] Lars von Trier. So I had a lot of fun doing it.
"Lars also wanted to create a relaxed atmosphere on the set, so he had a big sign that said, 'Make mistakes.' That was sort of a relief because everybody does make mistakes, but here it was encouraged — nobody should feel bad about trying things that didn't work."
AMISTAD (1997)
On the set of this historical drama, Skarsgård marveled at his costar Morgan Freeman's way of preparing for a scene.
"I had a very nice relationship with Morgan. He's a lovely man, but we have two different temperaments. I'm a pacer on the set. I pace back and forth all the time. I probably cover a couple of miles before a take. But Morgan, he was so remarkably calm. He just stood there as if he was unconscious, like he was cut of out of wood or something. But when [they would call action], he would take two steps in and be brilliant."
GOOD WILL HUNTING (1997)
Skarsgård plays an MIT professor who, along with a grieving therapist (Robin Williams), tries to help a young genius (Matt Damon) find his way.
"Robin's always very funny. And he has such a remarkable brain. I remember doing the scene in the bar with him where I come in and we have a dialogue. The camera was set up inside where Robin was, I make my entrance, and suddenly, he plays the scene as Jack Nicholson. Of course I laughed my head off."
DEEP BLUE SEA (1999)
Skarsgård's genetic researcher learns the hard way that playing God with a group of deadly mako sharks can lead to very bad results.
"My death scene was pretty easy: I had a fake arm which a mechanical shark pulled off and then I was carried underwater on a stretcher for a while. But they gave me oxygen so it wasn't too bad [laughs]. Some of the mechanical sharks were pretty scary, though. We had one that malfunctioned and started destroying the decor. They were so powerful; I just stayed away."
KING ARTHUR (2004)
As originally written, the character of Saxon leader Cerdic wasn't evil enough for Skarsgård, but that soon changed after a few alterations.
"He was too much of a cliché villain. I wanted to spice him up a little. I also didn't want to speak with a German accent. I said that I don't want to blush every time I fly Lufthansa. And there are so many German villains that Germans should sue the rest of the world. They said, 'Okay, you don't have to do the accent,' so I took the role. I actually did a slight Texas twang because it was right when Iraq was invaded."
EXORCIST: THE BEGINNING (2004) and DOMINION: PREQUEL TO THE EXORCIST (2005)
Skarsgård was the lead in both Paul Schrader's Dominion and Renny Harlin's Exorcist, which was made after the studio scrapped Schrader's version.
"I wasn't that happy to get into the same costume and do it all over again. I felt that I had done the film already, and I didn't even know if they'd washed the clothes since I had last worn them. Originally, they wanted to do reshoots with another director and put them into Schrader's film, which they had me on contract for. That also didn't make me too happy because it would feel like two different films. So when Renny — who I like as a person and had worked with before on Deep Blue Sea — wanted to re-do the entire film, I said yes because it was better than doing a patchwork."
In both films, Skarsgård portrays a younger version of the priest that acting legend and fellow Swede, Max von Sydow, made famous in the original Exorcist (1973).
"I thought I didn't care about it but one night in Rome I had a dream that I saw Max coming from the set [of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, which was being shot at Cinecitta the same time as Beginning] and I said, 'Hi, Max,' because I know him. He said, 'Hi,' and then came closer, and I realized that he was over 10 feet tall. Then I understood that subconsciously I must have had some fear of not filling his shoes."
PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD'S END (2007)
In the third installment of this hugely popular franchise, Skarsgård reprises his role as Bootstrap Bill, the cursed father of Orlando Bloom's Will Turner.
"When I met with Gore Verbinski [before making Dead Man's Chest] and saw the sketches, he promised me there would be just a little seafood on my face in the beginning and the rest would be CGI. It didn't turn out that way. By the end, I was in makeup for more than four hours. But in At World's End, I'm deteriorating more and actually becoming a part of the ship, so it ended up taking six hours. If I'm going to do more of these films, I should probably renegotiate the CGI and mussels thing."
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