Alexander Skarsgard's sexuality hint
Alexander Skarsgard has suggested he has "been with" both men and women in the past while discussing his new movie Pillion.
Alexander Skarsgard has suggested he has "been with" both men and women in the past.
The 49-year-old actor - who has a two-year-old son with girlfriend Tuva Novotny - can currently be seen as charismatic biker gang leader Ray, who embarks on a dominant/submissive relationship with the younger Colin (Harry Melling) in Pillion and while he insisted his own background isn't "really relevant" to the story, he believes the movie depicts his character in a more authentic way than other tales have.
According to Variety, he said at the Zurich Film Festival: “I found that in this case, it’s not really relevant what my background is. I mean, I do have a kid, but what I’ve done in the past, who I’ve been with, men, women… To me, what was important was that this felt like an opportunity to tell a story about a subculture I hadn’t seen portrayed this way – with so much authenticity.
“My experience of watching this on screen was through [Al Pacino-starring] Cruising, where it’s this dark underbelly of New York City and it’s dangerous, murderous and scary. Leather gays are scary. I’m no Ray, but I have a little bit of experience from that world and I know that’s not the truthful depiction.”
Alexander praised director Harry Lighton for not having "put on silk gloves to tell this story" but noted nothing in Pillion is unnecessarily graphic.
He said: “He embraced the awkwardness of it. All these characters were fully fledged and the sex scenes weren’t graphic for the sake of being graphic. We shot way more graphic stuff than you’ve seen just now.
“Harry did a beautiful job of calibrating it. You don’t shy away from it because ‘Oh, we can’t show men having sex,’ but you also don’t show a closeup of a dick just because you can, for the shock value.
"I think my mom will like this movie, and it’s about kinky gay bikers and a D/s relationship. Portrayed with the perfect amount of respect, but not too much respect.”
The Swedish star admitted his approach to sex scenes in the film was very different to when he had to get intimate with Nicole Kidman in Big Little Lies.
He said: “On this one, Harry and I were excited about just literally throwing ourselves into that ring. On Big Little Lies, it was important for Nicole and I to get to know each other before and really build that trust, because we knew we wanted to shoot in a very safe but authentic way.
“A lot of those scenes are shot with a single camera. The whole scene plays through from the beginning till the end and they are quite violent physically and really difficult emotionally.
"I would go over to Nicole’s house, play with her kids and just hang out and have lunch and talk. By the time we started shooting, we were like two friends getting into this together.”
