Alexander Skarsgård opens up on teenage 'embarrassment' when his famous dad would walk around naked
Alexander Skarsgard felt "embarrassed" as a teenager when his dad would walk around naked and just wanted him to have a normal job rather than being a Hollywood star.
Alexander Skarsgard felt "embarrassed" as a teenager when his dad would walk around naked.
The 48-year-old actor is the son of 'Mamma Mia!' star Stellan Skarsgard and admitted that while he grew up in a "very artistic household", he started to develop "insecurities" about the open nature of it all once he reached adolescence.
He told The Times: "It was a very artistic household with lots of big dinner parties, lots of wine flowing. My dad was embarrassing because he wasn’t like my friends’ dads.
"He’d walk around naked all the time, and there’d be weird poets and artists everywhere. Today it sounds super-inspiring and fun and creative, and when I look back it was incredible in many ways — we as kids were treated as equals.
"You’d be four and sitting with the adults and they’d be listening to you, saying, ‘All right, well, I don’t quite agree with that,’ which I’m grateful for.
"But when I became a teenager and friends came over, insecurities set in. My dream was for [my dad] to drive a Saab and wear a grey suit and leave at nine and come home at five, not running around with a bunch of hippies and being out all night.
"They came to say hi or to get an autograph, but it made me paranoid and very insecure. I didn’t like it at all."
The former 'True Blood' star dabbled in acting himself as a child but quit when he turned 13, and returned to it when he reached adulthood.
At 19, the Swedish-born star signed up to national service and joked it was all because he wanted to be like the next James Bond, although it wasn't quite like the glamour seen in the Hollywood film series.
He said: "Now it’s mandatory, but it wasn’t then and I didn’t do it for patriotic reasons to defend my country, to keep the Russians from invading Sweden, because that wasn’t even on the radar at the time. I did it because I was 19, I didn’t know what I wanted to do and I wanted to be James Bond for 18 months..
"Definitely less champagne and models.
"It was quite bleak. But it was also a really good experience for me because I was a team leader, and when we were out on missions it was mostly me and three other guys, which was a lot of responsibility for an idiot teenager. So I had to grow up a bit."
