Alicia Vikander: everything you need to know about the Swedish actress
Alicia Vikander is one of Scandinavia’s best-known actresses. The up-and-coming Swedish dancer, producer and actress rose to international fame. Find out who Alicia Vikander is, how her career began and what projects she is working on today.
Who is Alicia Vikander?
Alicia Vikander is a Swedish actress, dancer and producer, best known for The Danish Girl and Tomb Raider. Originally from Gothenburg, she studied in Stockholm and now owns her own production company called Vikarious, which specialises in promoting women in the film industry.
Alicia Amanda Vikander (born 3 October 1988 in Gothenburg) is a Swedish dancer, producer and actress. She is best known for her role in Tomb Raider as Lara Croft and her work on the film biopic The Danish Girl, for which she won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in 2016.
| Born | 3 October 1988 in Gothenburg |
|---|---|
| Kown from | The Danish Girl (2015), Tomb Raider (2018), Earthquake Bird (2019) |
| Awards | Satellite Award (2015), Oscar for Best Supporting Actress (2016) , Screen Actors Guild Award (2016), Critics’ Choice Movie Award (2016) |
Biography
Childhood and youth
Alicia Vikander, who is one quarter Finnish, was born in Gothenburg in 1988. After her parents separated two years later, she was largely raised by her mother. Her five half-siblings lived with her father, whom she visited every other weekend.
In 1998, at the age of nine, she began ballet training in Gothenburg at the Svenska Balettskolan i Göteborg. When she was 15 years old, she moved to Stockholm, where she trained at the Kungliga Svenska Balettskolan (“Royal Swedish Ballet School”) from 2004 to 2007, while at the same time receiving a secondary school education.
Career start: from dance to acting
However, dancing became more difficult for her, as she suffered several injuries during this period. At the same time, she discovered her passion for acting and made her first TV appearances. After finishing school, she applied five times to theatre schools but was rejected.
2011 to today: international success, marriage and children
In 2011, she moved to London, where she lived for several years. Since 2014, she has been dating actor Michael Fassbender, whom she first met at the Toronto Film Festival in 2013. In 2014, their relationship deepened during the shooting of the film The Light Between Oceans (2016), in which Vikander and Fassbender play a married couple. The wedding followed in Ibiza in October 2017. They now live in Lisbon with their child, who was born in 2021.
Activism: commitment to equal rights in the film industry
Alicia Vikander campaigned against discrimination and harassment of women in the Swedish film industry by contributing to an open letter in Svenska Dagbladet. She has also spoken out several times in favour of promoting women in the film industry and diversifying female characters and thus film roles. Her production company Vikarious specialises in the promotion of women in the film industry.
Career: Alicia Vikander’s career from 1995 to today
She took part in her first production at the age of seven. The musical Kristina från Duvemåla was written by Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson from ABBA and played at the Gothenburg Opera for three years.
She appeared in several other musicals there as well, including The Sound of Music and Les Misérables. At the age of nine, she won a TV singing competition for children, Småstärnorna, with the song Du måste finnas.
From 2008 to 2010, she took part in the TV drama Andra Avenyn, which made her known in Sweden.
For her role in The Inner Beauty of the Universe, she was honoured with the Rising Star Award for Best Young Actress at the Stockholm Film Festival in 2010. A year later, she received the Swedish Guldbagge Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role.
In 2012, she played the role of Danish Queen Caroline Mathilde in the Danish historical film The Queen and the Physician alongside Mads Mikkelsen. During the same year she took on a supporting role in the film adaptation of the well-known Russian novel Anna Karenina as well.
She subsequently received further international role offers. Her international breakthrough came with her role as Gerda Wegener in the Hollywood drama The Danish Girl (2015), in which she starred alongside Eddie Redmayne and won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in 2016.
Alicia Vikander attracted a lot of attention when she took on the role of video game heroine Lara Croft in Tomb Raider (2018). Her production company, subsequently founded in collaboration with her agent Charles Collier, released its first production Euphoria in 2017, directed by Lisa Langseth.
Alicia Vikander’s filmography: a selection
- 2007-2008: Andra Avenyn
- 2010: The Inner Beauty of the Universe (Till det som är vackert)
- 2012: Anna Karenina
- 2014: Ex Machina
- 2015: Codename U.N.C.L.E. (The Man from U.N.C.L.E.)
- 2015: The Danish Girl
- 2016: Jason Bourne
- 2016: The Light Between Oceans
- 2017: Euphoria
- 2017: Moomins and the Winter Wonderland (Muumien taikatalvi, voice)
- 2018: Tomb Raider
- 2019: Earthquake Bird
- 2020: The Glorias
- 2021: The Green Knight
New projects: what is Alicia Vikander working on today?
On 26 November 2020, the feature film The Glorias was released, which is based on My Life on the Road, the biography of Gloria Steinem and her life as an activist for equal rights. Gloria Vikander played a young version of the protagonist.
In 2021, she played the wife of a Korean-American facing deportation in the drama Blue Bayou. She was also to be seen in The Green Knight, a fantasy drama loosely based on a Middle English chivalric saga. Vikander further took on the role of April, the main character’s girlfriend, in the action thriller Beckett.
Tomb Raider 2, the sequel to the successful 2018 reboot, that was announced to be released in 2022, got cancelled because the rights were removed. In Firebrand (2023), Alicia Vikander takes on the role of Katherine Parr, the sixth and last wife of Henry VIII.
