Rising star Alicia Vikander has the look. It’s not so much the look of a perfectly polished Hollywood ingenue. It’s more intangible, more a throwback to the intriguing attractiveness possessed by those international actresses who graced the films of Truffaut and Godard in the 1960s like Anna Kerina and Jeanne Moreau. Beautiful in a soulful way and possessed of deep waters rushing beneath a placid surface, the 27-year-old Swedish actress has poise and grace rarely seen in younger performers these days, perhaps as a result of her training as a dancer. With a raft of strong performances already under her belt, Ms. Vikander is still not quite a household name yet. But she’s about to be.
Born in Gothenburg and the daughter of an actress, Alicia spent her formative years training to be a ballerina at the Royal Swedish Ballet School. But injuries and a burning desire to act sent her on a different path in her late teens and she found success on the Swedish soap opera, Andra Avenyn, at the age of 20. Jumping off from there she made her critically praised film debut in the Swedish film Pure, garnering several prestigious European awards for that 2010 feature.
Ms. Vikander broke through in the English speaking world with her role as Kitty in 2012’s adaptation of the classic weepy, Anna Kerenina, which starred Keira Knightly and Jude Law. And after making such a big impact in that relatively small role she was off to the races. After more work in Europe, she featured in The Fifth Estate (2013), the Aussie Son of a Gun (2014) and the British independent film, Testament of Youth (2015). But the movie that really put her on the radar of the general theater-going audience was 2015’s Ex Machina, Alex Garland’s spine-tinglingly dystopian directorial debut. Her role as a highly evolved artificial intelligence in beguiling semi-human form was one of the more interesting female characters to come along in years. While the exceptionally strong writing obviously did a lot of the work for the cast, which includes the outstanding Oscar Isaac and Domhnall Gleason, Vikander’s sympathetic and unsettling work as a beautiful android pitted against humans in a life or death examination for her worthiness to exist is quite simply a tour de force. Visionary as it is, Ex Machina would not have been as great without the actress’s stunning portrayal.
Her breakthrough as Ava the Android officially cemented Alicia Vikander’s status as one of the hottest Swedish imports since Lena Olin. She starred in this summer’s big budget Man From U.N.C.L.E. and will appear in a slew of upcoming mainstream movies, such as Burnt with Bradley Cooper, Tulip Fever with Christoph Waltz, The Light Between the Oceans with Michael Fassbender, her now ex-boyfrirend, as well as an upcoming Bourne Identity sequel. Now that is a busy lady!
Projecting a tender vulnerability wrapped around a steel core and with hypnotic brown eyes that always seem to hold you in their gaze, Ms. Vikander is also blessed with the acting chops to go far. She could well be this generation’s Juliette Binoche and should be aided by having an even better command of English than the great French actress. Only time will tell, of course. But one thing’s for certain: Alicia Vikander is a compelling actress well worth watching, especially if she continues to do smaller, independent films and doesn’t get swallowed up by the Hollywood Borg. We’re looking forward to watching what should be a stellar career for years to come.
