Alexander Skarsgard Says His First U.S. Movie Zoolander 'Gave Me a Warped Idea of Hollywood'
Alexander Skarsg?rd had a pretty easy time getting his first acting job in America.
The Swedish actor stopped by Good Morning America Thursday when hosts Robin Roberts and Michael Strahan took him on a trip down memory lane with a clip of Zoolander. Skarsg?rd made his first ever U.S. appearance alongside Ben Stiller in the hilarious 2001 movie about male models.
As Skarsg?rd explained, it was all by chance.
“I had just started acting and I was doing theater in Stockholm and my father [Stellan Skarsg?rd] was shooting a movie in LA and I was visiting,” Skarsg?rd, 42, said of his actor father. “I obviously didn’t have representation out there but his agent asked, ‘You’re in town, would it be fun to go to an audition? Do you think that’d be interesting?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, it’d be a great story to tell my friends back home.’ ”
Things quickly got more serious than the True Blood actor was anticipating.
“Two weeks later I was riding around with Ben Stiller shooting,” Skarsg?rd joked. “But it also gave me a warped idea of Hollywood, ’cause I remember after that I was like telling my friends back in Sweden, ‘It’s a piece of cake! You go to LA and you walk in a room and Ben Stiller is there, you have a little chat and next thing you know, they’re flying you to New York to shoot.’ And then it took three years until I got my next job.”
Skarsg?rd did several small roles after the hit comedy before booking his star-making turn in the HBO vampire show True Blood as Eric. The actor quickly became one of Hollywood’s go-to hunks after that, with blockbusters like the Legend of Tarzan and his award-winning role in Big Little Lies.
But most importantly, Skarsg?rd also took time out of his busy schedule to come back to the role that started it all in the 2016 sequel Zoolander 2.
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