Stellan in Sentimental Value
A new episode of Variety & CNN Actors on Actors has father and son — Stellan and Alexander Skarsgård — sitting down for a conversation. Stellan is promoting his new film Sentimental Value, which is getting him accolades. Our own Chris Bumbray was glowing about his performance as he wrote in his review, “It’s an excellent family drama, the likes of which we rarely see in mainstream American films anymore (sadly). Hopefully, it earns serious attention for Skarsgård, who must rank as one of the best actors of his generation, with this being perhaps his greatest role in a career filled with them.”
Stellan opens up about acting after having a stroke
Back in 2022, during the production of Andor and in between making Dune and Dune: Part Two, Stellan would suffer a stroke and Alexander asked him, “I know you were nervous going into Sentimental Value — about the weight of it, or your own capability of playing the part.” Stellan replied,
You mean because of the stroke? I wasn’t that nervous, because I’d made the second season of Andor and the second part of Dune after the stroke. The directors of both helped me a lot — I was in the hospital and called Tony Gilroy and Denis Villeneuve and said, ‘I don’t know what’s going to happen.’ They were very supportive.”
Alexander would then ask his father, “Did you feel like, ‘I know I can fix this?’” Stellan responded,
I felt I could do it. I still had my voice. I didn’t know how to handle this sort of earwig thing. But with the earwig — the guy talking in my ear — must not interrupt my rhythm; I have to hear the other person saying my cue, and he has to be very fast and clear, without emotion, say the line, and then I can create my rhythm. That was complicated. I thought, ‘Well, maybe this is it. Maybe I won’t get any more jobs.’ And then Joachim [Trier] called me.”
Alexander showed he understood his father at such a time, “I remember before going into it, it was almost an existential crisis. You’ve been acting for 60 years, and then it’s like, ‘Is that it? Am I never going to do this again?’” Stellan put things into another perspective by saying, “But also, I’m 74 years old now. Most people writing are much younger. They rarely understand older people. They think old people can’t handle a cellphone, walk funny and can’t tie their shoelaces. Most of the scripts that I get are someone who’s got dementia or Alzheimer’s. With all respect for those people, I don’t want to play that yet. Suddenly you’re supposed to play a certain age, not a person.”
