Actor Stellan Skarsgård doesn't believe in bad guys

DAVE DAVIES, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies. Our guest today, Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgard, has had a long and interesting career, which only seems to get more interesting with age. Now in his 70s, he's just earned a Golden Globe award and an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor for his performance in the widely acclaimed film "Sentimental Value," from the Danish Norwegian director Joachim Trier. This surge in Skarsgard's fortunes comes four years after he suffered a stroke which left him struggling to memorize his lines. He found a workaround, which we'll talk about, and that enabled him to continue to play roles he'd begun in the science fiction movie series "Dune" and the "Star Wars" spinoff TV series "Andor," as well as the film set "Sentimental Value."

Skarsgard began acting as a teenager and has appeared in more than a hundred movies, from independent European films, like "Breaking The Waves" and "Melancholia," to commercial Hollywood fair, such as "The Hunt For Red October," "Pirates Of The Caribbean" and "Mamma Mia!" He's also found time to raise eight children from two marriages. Five of those kids are also professional actors. The best-known in the United States are his sons Alexander and Bill.

Skarsgard will find out if he's an Oscar winner at the award ceremony March 15. He spoke to me last week from a studio in London.

Stellan Skarsgard, welcome to FRESH AIR.

STELLAN SKARSGARD: Thank you very much.

DAVIES: In this film, "Sentimental Value," you play Gustav Borg. He's a famous director, and it's about his family relationships. He's the target of a lot of anger from one of his daughters because she says he wasn't around. Being in the movie business can mean you're away a lot. And this daughter is also a successful actress herself. There's an obvious parallel here to your own life. I mean, you're in the movie business, and a lot of your children are actors. I know you've been asked this a lot, but to what extent, when you read this script, did you identify with this character?

SKARSGARD: Not at all. He's from a different generation. He's a different kind of father than I am. Of course, the conflict between working as an artist and combining that with a personal life is difficult. And those problems I have, but that goes for every artist. But I didn't think I had anything to do with the role at all. So I did the entire film as if it was a stranger I was doing. But then my second son, Gustaf, said to me, after having seen the film - that he liked very much - that he said to me, do you recognize yourself? And I went, no. And he said, look again.

And even if I was at home, basically, eight months of 12 - I only worked four months a year since 1989. If I was at home eight months a year, I wasn't enough home for him. So I started to thinking about it. What became clear to me is - I mean, I have eight children, so I have eight different needs.

DAVIES: Right.

SKARSGARD: Some children need me a lot, and some don't need me at all. So you can't get it right as a parent.

DAVIES: I read that the director, Joachim Trier - you talked about this, I guess, a year before you started shooting, and he kind of crafted the script for you. Is this true?

SKARSGARD: Yeah. He wrote it for me, yeah - not as a service to me, but he was thinking of me when he was writing it - he and the writer, Eskil Vogt. He says that it was - the role was such a bad guy that he needed someone nice to do it.

(LAUGHTER)

SKARSGARD: So it was a flattering way of putting it.

DAVIES: Yeah. Is he a bad guy, Gustav, your character?

SKARSGARD: I don't believe in bad guys. No, no. I mean, the monster that I did in "Dune" was a bad guy. You might say that. But, in, like, human beings, we have problems because they are nuanced...

DAVIES: Right.

SKARSGARD: ...Real humans. And they are - they're flawed, and they're sad, and they're comic, and they're everything.

DAVIES: Right. And the gulf between Gustav and his daughter, you know, is bridged as the movie eventually reaches its climax. It's quite well done. You know, I don't have a clip to play from the film for an American audience. A lot of the film is not in English. But the other thing that I realized when I was looking for audio was that if you listen to audio versions of dialogue in this film, there are maybe longer pauses than usual, and it occurred to me when I watched the film for the second time that a lot of the acting here is - you know, you're responding with your face and your eyes to what other actors are saying. Is this a Joachim Trier technique?

SKARSGARD: It's a human trait. I mean, it's a wonderful thing because normally what is asked of the actor is to act within the line, to make the line one way or make the line another way, to - because in the line is all the information that is given to the audience. And that's not accurate. That's not good. What you need to do and what I like to do is to show whatever happens between the lines, under the lines, before the lines, after the lines. And that counterbalance - and sometimes it says that the line you were just saying is a lie, or it says that line you were just saying, you don't understand. You know?

DAVIES: Right.

SKARSGARD: So it becomes a much richer tapestry of feelings. And Joachim Trier is fantastic in that sense. He - that is what he loves.

DAVIES: Right. The camera isn't just following the speaker. It is following the listener.

SKARSGARD: No.

DAVIES: Right. Right. Yeah.

SKARSGARD: I mean, there's one role that is - really, really listen. And that is Inga, one of the daughters, this sort of the stable daughter, the center of love in this story. She is almost all of the time watching. And she's registered watching, and you get her fantastically - her performance by watching.

DAVIES: I wanted to talk about this stroke that you had that you suffered, I guess, in 2022, right? If you're comfortable, could you just tell us what happened when this occurred?

SKARSGARD: Well, I just got a stroke. I mean, my wife sort of noticed something on me, and my son, who was a doctor, he said that you should go to the hospital. And it was a stroke. It was a rather mild stroke. I lost some muscles in in my right side of my body, and I lost something, some part of my brain. Have a bigger problem with if I'm presenting a long thought chain, like if I'm having a political discussion or anything. I mean, I lose my bearing in the middle of it and just go quiet. But other than that, maybe some balance problems. But other than that, I was fine.

DAVIES: Well, of course, the problem, as I understand it, that you faced with your career was that you couldn't really learn lines as you did before. And you found a way to kind of work around this. Tell us what you did, how you got there.

SKARSGARD: Well the thing is I've always had difficulties learning lines in a way if I didn't sort of have them tailored to my feelings, but the way - I totally forgot lines immediately now. And I discovered that - I sort of was lying in bed in a hospital, and I was trying to test myself if I could remember the lines. And I sort of - I took a book, and I read something, and I closed the book, and I didn't remember it.

SKARSGARD: So I called - from the hospital, I made a call to Tony Gilroy, who was the showrunner and writer of "Andor." I was in the middle of doing them. I had done the first episodes, and I hadn't done the second season. And I also owed Denis Villeneuve - who was going to do "Dune 2" - a phone call. And I talked to them and I said, I cannot remember anything, any lines. And they said, don't worry, we'll fix it. And they said, take it easy. Come in and do what you need to. And I did. And there's a lot of actors that are actually using this technique, which is an earpiece and a prompter. But I found it rather difficult if you wanted to be precise in terms of rhythm, and...

DAVIES: Yeah, I can think.

SKARSGARD: ...Of the rhythm of the scene. And to me, rhythm is very important because it - you use it as a tool, the way - the rhythm you make in the scene. And I had to have the guy - the prompter - put his lines on top of my fellow actor. So I...

DAVIES: So - just so I understand this, you have a little earpiece, right?

SKARSGARD: Yeah.

DAVIES: And it's not a recording of the lines. It's a live prompter who is saying these lines as you're in the scene, often speaking at the same time as your fellow actors.

SKARSGARD: Yeah, that's true. He has to speak at the same time - or she has to speak at the same time as the other actor for me to be able to put the cue where I want.

DAVIES: Right.

SKARSGARD: So he - I'm listening to him and I'm listening to the fellow actor, and then I react to the fellow actor's line. I don't react to the prompter, but I take the text from the prompter and say it.

DAVIES: Wow.

SKARSGARD: So it's quite a complicated - in terms of simultaneous work, it's kind of complicated, but it's feasible.

DAVIES: Yeah.

SKARSGARD: And we did it. So I don't think there's any trace of the stroke in my work.

DAVIES: Are you surprised by the tremendous response to "Sentimental Value"? This film?

SKARSGARD: I mean, the power of the response I am surprised by. You can't anticipate that because it's fantastic. I mean, the audience response. It appeals to, obviously everybody - from children to old people - because everybody has a family member or are in a relationship to some family member that is sort of reflected in the film. But it's also - it's a very light film. It's - it deals with serious problems, and it deals with them seriously and don't take them light. But the film itself is very, very light. It's like a - light as a feather.

DAVIES: We need to take a break here. Let me reintroduce you. We are speaking with actor Stellan Skarsgard. He's up for the Best Supporting Actor Award at the Academy Awards ceremony March 15. We'll continue our conversation in just a moment. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR, and we're speaking with Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgard. He won a Golden Globe and earned an Oscar nomination for his performance in the new film, "Sentimental Value."

Let's talk a little bit about your life here. You - I understand you did your first acting as a teenager, a Swedish TV series called "Bombi Bitt And Me." You played a character named Bombi who - I've seen a little video of this. I - unfortunately, there was no translation, so I don't know what you were saying, but it's kind of like a Huckleberry Finn character, a guy with a straw hat with a lot of moxy, is more or less right?

SKARSGARD: Yep.

DAVIES: And it was a hit, right? You were well-known.

SKARSGARD: Nah. Yeah, I mean, we had - it was a TV series, and we had one channel to choose between. Everybody choose it.

(LAUGHTER)

SKARSGARD: But - so everybody saw it. So it was - I became very famous as a 16-year-old. But I've done theater before, and I've done sort of amateur theater, and I've done also professional theater before I did that.

DAVIES: OK. So what did being famous at 16 - I assume this meant people would recognize you on the street and that kind of thing?

SKARSGARD: Everybody...

DAVIES: What effect did that have on you in your life?

SKARSGARD: Well, you can say that child actors, they can either succumb to the pressure and the sort of loss of anonymity, and it can turn out really bad. Or you can survive it and it turns out pretty well. And I had very thoughtful and brilliant parents who sort of made sure that my head didn't get too big and that I was grounded as a person. And...

DAVIES: Do you remember how they did that?

SKARSGARD: Well, they pointed out to me how different I was from the - my persona, my public persona. And the important thing is, don't get that difference between your public persona and yourself too big, because that's when it happens - when it goes wrong.

DAVIES: Right. Now I wanted to talk about a film that I gather was kind of a breakthrough project for you. 1996, the film is "Breaking The Waves." It was your first with - first film with the Danish director, Lars von Trier, right?

SKARSGARD: Mm-hmm.

DAVIES: And you star with a very young Emily Watson. I think this was her first film. A lot of sex in this movie, which was interesting. I mean, you were a little older than her. You were in kind of the mid-40s. She was late-20s. Anyway, I want to play a clip here. You play a man who works on an oil rig off the coast of Scotland, and she plays a young woman in a very conservative coastal town near the rig. And the two of you fall in love, get married, have an active and very actively portrayed sex life in the film. And then your character, Jan, is injured in an accident and paralyzed from the neck down. Bess, your now wife, is devoted to you. And in this scene, she is at your bedside, and you make a request of her. Let's listen.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BREAKING THE WAVES")

SKARSGARD: (As Jan) Love is a mighty power, isn't it? If I'll die, it will be because love cannot keep me alive. But I can hardly remember what it's like to make love. And if I forget that, then I'll die. Remember when I phoned you from the rig, and we made love without being together?

EMILY WATSON: (As Bess McNeill) Do you want me to talk to you like that again? I - I'd love to.

SKARSGARD: (As Jan) Bess, I want you to find a man to make love to, and then come back here and tell me about it. It will feel like you and me being together again. Now, that - that will keep you alive.

WATSON: (As Bess McNeill) I can't.

SKARSGARD: (As Jan) This morning, when I told you to get a lover, it wasn't for your sake. It was for my sake 'cause I don't want to die. I'm afraid. You understand?

WATSON: (As Bess McNeill) Yes.

SKARSGARD: (As Jan) It will be you and me, Bess. Do it for me.

WATSON: (As Bess McNeill) How? I can't.

DAVIES: And that is our guest, Stellan Skarsgard in the 1996 film "Breaking The Waves" with Emily Watson.

I imagine you may not have heard that in a while. Does it bring back some memories?

SKARSGARD: Yeah, it sure does. I haven't seen the film since - it's our year, so.

DAVIES: Yeah.

SKARSGARD: Remember very well.

DAVIES: Yeah. I will say, you know, that request that you make of her takes the film to some pretty dark places, eventually, doesn't it?

SKARSGARD: Yeah. He - I mean, the man is missed - he asked her first to forget about him because he's not - he doesn't function as a man anymore, so she should get another man. And she refuses, and he comes up with this scheme to make her sleep around and find another man. And, of course, it misfires. It is a stupid way to do it. But what I learned from Lars von Trier is that there's no rules that are sacred. It's a - and that's a good, good rule to have (laughter).

DAVIES: In making art, you mean?

SKARSGARD: In making art.

DAVIES: Yeah.

SKARSGARD: And Lars, he'd - his first five films were very controlled. He's a master filmmaker, and he knew it, and he was doing those wild, beautiful films that were totally void of humanity in a way because the people in it, the actors, they were sort of directed. They were directed in minutia. And that kills the life - and he realized that. So he constructed, among other things, Dogme - the Dogme Manifesto - which was a way of him to take away all his tools. But also, he started with letting the actors free.

And one way of making sure that they were free was having signs on the set that said, make mistakes. And he was very adamant about it. You should make mistakes because in making mistakes and not being afraid of making mistakes, you're expanding your possibilities, and you're expanding the life in the character.

DAVIES: So you found that a liberating experience as an actor?

SKARSGARD: Yeah, enormously. That, in combination with another director, Swedish director called Bo Widerberg. I don't know if you remember him. He was nominated for a couple of Oscars, and he - for foreign films, and he won at Cannes a couple of times in the '60s and '70s. And he said to me - once upon a time when we were going to do a film, he said to me and some other very seasoned Swedish actors, and he said - in his very special voice and special accent. He said, I know you know how to do this, but I don't want to see your [expletive] tools. I want you to be as good as the amateurs that I have in the film.

And that is exactly what - Lars von Trier's way of directing or not directing and Joachim Trier's way of not directing is aiming at, to get the actors free of their tools, their conventions. They try to do what they think is - would benefit the career or the film or whatever, just to be there. And that was a revelation.

DAVIES: Well, we need to take another break here. Let me reintroduce you. We are speaking with Stellan Skarsgard. He's won a Golden Globe Award and earned an Oscar nomination for his performance in the film "Sentimental Value." He'll be back to talk more about his life and career after this short break. I'm Dave Davies, and this is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF DUKE ELLINGTON'S SONG, "WIG WISE")

DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies. My guest is Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgard. He's appeared in more than a hundred films, including "Good Will Hunting," "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo," and "Dune" 1 and 2. He won critical praise for his role in the HBO miniseries "Chernobyl," and he won a Golden Globe and earned an Oscar nomination for his performance in the new film "Sentimental Value." The Academy Awards ceremony is March 15. I spoke with Stellan Skarsgard last week.

Not long after the Lars von Trier film "Breaking The Waves," you were in "Good Will Hunting," which was directed by Gus Van Sant. This was the film set in Boston, written by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. And I wanted to play a clip here. I mean, the story people will remember is about these young friends in Boston who are working-class guys. They're kind of brawlers. They like to drink at bars. But one of them, the Matt Damon character, is a janitor in a college and is also a savant - brilliant at math and whatever.

You, Stellan Skarsgard, play a math professor who want to get this brilliant young man to work with you, but he's in jail because he got into a fight and punched a police officer, and you've gotten the court to agree to release him to study math, provided he sees a therapist. So in this scene we're going to hear, you have come to a psychiatrist - played by Robin Williams, who you have a history with - to see if he will agree to see the young man. And the psychiatrist is reluctant, and he speaks first. Let's listen.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "GOOD WILL HUNTING")

ROBIN WILLIAMS: (As Sean) I've got a full schedule.

SKARSGARD: (As Gerald Lambeau) Sean, Sean.

WILLIAMS: (As Sean) And I'm very busy. I've got a full schedule.

SKARSGARD: (As Gerald Lambeau) This boy is incredible. I've never seen anything like him.

WILLIAMS: (As Sean) What makes him so incredible, Gerry?

SKARSGARD: (As Gerald Lambeau) Ever heard of Ramanujan?

WILLIAMS: (As Sean) Yeah, I - no.

SKARSGARD: (As Gerald Lambeau) It's a man. He lived over a hundred years ago. He was Indian. And he lived in this tiny hut somewhere in India. He had no formal education. He had no access...

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) Coffee?

SKARSGARD: (As Gerald Lambeau) ...To any scientific work. And - but he came across this old math text. And from this simple text, he was able to extrapolate theories that had baffled mathematicians for years.

WILLIAMS: (As Sean) Yes, continued fractions. Yeah, he wrote it with...

SKARSGARD: (As Gerald Lambeau) Well, he mailed it to Hardy...

WILLIAMS: (As Sean) Yeah.

SKARSGARD: (As Gerald Lambeau) ...At Cambridge.

WILLIAMS: (As Sean) Cambridge, yeah.

SKARSGARD: (As Gerald Lambeau) Sure. And Hardy immediately recognized the brilliance of his work and brought him over to England. And then they worked together for years, creating some of the most exciting math theory ever done. Now this Ramanujan - his genius was unparalleled, Sean. Well, this boy's just like that. But he's - he's a bit defensive. I need someone who can get through to him.

WILLIAMS: (As Sean) Like me.

SKARSGARD: (As Gerald Lambeau) Yeah, like you.

WILLIAMS: (As Sean) Why?

SKARSGARD: (As Gerald Lambeau) Well, because you have the same kind of background.

WILLIAMS: (As Sean) What background?

SKARSGARD: (As Gerald Lambeau) Well, you're from the same neighborhood.

WILLIAMS: (As Sean) He's from Southie.

SKARSGARD: (As Gerald Lambeau) Yeah.

WILLIAMS: (As Sean) Boy genius from Southie. How many shrinks you go to before me?

SKARSGARD: (As Gerald Lambeau) Five.

WILLIAMS: (As Sean) Let me guess. Barry?

SKARSGARD: (As Gerald Lambeau) Yeah.

WILLIAMS: (As Sean) Henry?

SKARSGARD: (As Gerald Lambeau) Yeah.

WILLIAMS: (As Sean) Not Rick.

SKARSGARD: (As Gerald Lambeau) Sean, please.

WILLIAMS: (As Sean) Mm-hmm.

SKARSGARD: (As Gerald Lambeau) Just meet with him once a week, please.

DAVIES: And that's our guest, Stellan Skarsgard, and Robin Williams in the film, "Good Will Hunting." What was it like working with Robin Williams on this set?

SKARSGARD: Yeah, it was fantastic. I mean, he was a very nice man and a very gentle man. But he also - he had, like, three brains going on at the same time, wildly. And he was very funny, and he was improvising. He improvised - every scene we had to do some extra takes because he had to get the - his versions out of his system. But the improvisation was also good for us all. I mean, we - you had to follow him wherever he went. And also he would follow you wherever you went.

And everything became very different from the previous take because of Robin leading it to somewhere that you didn't expect to end up. But what Gus Van Sant got out of it was - he got extremely vivid takes and different temperatures in the takes, and he got aggression in some takes and sort of niceness in some takes. And he could cut those takes into any kind he wanted. When he was editing, he could take the film where he wanted.

DAVIES: Did you find it challenging to deal with that kind of fast-paced improvising from Robin Williams? Had you done that before?

SKARSGARD: No, I'm - and I'm not good at improvising. I'm - I did once - once I was in Toronto at the film festival, and Mike Figgis come up to me, and he says, Stellan, I'd like to do a movie with you. Yeah? Yeah, cool. And it will be improvised in one take. And that is my worst nightmare. So I said, yes. And it's called "Time Code." It's a very interesting film. You should see it if you can. And it's improvised in one hour-and-a-half, and we did five takes, I think, and we choose one because you couldn't cut between them.

But what I did was that I made sure that I had lines enough, made a hundred lines probably that I made up, that this person could say in those situations. So I could go in and I could improvise those lines if I wanted to, if I couldn't come up with anything better. And I could also improvise silence.

DAVIES: It says something about you that you were pitched this idea, and it kind of terrified you, and you said, sure, let's do it (laughter).

SKARSGARD: Yes. It's like with "Mamma Mia!"

DAVIES: Well, I was just going to bring that up. That's the...

SKARSGARD: Yeah, see?

DAVIES: That's the musical where you sing and dance with Pierce Brosnan and Colin Firth. Did you have any singing and dancing experience?

SKARSGARD: No, I can't sing. I can't dance.

DAVIES: But you did.

SKARSGARD: Yeah, I had to (laughter).

DAVIES: And were you happy with the result?

SKARSGARD: The thing is that "Mamma Mia!" - they don't need those three men to be able to sing or dance. All the girls are good at singing and dancing. And they just want three bimbos to look pretty, be funny and be sexy.

DAVIES: Yeah. There's a lot of fun video you can find on YouTube of you and these other two men in a studio singing these songs, which are songs by ABBA - which are, you know, not the easiest - and just throwing yourselves into them, and it's a lot of fun to watch.

SKARSGARD: Well, I don't know. I haven't seen them, so - but I mean, I was terrified. And we were - all three of us were terrified. We got to that studio, and we met Bjorn and Benny that had made all this - all these songs, and they're very good musicians. And they were so nice to us, but we were so frightened. We didn't know how to get it started. But they encouraged us, and we threw ourselves into it. We felt that they can always fix it afterwards.

DAVIES: Right. Trust the director, trust the process.

SKARSGARD: Yeah.

DAVIES: (Laughter) All right. You know, I wanted to talk about the HBO series "Chernobyl," which you had a major role in in 2019. It's about this accident at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine in 1986, the worst nuclear accident in history. And you play a high-ranking Soviet government minister who is assigned the day after the explosion, by the head of the Soviet Union, to go and investigate it. And you are a very formidable comrade here. You - when you're traveling in helicopter with the scientist with you, and you ask him to explain how a reactor works, and he hesitates, you say, tell me, or I'm going to have a soldier throw you out the window of the helicopter.

The scene we're going to hear is one where you and others managing the response to this reactor realized that there could be a catastrophic release of radiation if you don't get three volunteers from the plant to wade into some very badly contaminated water under the crippled reactor and shut down some valves. They're almost certain to get a lethal dose of radiation and not survive. And in this scene, you're in the room, kind of sitting at the side while the lead scientist is trying to get workers to volunteer for this dangerous assignment, telling them they'll get a cash bonus. But they sense the risk, and they're skeptical, and at some point, you just stand up and take charge. I think one of the workers who's skeptical speaks first. Let's listen.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "CHERNOBYL")

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) Why should we do this for - what? - 400 rubles?

SKARSGARD: (As Boris Shcherbina) You'll do it because it must be done. You'll do it 'cause nobody else can. And if you don't, millions will die. If you tell me that's not enough, I won't believe you. This is what has always set our people apart. A thousand years of sacrifice in our veins. And every generation must know its own suffering. I spit on the people who did this. And I curse the price I have to pay. I'm making my piece with it. Now you make yours. Go into that water 'cause it must be done.

DAVIES: And that is our guest Stellan Skarsgard in the HBO series "Chernobyl."

This is powerful stuff here. The guy that you play here, Boris Shcherbina, was a real guy who Soviet apparatchik got involved in managing the response and eventually died because of the radiation sickness, didn't he? Tell us about getting into this character.

SKARSGARD: It's an interesting character because he believes in the system, and he believes in - that it works. You know, the Soviet system or any authoritarian system is based on loyalty and lies to else. And if you're asked out of loyalty to the power to present lies, you will sort of undermine the - everything. And everybody in the system were lying about everything in the nuclear reactor system because facts didn't count.

DAVIES: They were used to lying in all aspects of life. Right.

SKARSGARD: Yeah. And it was also important to not rock the boat, not to draw attention from your superiors and not sort of be controversial in any way. Sit still in the boat. But when he discovers the unfathomable size of this catastrophe, he gradually comes to his senses and realizes that we've made this ourselves. And that's an interesting character to play. And then, of course, he realizes, eventually that he'll die, as well. But to him, the big revelation is not that he's going to die, it's that the system that he has been serving all his life is flawed.

DAVIES: Right. And there are many, many other reactors with the same flaws that led to this disaster, and nobody wants to deal with that because they're not telling each other the truth.

We are speaking with Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgard. He's up for the Best Supporting Actor at the Academy Awards ceremony March 15. We'll talk more after this break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF HANS ZIMMER'S "ARRIVAL")

DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR, and we're speaking with actor Stellan Skarsgard. He won a Golden Globe and earned an Oscar nomination for his performance in the new film "Sentimental Value."

You know, you've done a lot of independent films, but plenty of commercial work, and often playing characters that are powerful, sometimes evil. And I want to just - you just tell us a little bit about the role in "Dune," the science fiction series in which you play a galactic bad guy, Baron Harkonnen. I could play a clip, but the audio wouldn't do it justice 'cause what's amazing is what you look like. You want to describe your character and what it took to get ready every day?

SKARSGARD: Well, it took eight hours of makeup.

DAVIES: Eight hours. Wow.

SKARSGARD: Eight hours. It is a lot of prosthetics. I mean, I added 40 kilos of foam to my weight. I'm playing this fat monster Harkonnen. And he's an emperor, and he has one job in the film, and that is to be sort of the very epitome of evil. And he is. You don't care about his psychological motives or where he was wounded as a kid or whatever. You just need him to have a physical, frightening presence. And to keep that physical frightening presence, you can't sort of dilute him by letting him be in every scene. You have to have him in as few scenes as possible, but immensely powerful in those scenes. And also, they had the idea, which was very good, that he's naked the first time you see him. And then he is in a sort of pajama silky thing. And they also had a lot of more, like, marble stuff armor on him, which made him look like a marble character. But that would just reduce him, I said. So what you have to do is notice that he will be more frightening naked than in those armors, and he doesn't have to show his arms. He doesn't have to show his guns or anything. And that's what we did. And that was - that's a challenge, and that was fun to do that kind of character that is not explained, that has no excuse for being who he is, and that is totally without compromise.

DAVIES: Yeah. As I was getting ready for this interview and looking over your career, it's really remarkable. I - you know, you and I are not that far from the same age, and, you know, I have this job where I get to talk to really interesting people like you for a radio program. But I feel the effects of age. You know, I don't know how much longer I'm going to be able to do this and kind of meet the standard. You've kind of never been a hotter property, I guess, than now, when you've got this Oscar nomination and this terrific film, and you're in demand. I'm wondering kind of how you think about the coming years. How do you stay sharp? Do you have, you know, physical or mental exercises or diet, you know?

SKARSGARD: Well, I've been very much affected by the stroke, so I don't think as much as I did. And I have problems with that, and it's annoying. And for instance, some books, if they have, you know, one line is over the whole page without any commas, that's hard for me to read. And I like reading. But on the other hand, I can still work because being an actor is not a very intellectual work. So I can still work, and I can still feel.

DAVIES: God, it's funny to say - hear you say that being an actor is not a very intellectual work. Maybe you've done so many films that this comes more naturally to you. I think of it as a pretty demanding profession.

SKARSGARD: Well, I think all actors want it to be an intellectual work. They make up all kinds of things to feel that they're doing a job that is worthy of all the money they get. But it's not. I mean, you can have an amateur play better than a professional actor in some scenes and in some cases, and you have to be as good as an amateur. You have to produce real life, real irrationality, real emotions that comes up spontaneously, suddenly, unexpectedly. And it has nothing to do with playing an intellectual puzzle.

DAVIES: Yeah. How do you feel that so many of your children are working as actors? Did you encourage it?

SKARSGARD: I didn't encourage it, and I didn't discourage it. I don't think that parents should impose their dreams on their kids at all. They shouldn't interfere with their choices. If they want an advice, they'll come to you. In a way, I'm happy because we have something in common we can talk about, most of them. I have one doctor that is not in the business. I can't talk to him about anything.

(LAUGHTER)

DAVIES: But memories and relatives and life. Yeah. Right. Yeah, but...

SKARSGARD: Yeah. No, no. I'm just joking.

DAVIES: Yeah.

SKARSGARD: We don't talk shop in the sense that I give them advice or they ask for advice because that's not useful. But we - at our dinners, we laugh at people. We gossip about people in the business, and we tell about that director and that actor, and they misbehave. So it's - we're like normal people.

DAVIES: Yeah, that would be a fun movie, hearing you gossip with your kids.

SKARSGARD: Yeah. Yeah.

DAVIES: You know, I can imagine that you wouldn't want to give them advice about acting technique and all that. But I wonder if, you know, there are things to learn about just navigating the business, mistakes you can make with the wrong agent or signing a bad contract. Do you help them with that side?

SKARSGARD: No, no.

DAVIES: No.

SKARSGARD: And they don't ask. But probably they've learned some things about my attitude - through my attitude to fame and stuff like that. And so they learn what they want from what they see.

DAVIES: Right.

SKARSGARD: And that's it. You can't sort of impose it on them.

DAVIES: And that attitude being, try new stuff, do good art.

SKARSGARD: Yeah. Yeah. I think so.

DAVIES: Yeah. Yeah.

SKARSGARD: And to be free, in a way, in your expressions and not go by the demands of anybody.

DAVIES: Yeah, yeah. Stellan Skarsgard, thank you so much for speaking with us.

SKARSGARD: Thank you very much. It's been a pleasure.

DAVIES: Stellan Skarsgard has won a Golden Globe Award and earned an Oscar nomination for his performance in the film "Sentimental Value," which is now streaming. The Academy Awards ceremony is March 15. Coming up, Maureen Corrigan reviews the new novel from Allegra Goodman. This is FRESH AIR.

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DAVE DAVIES, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. Allegra Goodman's latest novel is called "This Is Not About Us." But our book critic, Maureen Corrigan, says that title is coy. Goodman's readers are bound to see aspects of themselves and their families in these pages. Here's her review.

MAUREEN CORRIGAN, BYLINE: Some 20 years ago, a cobweb descended over my right eye. What I thought was a migraine turned out to be a semi-detached retina. Even saying those words now makes me flinch. After surgery, I lay still for days on my side, eye patch in place. Back then, my husband and daughter went to our local library to find books on tape for me. Since I'd reviewed Allegra Goodman's novel "Intuition" just before this scary event happened, they brought home cassettes of two of Goodman's earlier novels, "Kaaterskill Falls" and "The Family Markowitz."

I was lucky, and my sight recovered. So now I think of that interlude of being marooned on the couch, listening to Goodman's novels unspool, as one of the most idyllic reading experiences of my life, which is why even though I've kept up with Goodman's work, I was hesitant to read her new novel, "This Is Not About Us."

Most of her books have explored intense and enclosed worlds - from the labs of cancer researchers in "Intuition" to rare book zealots in "The Cookbook Collector" to the island prison of a 16th century castaway in last year's "Isola." "This Is Not About Us," however, is different. It's a throwback in form and subject to "The Family Markowitz," which came out 30 years ago. Both novels are domestic tales about three generations of a Jewish family, and both are structured as a series of linked stories in which various family members take center stage.

I worried that returning to a familiar formula might mean that Goodman was running out of energy as a writer. Then I started reading and stopped worrying. When I finished, "This Is Not About Us," I kid you not, I read it a second time just to savor all the interconnections, all the shifts in family members' opinions of each other.

"This Is Not About Us" opens at the prolonged deathbed of Jeanne, who, at 74, is the youngest of the three Rubenstein sisters. Jeanne's house is packed with flowers - the sunflowers from her daughter-in-law, Melanie, the roses from the Auerbachs next door. The flowers depressed her, especially those already wilting. When she looked at the mums, she felt she wasn't dying fast enough.

Sardonic Jeanne does inevitably depart, and that's when the mood here darkens - not because of her death but because of an apple cake that middle sister Sylvia serves at Jeanne's shiva. The apple cake recipe originally came from the eldest Rubenstein sister, Helen. But Helen is not a gifted baker like Sylvia. When Sylvia entices the entire extended family to gather around a Bundt cake that emits the warm, sweet fragrance of apples, Helen storms out of the Shiva, and she refuses to forgive Sylvia for - well, Goodman postpones the emotionally overwhelming ending to this preposterous and painful family rift till the very last pages of her novel.

The 17 chapters of "This Is Not About Us" can stand as independent stories, but they accrue power from the subtle ways in which they alter our initial impressions of family members. "Deal Breaker," for example, focuses on Helen's older daughter, Pam, who's in her early 50s and single. In an earlier story, another character describes Pam as a black hole - someone who, at the best of times, looked askance. But in "Deal Breaker," we see Pam cut to the quick when she realizes the man she loves will always put his ex-wife and teenage daughter first. That's when her mother Helen's superhuman ability to hold a grudge - remember the apple cake - becomes a quality that fortifies Pam.

Talking with her parents about the reason for the breakup, Pam struggles to characterize her ex-boyfriend's steadfast loyalty to his ex-wife and daughter. She asks her mother for the word that describes those trees that hold onto their leaves all winter. Marcescent, says Helen, because she knows the word for everything. She is such a puzzler. That's how he is, Pam tells her parents. Good for him, says Helen. And Pam knows she means good riddance.

Pam can't help but admire her mother's clarity. Helen is difficult. She's daunting, but she's crisp. She never clings. Goodman herself is pretty marcescent as a writer. She holds fast to the gifts that have marked her since her earliest books - psychological acuity, humor and an abiding curiosity about the volatile chemistry of people bound together by affinity, profession or blood.

DAVIES: Maureen Corrigan teaches literature at Georgetown University. She reviewed "This Is Not About Us" by Allegra Goodman.

On tomorrow's show, as President Trump weighs an attack on Iran, pledges billions to his new Board of Peace, has an unconventional team negotiating to end the war in Ukraine and still harbors ambitions to acquire Greenland, we speak with The New York Times' David Sanger. We'll discuss Trump's international agenda and the impact of the Supreme Court decision on tariffs. I hope you can join us.

FRESH AIR's executive producer is Sam Briger. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. We had additional engineering help from Adam Staniszewski. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Ann Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Therese Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Nyakundi, Anna Bauman and Nico Gonzalez-Wisler. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. For Terry Gross and Tonya Mosley, I'm Dave Davies.

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