Alexander Skarsgård is an embarrassing creep who tries to coerce women into partying naked with him in hotel suites. Or so it would seem from the version of himself that he played last year in Donald Glover’s comedy Atlanta. “I’m not saying that I dance around in a leopard-print thong in front of girls I don’t know,” he says. “But I’m also not saying that I don’t. That kind of thing works really well when there’s a kernel of truth in it.”
This twinkling, teasing playfulness represents the default setting of the 46-year-old actor. His natural self-deprecation is what makes it so startling when he turns up on screen as another of the brutes and bastards that have become his speciality over the years. There was the violently abusive husband in the HBO series Big Little Lies and the violently abusive cop in War on Everyone; a racist in Passing and a rapist in the Straw Dogs remake, as well as a sad, moustachioed sleazeball who sleeps with his partner’s underage daughter in The Diary of a Teenage Girl. Eric, the vampire he played across all seven series of True Blood, was an absolute catch by comparison.
