The first thing anyone seems to notice about Alexander Skarsgard is how tall he is. At 193 centimetres (six foot four), he is by no means off the scale, but every article about him describes him folding himself into a car or descending through space onto a chair. The effect was doubled when he bulked up to play Tarzan a couple of years ago; he made the chairs on chat shows look like kindergarten furniture. In his new film War on Everyone, he plays his big, skinny cop with a pronounced stoop. The effect, paradoxically, is to make him look even taller: a brilliant bit of characterisation.
For years, Alexander Skarsgard was mostly Son of Stellan, Stellan Skarsgard being probably Sweden's most internationally famous male actor. True Blood, the outlandish vampire drama, made the son Alexander famous in his own right. For seven months of each year for seven years, he played Eric Northblood, charismatic vampire, until the show finished in 2014. Of course, he owes Eric. "But it can be tough when you've done like 70 episodes with the same characters," says Skarsgard. "It can get like Groundhog Day."
He wanted to leave. At the same time, he was scared. "When you finish a show like that, you're like 'am I ever going to work again?'"
Not that he hadn't been working anyway; during the annual five-month hiatus from television, Skarsgard was making films in Scandinavia. Since he hung up his fangs for good, he has played a creepy older man in Diary of a Teenage Girl, a model in Zoolander 2 and a silent Amish in the forthcoming Mute.
We're here to discuss the pitch-black cop comedy War on Everyone. "I don't know how I choose," he says. "It's an instinct. It's something about when I read, understanding a character but not fully, I'm curious."
War on Everyone takes comic nihilism to the max. Skarsgard plays Terry, an Albuquerque cop whose partner in crime – and, very occasionally, against it – is played by the diminutive Michael Pena. Together they steal drugs from dealers and extort money from successful thieves, sparring about philosophy and literature in between car chases straight out of the Miami Vice handbook. When they stumble across some seriously bad men, the tone changes; inevitably, there is a shoot-em-up showdown. It is written and directed by John Michael McDonagh, who made The Guard and Calvary in his native Ireland.
Skarsgard first read the script for War on Everyone when he was shooting Tarzan, working out daily and living on a brutal diet mostly consisting of small serves of broccoli. Rogue policeman Terry, by contrast, was drunk in every scene. Skarsgard was in. The challenge, as he saw it, was to make someone who was "a really bad egg" sufficiently sympathetic for the audience to want him to survive. "How do you find the humanity in this guy? How do you make audiences care about him? And that came from myself, because I was reading it and I did care about him."
Skarsgard didn't plan to become an actor, but he has been doing bit parts since he was seven, usually because his father knew the director and was asked if he could provide a child. At 13, however, he starred in a television film that became a hit. That was scary. "I think most 13-year-olds are quite insecure but if you are in the spotlight being recognised and stuff it makes you … well it made me almost paranoid about going outside."
He told his father, who was then working 16-hour days in repertory theatre, that he didn't want to do it. "He was very supportive. He just said: 'Well, don't. You have to love it and if you don't, it's not worth it.'"
It was only when he was 20 that he thought he might give it another shot. So he enrolled in drama school in New York and, while he was staying with his father in Los Angeles, went for an audition. It was for Zoolander; he got the part. After that, he spent eight years waiting tables. Skarsgard was always insistent that success shouldn't be handed to him ahead of anyone else. To this day, he doesn't consult his father about work."I think I've always been very stubborn. It's been very important for me to make my own mistakes and not be guided by him." But they talk a lot, "obviously".
At 40, Skarsgard has lived in the United States for most of his adult life. There isn't a trace of Scandi left in his accent. Even so, he still feels very Swedish. "I haven't had a place in Stockholm for 10 years, but I still say I'm going to go home every time I go to Sweden," he says. "I try to read Swedish newspapers and know what's happening in Swedish music."
One day, he thinks, he will probably fold himself up and send himself back. "I miss it."
Just not yet.