Skarsgård Family: Still Obsessed With Glue (and Suffering For Their Art)
It seems being a Skarsgård means willingly subjecting yourself to hours of makeup torture for the sake of cinema. Remember Stellan, plastered head-to-toe with barnacles as Bootstrap Bill in *Pirates of the Caribbean*? Well, his son Alexander is now taking that «dedication» to a whole new (and arguably weirder) level.
In the upcoming film *Wicker*, Alexander Skarsgård plays… a creature made of grass and reeds. Yes, you read that right. And apparently, this involved being completely sealed inside prosthetics.
According to an interview with *Variety*, he was literally glued into character! No eating, no drinking, no sweating – just pure, silent suffering. He admits it wasn’t quite the seven-hour barnacle marathon his dad endured («only» a little over an hour in makeup), but still… trapped inside a wicker man sounds less like acting and more like a very intense spa treatment gone wrong.
The article highlights how this forced him to rely on exaggerated movements, since subtle facial expressions were… off the table. He’s basically communicating through interpretive dance while slowly suffocating under layers of foliage.
It’s all part of Skarsgård’s pattern of choosing roles that prioritize commitment over comfort (think *Succession*, *Infinity Pool*). Clearly, vanity isn’t a concern. Which is good, because who needs eyebrows when you’re embodying a sentient shrub?
We’ll get to see the full extent of this leafy dedication at Sundance in 2026. Until then, we can only imagine the skin relief Alexander experienced after his two weeks of filming… and the subsequent week dedicated solely to un-gluing.
