Bill Skarsgård gives us Stockholm Syndrome with his latest role

“We’ve got it,” says Bill Skarsgård. It’s December in Stockholm, but we’re pretending it’s spring. The actor has walked by the Acne Studios flagship at Norrmalmstorg 10 times already. Moments ago a bus nearly hit our photographer as it came zipping a round the corner, honking its horn. Skarsgård is wearing a denim jacket and jeans. It is very cold. “Just one more,” urges the photographer. Skarsgård heads back up the street. As he starts walking his pose relaxes. His unbothered gaze meets the camera before he glances back over his shoulder. He doesn’t look cold but rather, well, ineffably cool. One might call it acting.

We haven’t placed Skarsgård in this location for its proximity to great shopping. In 1973, the expansive corner space was home to Kreditbanken, the site of the infamous Norrmalmstorg robbery. If you haven’t heard of it, you’ve surely heard the phrase it inspired: Stockholm syndrome, the phenomenon in which a hostage falls in love with their captor. The charismatic outlaw at the heart of the heist was Clark Olofsson, who Skarsgård portrays in the new Netflix series, Clark.

“He was a very eccentric, particular guy. Very clever, very manipulative,” says Skarsgård of Olofsson. We’re warming up in the wood-panelled boardroom of the Nobis Hotel, which happens to sit directly above Acne Studios. It was here that police officers gathered, eventually drilling holes into the roof of the bank vault below to release a gas that would smoke out Olofsson and his accomplice, Jan Erik Olsson. “You put a camera on him, and people are going to listen.”

That last bit applies seamlessly to Skarsgård, too. I promised the actor I would objectify him in this story, but it almost feels redundant to discuss his appearance. Just look at him. All six foot three of him, clad today in slim jeans and fitted grey long sleeve.

I point out that in his rise to infamy, Olofsson used many of the same tools an actor, Skarsgård inclusive, might use to achieve success: charisma, wit, easy good looks. Skarsgård agrees. “I think Clark could have been very successful in the entertainment industry, he just picked the wrong path,” he says. “There are a lot of questionable people in this industry where it’s like, ‘I don’t know if this guy is a sociopath.”

For Skarsgård and Olofsson the similarities end at their on-camera prowess. While the latter revelled in a life of crime, Skårsgard’s limited of fences didn’t exactly make the news. “When I was a kid, shoplifting became a thing, and I was actually pretty bad at it,” he says. “I did not like the sensation of stealing.” So he ended his criminal career at age 10, after two nicked chocolate bars.

Bill Skarsgård grew up on Stockholm’s artist-friendly island of Södermalm, in the most famous acting family in Sweden. His father is Stellan Skarsgård and, of his seven siblings (two are half siblings, from his father’s second marriage), three are working actors, most notably his eldest brother, Alexander. Skarsgård doesn’t “remember a moment of not knowing” that his father was an actor. As is often the case with the children of actors, he practically grew up on film sets.

“As a kid, it was a very magical place because you have a shit-ton of adults pretending and playing dress up. It’s in a very serious way, but still, that’s what they’re doing,” he says. “I was like, ‘This is crazy that this could be adult life, where you could just play dress up for money, pretend and tell stories.’” Back then, his narrative of choice was James Bond. He and his friends would assume characters and act out various missions.

Of his childhood on-set experiences, one stands out: that of outrageous B-movie Deep Blue Sea. Directed by Finnish filmmaker Renny Harlin, the film, which stars Stellan alongside LL Cool J, follows a group of scientists studying super-intelligent sharks. “[My dad] gets his arm bit off by a shark,” Skarsgård says. “I was, like, eight and we were on the set and dad showed me his fake arm that’s going to get ripped off and we saw the mechanical shark. It was a f***ing dream for an eight-year-old. I was also a fan of LL Cool J.” He whips out his iPhone so we can watch the LL Cool J music video inspired by the film. Skarsgård grins, bopping his head and singing along to the absurd lyrics: ‘My hat is like a shark fin’.

Skarsgård’s fascination with playing pretend professionally never waned. He booked a handful of roles in Swedish productions as a pre-teen, finished up high school (he studied science rather than theatre because “school shouldn’t be fun”) and started “actively pursuing” acting at 18. One might say things came full circle when Skarsgård took on the role of Pennywise in the hotly anticipated remake of Stephen King’s It. In the film’s very first scene, he, like the mechanical shark before him, bites off someone’s arm.

To achieve the indelibly creepy look of Pennywise, Skarsgård sat in the makeup chair for two and a half hours. Transforming into Olofsson was a little less involved. Though Skarsgård, now 31, plays the outlaw at every age from late teens to mid-forties – the series begins with Olofsson being born and concludes when he is 45 – budget and time constraints, not to mention the madcap style of director Jonas Åkerlund, meant realistic makeup application was not an option.

“During pre-production, we did these six-hour sessions to nail the looks,” recalls Skarsgård. Once filming started, however, the actor would often have to be “18 in the morning, 35 around lunch and 45 in the afternoon.” “Eventually it got really, really stressful getting the glues and shit on and off. But there’s nothing realistic about the show, so you have to get over seeing me in a shitty glued on beard,” he says. During action sequences, a moustache would occasionally fall off. I ask if he’s ever tried to grow a beard in real life. “I have, and it’s not a pretty sight.”

When I call up Åkerlund a few days later to ask what compelled him to take on Clark, he responds matter-of-factly: “Bill Skarsgård.” “When the idea came up to do this, the first words that came out of my mouth were ‘Bill Skarsgård’ and the next were, ‘I’m not doing this unless Bill does it,’” he says. He notes that in addition to the physical characteristics required to embody this role – “Obviously [Bill] is tall and Clark was also very good-looking” – Åkerlund knew “he was capable of pulling this off as an actor.” “I think he’s talented enough to pull off anything he wants,” he says. “He’s a pro– he grew up with it.” I ask why Skarsgård seems to consistently portray psychopaths and misfits, characters on the edge. “I guess he’s drawn to these characters,” Åkerlund says. Skarsgård himself expresses a similar sentiment: “It’s weird, because I always play tormented parts. I don’t consider myself a dark person at all, but I like dark shit.” Though he never had a full-blown emo phase, he insists that his playlist would “ruin every party.”

Clark wound up being quite a personal project for Skarsgård, who doubles as the show’s executive producer. “I tried to cast every person that I know on the show,” he says. Longtime Swedish actor pals Björn Gustafsson and Adam Lundgren have supporting roles and a couple of Skarsgård’s non-actor childhood friends make appearances. His partner Alida Morberg, with whom he shares a young daughter, is in the series, as is her father Per Morberg, a prominent Swedish actor and television host. Finally, Skarsgård’s nine-year-old brother Kolbjörn Skarsgård makes his acting debut playing the six-year-old version of Olofsson. “Everybody has these shitty wigs and beards,” Skarsgård says. “It was very fun and collaborative – family style.”

It’s fortuitous that Skarsgård is eager to include his inner circle on screen, because you won’t find photo or video evidence of them anywhere else. He is one of the few millennial actors – or actors, period – without any for m of social media (unless he’s hiding a burner account, but I believe him when he say he isn’t). “There are a few of us out there,” he says, grinning. In fact, he’s in good company; Robert Pattinson, Emma Stone, and Kristen Stewart have all eschewed the various platforms. “With social media, you marry the media. It’s a perverted thing, if you think about it,” Skarsgård muses. “You have artists who are in a relationship with media now. Media was always lame for us. It was like, ‘Oh, I hate interviews’. And people still say that, but they have social media. It’s like, no, you are media.”

You won’t find many tall tales about Skårsgard in the tabloids either. His home base is Stockholm, worlds away from Hollywood and the prying lenses of the paparazzi. “I like it here,” he says. For about a decade he was elsewhere – shooting his first Netflix series Hemlock Grove in Toronto or living with flatmates in New York. His “entire family” is here, as are his childhood friends. Recently he started a family of his own. These days he’s found a “new affection” for his hometown.

Still, he “doesn’t want to be here 12 months of the year” and thanks to his rigorous filming schedule, it’s unlikely he ever will be. In a couple weeks he’s off to South Africa on another project. He views his career as “a f *** ing marathon.” “I’m 31. I might want to do this for another 60 years. That’s a long time. Look at Clint Eastwood,” he says. He pauses, then concludes, “I’m not saying I’m Clint Eastwood. But shit, 60 years? That’s a long f *** ing time.”