This is how actor Fares Fares and artist Clara Hallencruetz Fares fell in love over a fork

More often than not, a utensil is just a utensil. But in the case of Lebanese-born Swedish actor Fares Fares and artist Clara Hallencruetz Fares, it became a catalyst for magic. “He asked me for a fork and I thought that was kind of rude. We’d just said hi and then he asked me to go get him one,” says Clara.

The three of us are sitting on folded chairs, eating poké bowls on the corner of an Östermalm street, discussing the couple’s first encounter at a mutual friends’ dinner. “That’s how most people of our generation meet,” Fares shrugs. “Through friends or at work.” I ask if there were sparks from the start. "It was like ‘Hi, hi’ and then nothing more. Let’s just say things were complicated in the beginning and later they weren’t,” Fares says. Clara, interjects. “I was in a relationship at the time. It wasn’t until that had ended and Fares was back in Stockholm that he reached out… But we are so boring!” She throws her wavy blonde hair over her shoulders and looks at her husband of three years. “We should make up a more fun story. So I was an astronaut…”

Despite Clara's wish for an embellished love story, this power couple – an acclaimed movie star-turned-director and a renowned artist – radiate anything but boredom. That simple request for a fork marked the beginning of a love story that has resulted in two little boys, a spontaneous Stockholm Town Hall wedding, and, just moments before, a Vogue Scandinavia shoot that saw them kissing passionately amidst a flower-drenched roundabout. “We often take photos where we are kissing,” says Fares. “If we are within a certain distance of each other we have to kiss,” adds Clara. “It’s magnetic.”

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Meanwhile, the fork anecdote didn’t end there; Clara went on to purchase an identical fork from the restaurant, had it engraved, and presented it to Fares as a gift. However, when the pair moved house, it was accidentally sold. Fortunately, fate intervened, and Fares tracked it down, repurchasing it at a “much more expensive” price. The fork is now used daily in their household and a fork tattoo resides on Fares’s body. “To be honest, it’s a really ugly fork,” laughs Clara.

The fork isn’t the sole emblem of their love story. Clara points to a tattoo of a brachiosaurus on her elbow. “Fares has a triceratops,” she says. “We got them last week. I illustrated them to represent our boys.”

Ever since the couple’s first proper date on New Year’s Eve 2018, they knew they wanted to have children together. “During that date, we decided that we would be just us for a year and then we’d start trying,” explains Clara. “Exactly a year later, on New Year’s 2019, I took a pregnancy test because I felt off. Apparently, Ziggy had gone with the plan before we even had time to get off birth control.” Finding out they were expecting their second child, Tino, was equally memorable. It was their wedding day. “In the morning. I took a pregnancy test so I realised I was pregnant,” says Clara. “I took one of Ziggy’s T-shirts and wrote ‘Big Brother’ on it. I put it on him then I took him into the bed to wake Fares up.”

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The family then headed to Stockholm Town Hall, Clara dressed in a white Zara dress and sneakers, Ziggy and Fares both in suits, all with “wet hair” due to an unseasonal downpour. It was so rainy that day, they remember having to go to the bathroom to dry Ziggy with toilet paper before saying “I do”. After the ceremony, they went for pizza at a local restaurant. “We were so present. There was no one else to talk to but us,” says Clara. “We felt a bit naughty, rascally,” adds Fares.

At the time of speaking, Fares is just about to see the release of A Day and A Half on Netflix, his directorial debut. Directing is something he has been wanting to do since he started his career, one that has seen him star in hits such as Jalla Jalla!, Zero Dark Thirty, Boy from Heaven and Chernobyl. “I was like when I have a window, I'll just write something. And that window never came, so I just realised, I have to make that window,” he explains.

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The inspiration for his upcoming dramatic thriller stemmed from a brief article he stumbled upon in 2008. “It was about a man who entered a doctor's office with a pistol and tried to force his ex-wife to tell them where she had their child. And the police come and well...” Fares pauses, unwilling to disclose the story's outcome. “It was just a couple of lines, very short, but I saw a love story.” I ask how a seemingly tragic incident could be perceived as a love story. He laughs and says, "I don't know what that says about me."

He took the finished film to Netflix and it was picked up. The day he found out there was “a lot of excitement.” Fares also stars in the film, which he admits wasn’t the initial plan but made things “easier financially”. His intimate knowledge of the characters and their nuances from having written the script made the process smoother. “Normally as an actor I have to do a bunch of research. Do all this stuff to get the character into my system,” he says. “But here I knew everything.”

Meanwhile, Clara is on the verge of releasing her own rendition of a love story: a children's book. The picture book explores the idea that bedtime isn’t the end of today’s play, but rather the beginning of tonight’s adventure. “It's meant to be a conversation between the parent and the child,” she explains, saying the only way she can get her kids to sit still is to engage them in the story. “It's like an exercise for fantasy and creativity.” While home looking after the boys, Clara discovered a newfound passion for illustration, veering from her usual art photography that recontextualizes everyday objects. “When my maternity leave finished I couldn't stop illustrating,” she says. So the book was born. She actively involves Ziggy in her creative process, showing him the paintings and listening to his ideas. “The other day he told me he dreamed of a fish kissing a whale. So I painted that,” she says. “I mean, I’m stealing his inspiration, that’s what I’m doing.”

Clara marvels at her children’s boundless creativity. “They are so weird in the best way,” she says. Case in point: Ziggy enjoys taking household items to bed with him. Last night, it was a part of the vacuum cleaner that he said was an eel. Another time, it was a colander he claimed was an underwater dinosaur. “Ziggy looks like Fares but acts like me, while Tino looks like me and acts like Fares,” Clara says. She elaborates further, “Tino has this personality that doesn’t change regardless of who he’s with or where he is. It’s like Fares. If Fares thinks something is good then it’s good, and he doesn’t change his mind. Can you imagine being an actor? I would be terrible. I care too much what people think.”

While the pair are head over heels, there is one thing Fares would love to change about Clara: “I really want her to play Dungeons and Dragons.” Fares developed an interest in the fantasy tabletop role-playing game during his time at theatre school yet stopped for some years. “Then we moved,” Fares begins before Clara interjects: “I made a mistake.” Fares teasingly responds, “Oh, you think it’s a mistake?” to which Clara retorts, “Yes, the biggest mistake. The stupidest thing I’ve ever done.” The move meant Clara stumbled across a box of his old Dungeon and Dragons supplies and put it on Instagram. Within minutes friends were reaching out asking if Fares played. He now plays every second Monday and is two years into a campaign in which he is Dungeon Master. In his spare time, Fares can be found painting miniature figurines to enhance the game and he creates maps of the world on his computer. “So yeah I lose him every second Monday,” Clara says.

Ziggy and Tino don’t understand their father’s job, but Fares believes they’ll gradually grasp it. “Last year there were posters around Stockholm of Boy From Heaven and our older son would see them and say ‘Oh, that’s Daddy’,” he says. “But they haven’t seen me on their iPad. I haven’t really made many family-friendly movies. So I think it’ll take a while.” I ask what movie he’s most excited for them to see. “All of them,” he says without missing a beat. “We will start at the beginning with Jalla Jalla! and progress chronologically from there.”