“I'd rather fail doing what I love than succeed doing something that kills me inside” - Frida Gustavsson

Life in the limelight is not without its complications. Many have campaigned – and complained – about the human cost of fame and fortune, and while their cries have historically been dismissed as Champagne problems, the repercussions are all too real. Just ask Frida Gustavsson. Gustavsson’s star is rising, again. In addition to her leading role in the forthcoming Netflix series Vikings: Valhalla, the Swedish supermodel-turned-actor stars in Tigers, a coming-of-age drama that tells the true story of 16-year-old football prodigy Martin Bengtsson.

Written and directed by Ronnie Sandahl, the film has met with critical acclaim and Gustavsson shines in her supporting role as Bengtsson’s girlfriend, Vibeke. It was an on-screen persona that resonated with the actress, within a film that tells a story she knows all too well. Like Gustavsson, Vibeke is a young Swedish model who swaps the comforts of her hometown for the cut-throat fashion industry in her tender adolescence.

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“This role was an opportunity for me to say certain things that I felt I wasn't empowered to say, or I didn't have the voice to say during my modelling career,” explains Gustavsson. She has dialled in for our Zoom call from a quiet corner at her best friend’s house in Stockholm. “It was really liberating for me to just let go of the facade that I held for so many years and show another side of what it can really be like when you’re physically owned by these huge corporations.”

In Tigers, the corporation in question is Italian football club Inter Milan, where Bengtsson signed his first professional football contract – an experience that spiralled him into a deep depression and ultimately led to him at tempting to take his own life, as recounted in his 2007 autobiography, In the Shadow of San Siro. In Gustavsson’s own life, it was multimillion dollar modelling agencies who owned the rights to her body when she signed on the dotted line. “Ronnie and I spent a lot of time talking about the body and what it feels like when you don't own your own body. When you belong to other people and your job is to be scrutinised, picked apart and constantly judged,” she says. “I lived that.”

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In 2008, Gustavsson, who was 15 at the time, was scouted by a model agent from Swedish agency Stockholmsgruppen during a trip to Ikea with her dad. “It’s such a stupid story,” she says. “When I was a kid I loved going to Ikea when I was sad because I was obsessed with interior design. It was my dream to design homes and living spaces.” While hesitant at first, she accepted their offer simply thinking it would be an opportunity to earn some money and travel: two things that’d entice any teenager living just outside of Stockholm.

By the time she was 16, she was in Paris rubbing shoulders with the likes of Pier Paolo Piccioli and Maria Grazia Chiuri, who cast her for their autumn/winter 2012 Valentino Haute Couture presentation. That same year, she walked in the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show and graced the campaigns and runways of every designer worth mentioning – Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Prada, Oscar de la Renta, Hermés, Christian Dior and Alexander McQueen, among others – all whilst appearing in editorials for Vogue. Gustavsson had reached the pinnacle of model industry success before her 21st birthday.

What had initially started off as a means to travel beyond Sweden had snowballed into a major career. The only problem was, it wasn’t for her. “I got to a point where I thought, ‘I have to jump off this train now because it’s going so fast and it’s heading in a direction I don’t see myself going in,’” says Gustavsson. “I hit a depression because I was so overworked and burned out. I spent so many years of my life living as someone else and trying to be this person for other people. I was pretending to be this model who just loved modelling, who always showed up and had to be super skinny.”

In her role as the perfect model, Gustavsson was “always conscious” of what she was eating, and people were “constantly judging”. “The point came where I just completely crashed, and I promised myself then that I would never let myself get there again,” she says, adding, “I'd rather fail doing what I love than succeed doing something that kills me inside.” Gustavsson quit modelling in 2015, leaving New York City, where she had spent her late teens, to return home to Sweden in pursuit of her real dream: an acting career.

Within a year, she was cast in the Swedish miniseries Arne Dahl: Efterskalv, making her debut on the small screen. “It was incredible. It was the first time I felt incredibly scared and happy at the same time,” she recalls. “I just felt like I had finally found my place in life. I decided afterwards that this is what I needed to do for the rest of my life and that I would work every waking moment to make it happen.”

Her vow manifested into reality; Gustavsson became a regular face on Swedish television. In 2019, she landed her first lead role in Eld & Lågor (Swoon), a Romeo and Juliet-esque story set during the second world war. Then, in 2020, she was cast in Vikings: Valhalla. Premiering this February, the series picks up a century after the hit show Vikings left off, with Gustavsson as Freydis Eiriksdottir, a young woman who is set on revenge after being sexually assaulted by Christian Vikings.

The strength of the character resonated with Gustavsson. “As soon as I read the script, I felt like the part had been written for me,” she says. “It is literally me on paper, so when I got it, it felt like a dream come true. I screamed so loud my poor boyfriend almost went deaf.” As with her character in Tigers, Gustavsson felt deeply connected to Freydis’ story. “Freydis is a pagan and grew up on the outskirts of the Viking world in Greenland. When she was a teenager, a group of Christian Vikings came to her village and raped her before carving a huge cross on her back. She’s been through so many things that really left her with a lot of trauma, yet she ref uses to let them dominate who she is as a person and that’s something I can really relate to,” she says.

Both Freydis and Vibike are powerful female characters with voices of their own, much like Gustavsson herself. The actress seeks out these roles, driven, perhaps, by how her voice was silenced throughout her modelling career. There’s one role in particular she’s holdinga candle for: “I’m a huge history nerd, so my absolute dream role would be to play Queen Kristina. She was the daughter of Sweden’s most prominent king in the 1600s, but she abdicated the crown and became best friends with the Pope, so she went to live in Rome. She’s actually the only woman who is buried in the Cathedral at the Vatican,” Gustavsson explains. “She was such a complex and very misunderstood character and I just find her incredibly inspiring.”

With Tigers – which has been selected as Sweden’s 2022 Oscar submission – she too, aims to inspire. “The most important theme in the film is that society’s idea of success isn’t always what it seems,” she says. “It’s such a current piece that really touches on so many subjects that I feel we're usually shying away from: hyper-masculinity and how that has catapulted in a capitalistic world, eating disorders, mental health issues. It’s so beautifully honest.”

In an era clouded by performative behaviours and the impossible pursuit of unrealistic perfectionism, living authentically is harder than ever. Still, it’s what Gustavsson values the most. “Playing Vibike was so therapeutic for me because her carefree nature was refreshing. She’s always herself and that felt very liberating for me,” she says.

“We live in a time where self-reflection and constantly looking at ourselves aesthetically is championed as something really important but it can also be very toxic. I just want people to remember that. Sometimes we need to step out of ourselves and actually live in our surroundings.” Living in the moment is a lot easier said than done, but Gustavsson is determined to make it her philosophy from herein out. And given her track record, once she sets her mind to something, we can consider it done.