I've never been able to lift my own weight, and the day when you have that capacity, it's pretty empowering!
— Alicia Vikander
I had tried out for theatre school and didn't get it four times.
My mum used to tell me when I was a kid that I had to go to bed at 7.30 P.M., and when I'd ask why, she'd say, 'Well, you do get a bit grumpy when you don't have routines'. Then I realised, when I was a bit older, that's actually true.
All the parts I've enjoyed playing the most I didn't know about until they appeared, or it was something I read and fell in love with.
I like not knowing about my favourite actresses and actors. I love seeing Meryl Streep up there and knowing so little about who she is outside of what she's playing on screen.
My dad has children by four different mothers.
People always think I'm not scared. I've noticed that whenever I feel stressed, everyone thinks I'm fine, and later, it's like, 'I was not fine.'
I love crosswords! Actually, when I was growing up, me and my girlfriends would collect them and see who finished them first!
We all body shame and compare bodies, and that needs to go out of the window.
I'm a real Swede! In fact, I'm a quarter Finnish.
I push myself hard. I don't like pain, exactly, but as a ballerina, I lived in constant pain. At ballet school in Stockholm, I remember we had a locker where if someone had been to the doctor and gotten painkillers, we divided them among us. In a sense, we were all addicted.
This worldwide spread of recognition is insane. I was brought up in a small country. If you made a Swedish film that just got into a film festival somewhere, that was like the biggest thing you could wish for.
Both my mom and my dad have always included me in intelligent conversations about people, about characters, about how people work. My dad and my mom still read all scripts that I find interesting. I send them an e-mail, and I'm like, 'Okay, I have my eye on this,' or whatever.
I love when I am outside my comfort zone.
I endured quite a few injuries when I was younger and had my first surgery on my foot when I was 15. But I love dancing. 'Anna Karenina' was great for me as it meant I could combine the two and I actually went back and did some classes.
I started off when I was seven years old doing musicals. I was in 'Les Miserables' and 'The Sound of Music,' and my mum's an actress. My parents divorced when I was young, and when she couldn't find a babysitter, I was in the wings, sleeping.
I do work very hard. I have been very colored by that education. I spent six days a week, seven hours a day training. That will always be the foundation of my work.
I love big popcorn movies.
I'd quit ballet school, which I thought was going to be my path, but my gut instinct told me to do something different.
I give a lot to charity when it comes to clothes.
For events, I do use make-up, but normally I don't. I might use a bit of eyebrow pencil and a lipstick but nothing else.
Helena Bonham Carter was one of my biggest crushes. And Rachel Weisz. I think I told her that when we were filming, which was probably a bit embarrassing.
Being able to be dry in a second language is almost the last thing you learn.
In film, you get the license to try and go for emotions that you normally try to keep away from you.
That is the thing I want to tell girls, to stop criticising yourselves and to stop comparing yourself to other people.
My dad read 'The Danish Girl' and fell in love with it. He told me, 'You need to do this film.'
It's a mixed feeling when everything you've ever wanted in making films is coming true, and yet you feel scared because it's happening all at once. Suddenly you're in rooms with people you've looked up to for years, the Judi Denches. You wonder if you're good, if you have what it takes.
I vividly remember watching women in films when I was nine or 10, picturing them being what I'd be like as an adult. I had these real female crushes on certain actresses. And I'd watch them, thinking, 'One day, I'll be that. One day I'll be a woman.'
I don't have the best feet.
I still love to see the ballet. And I love to boogie.
I love films that make me react emotionally and physically when you walk out of the cinema. Two of my favorite films however have got to be 'The Tree Of Life' and 'The Piano Teacher,' which also stars one of my favourite actresses Isabelle Huppert.
My Mother is an actress, so it's always been a part of my life.
I love to see how far you're able to go, both in skills but also emotionally how far I can push myself.
I've always wanted kids.
I love skincare. If anything, my skin goes extremely dry. I could put hand cream on my face, and it still goes in. On flights, I always put on masks, and I have night cream as my day cream.
Jewellery is a way of making a very simple outfit something you can wear to go out.
Three trans women came up to me separately to tell me they had felt such a connection with Ava in 'Ex Machina' and her dream of finally coming to full female fruition. They had all cried; one said she was very emotional during the scene where Ava finally puts her skin on for the first time.
I'm very interested in the editing process - in all aspects of film-making, really.
Working makes me happy, makes me calm.
Being in ballet school and being in leotards in front of a mirror I don't know how many hours a day was quite tough.
I can say the one good thing is for every year where I grow up, I am kinder to myself, and I would say to the younger version of me, 'I love my body, and I have learnt to stop looking in the mirror at the things I want to change.'
I am very fortunate to work with people I have seen on the screen so many times and admired, and they are in the public eye, and I have seen how they handle it. There are definitely ways to just keep on enjoying the profession and the work. Other people tell me that things are going to change.
After I quit dancing, for a while it felt strange not to be in pain. It was as if an old friend - not a good friend, but a presence, always tagging along - had left me.
In any relationship, when you go through any big change, you struggle to find your new constellation, your new ground. It takes a while to determine what the new relationship between you is.
I guess, like most foreigners, when you're away, you see your own culture being even more strange. But where I come from and my roots mean a lot. I miss my family and my friends. Something I've realized as I've been traveling is that it's more about the actual people than the actual place.
In 'A Royal Affair' I had to learn to act like a queen and learned Danish. It's so much different to act in another language. It's the nuances in the words.
My agent in Sweden used to send off interview tapes but I decided to take it upon myself and come to London to visit casting directors which is when things first started taking off for me. I love Sweden but the industry out here is quite small so when I was given the chance to go internationally I took it.
I was able to actually combine dance and acting, which was a dream come true.
I love doing interviews that are about work that I do, films that I make. I am not very interested in the rest. I think I have always been quite reserved and a bit frightened of that whole thing.
