Marie Claire US — Alicia Vikander likes making plans. When she was 12 years old, she looked at the year 2018 on a calendar and thought about what her life would be like then. “I realized I’d be 30, and in my head, 30 was the year you became an adult, so I remember thinking, Hopefully I’m going to have something good by then, but I’m also going to be old.”
Vikander laughs—a lovely husky sound that rings out across the garden of L.A.’s Chateau Marmont, where she sits without a bit of makeup on, relaxed and glowing in cropped Paige jeans and a long-sleeve navy t-shirt. She’s just back from skiing in the French Alps over New Year’s (“It was amazing!”). Her dark wavy hair is air-dried, her tobacco-brown eyes warm, a Louis Vuitton Petite Malle bag tossed casually to one side. It’s the day after the Golden Globes, where Vikander presented the award for Best Motion Picture Comedy to Greta Gerwig for Lady Bird, and the hotel is bustling with postmortem cheer. A sleepy-eyed Dakota Johnson comes up, murmurs,“Morning…” and envelops Vikander in a bearhug. Once she’s gone, Vikander smiles wryly and continues, “The nice thing is, life has only gone better than I’d imagined.”
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“It’s interesting that a character that has been seen as very sexualized back in the ’90s is very different now,” says Vikander. “If you go out in the street and ask men and women, young and old, what they find attractive, it’s different. You want her to be attractive and sexy, but, nowadays, you want this to be a girl that fights. Someone who’s vulnerable, but funny. Someone who’s OK with people seeing her bad sides.”
In some ways, Vikander’s Lara Croft seems tailor-made for the #MeToo movement. She’s all about strength and grit, taking on challenges. Survival. There is no love story in the film, no steamy shower scenes or sultry pursing of lips before throwing punches. Instead, we see her bruised and bloodied but never down for the count. “She always stands up,” says Vikander. “When things are found to be quite shit, she always sees the bright side. She just keeps on going.”
Photoshoots > 2018 > 2018 – Session #013 (Marie Claire US)