Post by Donald (Panda) Spix on Sept 5, 2018 14:20:04 GMT
The creepy thriller It has already managed to scare millions of moviegoers in a very short amount of time, due in great part to its portrayal of the murderous and nightmarish clown, Pennywise. But, this being Hollywood, the actor behind all that scary clown makeup is actually really gorgeous and far more famous than you might have originally thought.
Get to know Bill Skarsgård, a name you'll likely be hearing about for years to come.
Get to know Bill Skarsgård, a name you'll likely be hearing about for years to come.
If the name Skarsgård sounds familiar to you, that's because it's been in the Hollywood family for decades. Bill's father is the legendary Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgård, who's been in everything from controversial indies (1996's Breaking the Waves) to Oscar-winning dramas (1997's Good Will Hunting) and big-budget action flicks (the Thor series).
Bill has seven siblings, three of whom are also actors. HBO audiences are likely familiar with his big brother Alexander, who had a major role on True Blood (2008-14) and was most recently nominated for an Emmy for Big Little Lies. History Channel fans may also know his brother Gustaf, who plays Floki on Vikings (2013-).
Bill has seven siblings, three of whom are also actors. HBO audiences are likely familiar with his big brother Alexander, who had a major role on True Blood (2008-14) and was most recently nominated for an Emmy for Big Little Lies. History Channel fans may also know his brother Gustaf, who plays Floki on Vikings (2013-).
Although he's been steadily working since he was a kid, Skarsgård is only just beginning to make a name for himself in the United States. Prior to It, arguably his most memorable role was Roman Godfrey in the short-lived Netflix series Hemlock Grove (2013-15). He also had bit parts in a diverse array of films, including Anna Karenina (2012), Allegiant (2016), and the 2017 summer blockbuster Atomic Blonde, opposite Charlize Theron and James McAvoy.
If you thought Skarsgård's performance looked terrifying on the big screen, try actually being in the room where it happened.
In his 2017 chat with Interview, the actor admitted the intensity of his character's look and performance proved to be so terrifying that some of the child extras actually cried on set. "On set, I wasn't very friendly or goofy," he recalled. "I tried to maintain some sort of weirdness about the character, at least when I was in all the makeup. At one point, they set up this entire scene, and these kids come in, and none of them have seen me yet. Their parents have brought them in, these little extras, right? And then I come out as Pennywise, and these kids—young, normal kids—I saw the reaction that they had."
He continued, "Some of them were really intrigued, but some couldn't look at me, and some were shaking. This one kid started crying. He started to cry and the director yelled, 'Action!' And when they say 'action,' I am completely in character. So some of these kids got terrified and started to cry in the middle of the take, and then I realized, 'Holy s***. What am I doing? What is this? This is horrible.'"
"But then we cut, and obviously I was all, 'Hey, I'm sorry. This is pretend,” he added. Uh, we're still waiting for our apology, Bill.
Speaking to Interview magazine in June 2017, Skarsgård admitted that the idea of becoming the fourth man in his family to pursue acting didn't always sit well with him, so much so that he actually majored in chemistry in high school with the thought of becoming a doctor like his mother and brother Samuel.
"I don't think I would ever be a doctor, but the reason I majored in science was because you could become a civil engineer, you could become a biologist, you could become a computer scientist—that was the point of it," he said. "I had no idea what I wanted to do."
He continued, "In my last two years of high school—because they would still reach out to me for auditions and I would read scripts—there happened to be these few scripts that I really responded to. One in particular that I read, I was like, 'Oh, this is a real character. This is amazing.' I was like, 'I really, really want to do this.' It was Hannes Holm's film [Behind Blue Skies], and I saw him at a premiere—I was, like, 19 at the time, I had probably been to three or four auditions, but I wasn't cast or anything—and I went up to him and was like, 'I don't know what I need to do, but I need to be in your film.' Eventually, I landed the job, and that was something that I felt transcended whatever other people would think of me."
Looks like he made the right call.
We've certainly heard about actors going to great lengths to land a role. So, in many ways, it makes sense that Skarsgård's audition process for It involved "a callback, a screen test and sending additional self-tape from Stockholm before it was official," per The New York Times.
It also involved auditioning in full makeup. "I had my girlfriend put on the makeup the morning of, and then I drove through Hollywood in full clownface," he told Out magazine. "I was like, This is really humiliating—the epitome of the Auditioning Actor in L.A. But I'm happy I stuck with it."
The film's director, Andrés Muschietti, approved. "Bill has this incredible balance between childlike features [and] something that can be very disturbing—a very, very intense look," he said. "I wanted him to bring that to the equation. I said, 'In post-production, I might twist one of your eyes to the side so your eyes are looking in different directions,' and he says, 'Oh, I can do that'—and he just did it, right there in front of me."
In his 2017 chat with Interview, the actor admitted the intensity of his character's look and performance proved to be so terrifying that some of the child extras actually cried on set. "On set, I wasn't very friendly or goofy," he recalled. "I tried to maintain some sort of weirdness about the character, at least when I was in all the makeup. At one point, they set up this entire scene, and these kids come in, and none of them have seen me yet. Their parents have brought them in, these little extras, right? And then I come out as Pennywise, and these kids—young, normal kids—I saw the reaction that they had."
He continued, "Some of them were really intrigued, but some couldn't look at me, and some were shaking. This one kid started crying. He started to cry and the director yelled, 'Action!' And when they say 'action,' I am completely in character. So some of these kids got terrified and started to cry in the middle of the take, and then I realized, 'Holy s***. What am I doing? What is this? This is horrible.'"
"But then we cut, and obviously I was all, 'Hey, I'm sorry. This is pretend,” he added. Uh, we're still waiting for our apology, Bill.
Because his father was such a famous actor in Sweden, Skarsgård said it opened doors for bullies at school to pick on him and accuse him of being privileged. "When I started working in Sweden, there were people that really wanted to hate me, " he told Out magazine in September 2017. "Kids in the schoolyard would be like, 'You think you're so cool because your dad is Stellan Skarsgård, huh?' And I'm like, 'No? Not at all.' But I would get into fights over it. [People think] it's nice to be able to say, 'This guy didn't get any of this because he actually deserved it—he just got it for free.'" Who's laughing now? |
"I don't think I would ever be a doctor, but the reason I majored in science was because you could become a civil engineer, you could become a biologist, you could become a computer scientist—that was the point of it," he said. "I had no idea what I wanted to do."
He continued, "In my last two years of high school—because they would still reach out to me for auditions and I would read scripts—there happened to be these few scripts that I really responded to. One in particular that I read, I was like, 'Oh, this is a real character. This is amazing.' I was like, 'I really, really want to do this.' It was Hannes Holm's film [Behind Blue Skies], and I saw him at a premiere—I was, like, 19 at the time, I had probably been to three or four auditions, but I wasn't cast or anything—and I went up to him and was like, 'I don't know what I need to do, but I need to be in your film.' Eventually, I landed the job, and that was something that I felt transcended whatever other people would think of me."
Looks like he made the right call.
We've certainly heard about actors going to great lengths to land a role. So, in many ways, it makes sense that Skarsgård's audition process for It involved "a callback, a screen test and sending additional self-tape from Stockholm before it was official," per The New York Times.
It also involved auditioning in full makeup. "I had my girlfriend put on the makeup the morning of, and then I drove through Hollywood in full clownface," he told Out magazine. "I was like, This is really humiliating—the epitome of the Auditioning Actor in L.A. But I'm happy I stuck with it."
The film's director, Andrés Muschietti, approved. "Bill has this incredible balance between childlike features [and] something that can be very disturbing—a very, very intense look," he said. "I wanted him to bring that to the equation. I said, 'In post-production, I might twist one of your eyes to the side so your eyes are looking in different directions,' and he says, 'Oh, I can do that'—and he just did it, right there in front of me."
Skarsgård's ability to scare the crap out of people didn't come about on his own. In fact, according to The New York Times, his performance involved "extensive preparation" that included everything from "makeup and costume tests" to, hilariously enough, "consultations with a clowning coach."
Hey, whatever he had to do, it clearly worked.
Skarsgård is not the first actor to play Pennywise on the big screen. The role originated with the iconic Tim Curry in the 1990 miniseries of the same name. Naturally, Skarsgård had Curry's performance on his mind when he stepped into the same role.
"I had a few sleepless nights and these really terrifying feelings of anxiety where I was like, 'Holy s***, I'm taking on this iconic character," he told Out magazine. "What if I can't pull it off?"
Now that the film has earned well over $150 million at the box office, we're guessing Skarsgård is sleeping soundly these days.
After making a name for himself playing such a scary character, it makes total sense that Skarsgård is open to trying new roles in the future.
As he explained to The New York Times, "I wouldn't want to be associated with one character, because I want to be able to do different roles. Pennywise looks and sounds so different from me that I could do a rom-com next, and people probably wouldn't even know I was the same guy."
The Times also notes that Skarsgård's next project is a Stephen King-inspired TV series for Hulu, so it may be a few more years before we're calling him America's Sweetheart.
Although he left an indelible impression on audiences, Skarsgård wasn't Hollywood's first choice to play Pennywise.
In 2015, Will Poulter of The Revenant (2015) and We're the Millers (2013) was cast in the coveted role, with Cary Fukunaga of True Detective (2015) and Jane Eyre (2011) set to direct. Fukunaga left the project about a year later, reportedly for reasons rather typical in Hollywood. While Poulter stayed on through the arrival of Fukunaga's replacement, Andy Muschietti, the actor didn't last much longer.
As Muschietti explained to Deadline, "I was very, very intrigued by the prospect of working with Will, I always thought that he would be an amazing Pennywise. We talked a little bit about it, the idea of making the movie even though that Cary wasn't there. Will basically expressed a feeling that he had slowly disengaged from playing that character, that was so dark and terrifying. It was a personal decision I respected, but I was eager and willing to find my own Pennywise and that's what we did."
As one might imagine, in order to play a character as terrifying as Pennywise, Skarsgård went to great lengths to get the job done. This included binge-reading Stephen King's original novel in just ten days. "When I wasn't sitting at home reading, I'd be listening to the audiobook while I was out grocery shopping," he told People magazine. "I was so immersed, it was like binge watching a TV show. Sometimes you watch something so much you start to see it when your eyes are closed."
While getting into the mind of Pennywise was intense, Skarsgård also said that getting out of it came with its own mental baggage. "It was weird," he told People. "I really enjoyed myself doing it, but the day after we wrapped, I went back home to Stockholm, Sweden, and it's always a weird experience when you work really hard on something and then you go back to regular life at your childhood home. And that's when I finally realized what an impact the character had had on me. For the following two weeks I would have these really disturbing dreams about Pennywise. It was very strange, it was almost like a really slow exorcism to completely let go of him."
He added, "The closest thing I can liken it to is being in a very destructive relationship, because you never really realize you're in one until you're out. And then as soon as you're out of it, you're like, 'Oh my God, I can see it all so clearly now.' Doing characters is almost like being in a relationship with a made-up person, and you don't really see the journey clearly until it's over."
Although playing Pennywise came with its fair share of challenges, Skarsgård is ready to dive back into character as Hollywood moves forward with plans for a sequel. There's a lot more to explore in the character [of] Pennywise," Skarsgård, who is reportedly attached to the project, told The Associated Press. "I think that the second [movie] would …delve deeper into who he is and what he is. So, I'm really looking forward to [delving] deeper into that."
"I did have so much fun with the character, and I'm really looking forward to getting back under that clown makeup for the sequel," he told People.
We'll be watching (through our fingers.)
BY: Andy Scott
Hey, whatever he had to do, it clearly worked.
Skarsgård is not the first actor to play Pennywise on the big screen. The role originated with the iconic Tim Curry in the 1990 miniseries of the same name. Naturally, Skarsgård had Curry's performance on his mind when he stepped into the same role.
"I had a few sleepless nights and these really terrifying feelings of anxiety where I was like, 'Holy s***, I'm taking on this iconic character," he told Out magazine. "What if I can't pull it off?"
Now that the film has earned well over $150 million at the box office, we're guessing Skarsgård is sleeping soundly these days.
After making a name for himself playing such a scary character, it makes total sense that Skarsgård is open to trying new roles in the future.
As he explained to The New York Times, "I wouldn't want to be associated with one character, because I want to be able to do different roles. Pennywise looks and sounds so different from me that I could do a rom-com next, and people probably wouldn't even know I was the same guy."
The Times also notes that Skarsgård's next project is a Stephen King-inspired TV series for Hulu, so it may be a few more years before we're calling him America's Sweetheart.
Although he left an indelible impression on audiences, Skarsgård wasn't Hollywood's first choice to play Pennywise.
In 2015, Will Poulter of The Revenant (2015) and We're the Millers (2013) was cast in the coveted role, with Cary Fukunaga of True Detective (2015) and Jane Eyre (2011) set to direct. Fukunaga left the project about a year later, reportedly for reasons rather typical in Hollywood. While Poulter stayed on through the arrival of Fukunaga's replacement, Andy Muschietti, the actor didn't last much longer.
As Muschietti explained to Deadline, "I was very, very intrigued by the prospect of working with Will, I always thought that he would be an amazing Pennywise. We talked a little bit about it, the idea of making the movie even though that Cary wasn't there. Will basically expressed a feeling that he had slowly disengaged from playing that character, that was so dark and terrifying. It was a personal decision I respected, but I was eager and willing to find my own Pennywise and that's what we did."
As one might imagine, in order to play a character as terrifying as Pennywise, Skarsgård went to great lengths to get the job done. This included binge-reading Stephen King's original novel in just ten days. "When I wasn't sitting at home reading, I'd be listening to the audiobook while I was out grocery shopping," he told People magazine. "I was so immersed, it was like binge watching a TV show. Sometimes you watch something so much you start to see it when your eyes are closed."
While getting into the mind of Pennywise was intense, Skarsgård also said that getting out of it came with its own mental baggage. "It was weird," he told People. "I really enjoyed myself doing it, but the day after we wrapped, I went back home to Stockholm, Sweden, and it's always a weird experience when you work really hard on something and then you go back to regular life at your childhood home. And that's when I finally realized what an impact the character had had on me. For the following two weeks I would have these really disturbing dreams about Pennywise. It was very strange, it was almost like a really slow exorcism to completely let go of him."
He added, "The closest thing I can liken it to is being in a very destructive relationship, because you never really realize you're in one until you're out. And then as soon as you're out of it, you're like, 'Oh my God, I can see it all so clearly now.' Doing characters is almost like being in a relationship with a made-up person, and you don't really see the journey clearly until it's over."
Although playing Pennywise came with its fair share of challenges, Skarsgård is ready to dive back into character as Hollywood moves forward with plans for a sequel. There's a lot more to explore in the character [of] Pennywise," Skarsgård, who is reportedly attached to the project, told The Associated Press. "I think that the second [movie] would …delve deeper into who he is and what he is. So, I'm really looking forward to [delving] deeper into that."
"I did have so much fun with the character, and I'm really looking forward to getting back under that clown makeup for the sequel," he told People.
We'll be watching (through our fingers.)
BY: Andy Scott