Skarsgard has emerged in the last decade as a high-powered
international supporting player, after an award-winning career in
Swedish cinema. He is at his best when being creepy – his unforgettably
demented turn as the crippled husband Jan in Von Trier's Breaking The
Waves was his big breakthrough, though he has also been a splendidly
debauched businessman in My Son The Fanatic and a Bond-style
international villain in Ronin. But he can also play good-hearted; his
first American role was as a naïve professor in The Unbearable
Lightness of Being. It remains to be seen whether he can carry an
English-language film; the strangely unbalanced Signs And Wonders
didn't bode well.
