“You surround yourself with really nice people,” the star also told reporters at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival, where she received a lifetime achievement honor.

Alicia Vikander has received much love and the President’s Award for lifetime achievement at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival during its 57th edition, which opened on Friday.

The Oscar winner got a very warm reception from attendees of the opening ceremony, charming the audience by mentioning that her film A Royal Affair had shot in the Czech Republic, that she had enjoyed her time in the country and that it had been “pivotal” for her career. Karim Aïnouz’s Firebrand, starring Vikander as Queen Catherine Parr, the final wife of Henry VIII, who’s played by Jude Law, then kicked off this year’s fest.

In a wide-ranging roundtable conversation with The Hollywood Reporter and other media representatives, Vikander shared how she decides which roles to take on and why learning lines is so important for her. She also discussed her producing work, including future projects, film festival venues Cannes and Busan, Brexit and why she and husband Michael Fassbender decided to move to Lisbon.

Congratulation. Firebrand and your work in it have received so much praise. Do you know yet how you will follow up this film? Do you have a plan for your next project or projects yet?

It’s very different but also an indie film, and we are supposed to start to shoot very soon. I just want to say that nothing is super confirmed, but we have been trying to get this film off the ground with a French director named Fleur Fortune, called The Assessment, and with Lizzie [Elizabeth] Olsen — also an extraordinary actress. [According to reports, the two stars will play a couple living in a dystopian future where life and childbirth are controlled and optimized.] I can’t really say anything more, but it’s very different. The role is to the point where I’m excited because part of me doesn’t really know yet. I’m doing all this preparation, but it’s a very physical part and something I’ve never done before.

Anything else you can share about this or other future projects?

This is a small film. It has some genre elements to it, but it’s a very indie production. It has a European crew, and the French director is a first-time feature director. But I read that script, and I was like, “Uh huh.” And I had a chat with her. She’s extraordinary. I did my research. She’s done some pretty amazing 30-minute short films. She’s worked with Travis Scott and Pharrell, and she’s very visual. I spoke to her, and I was blown away. She’s such a cool woman, and I’m really excited.
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The Oscar-winning actress speaks with Scott Feinberg on a special live episode of THR’s Awards Chatter podcast at Cannes, co-presented by THR and Campari.

In Britain, schoolchildren learning about Tudor history are taught a handy rhyme to remember the order of King Henry VIII’s six wives: “Divorced, beheaded, died. Divorced, beheaded, survived.”

Hollywood has for decades been transfixed by the “beheaded” and “died” bits — essentially, the stories about women suffering — but what moviegoers are rarely reminded of is the wife who outlived Henry. In Karim Aïnouz’s hotly anticipated “Firebrand,” it’s the notorious Tudor king’s final companion, Katherine Parr, who finally takes center stage.

“What’s mostly been dramatized are the wives who didn’t make it,” says Swedish star Alicia Vikander, who plays the surviving queen opposite Jude Law’s ailing monarch. “[When I read the script] I immediately thought, ‘Huh, isn’t it interesting that most people know more about the other wives.’ It’s almost like people are drawn to quite grim stories.”

The more Vikander, an Oscar-winner for “The Danish Girl,” read up on Parr and her experience, the more bewildered she became about the grisly narrative surrounding Henry VIII’s wives. “I was like, ‘How could [Parr] not be more known?’ Especially considering that, yes, she survived more years than the other ones, but she was also the first woman under her own name in British history to get published,” says Vikander.

The learned and curious Parr published a number of religious texts beginning in 1545. But as detailed in “Firebrand,” her quest for knowledge and passion for debate almost cost her her life when she was accused of heresy. Scholars beware: Aïnouz’s particular rendition of history has a revisionist edge that bestows the tired annals of history with a modern angle. (“It was about having artistic freedom to make a strong story and to surprise people,” explains Vikander.)

Ultimately, it was Aïnouz’s depth and vision that “drew [her] attention.” “I was in Cannes and I saw ‘The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmao’ and I was so curious [about him],” says the actor.

“We didn’t grow up with British history in the same sense,” she says, reflecting on both their backgrounds — Vikander from Sweden, and Aïnouz from Brazil. This “outsider” status allowed for a new way of approaching the subject matter.
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The Oscar winner stars in the HBO series by French auteur Olivier Assayas, based on his 1996 film of the same name, about remaking an iconic work from the silent film era.

How does one remake a remake? The answer still confuses Alicia Vikander.

The actress is currently producing and starring in the new HBO series Irma Vep by director Olivier Assayas, who is recreating his 1996 French film of the same name which featured Maggie Cheung (In the Mood for Love, Hero) in the titular role. Both iterations follow an actress who is cast in a remake of the 1915 silent film serial Les Vampires to play villainess Irma Vep (an anagram for “vampire”), and finds the character rubbing off on her as she delves into the role—and slips into her famous black bodysuit.

Hollywood has churned out many movies about making movies. In fact, it loves them. (See: Mank, Singin’ in the Rain, Hail, Caesar!) But HBO’s Irma Vep takes that self-referential element to a mind-boggling degree. Vikander, an Oscar winner and Tomb Raider star, plays a successful actress, Mira, whose career somewhat mirrors her own. Meanwhile, Vincent Macaigne plays director René Vidal, an analogue for Assayas: René is filming an Irma Vep series with Mira, but has already made Irma Vep, the hit indie film, in the ’90s (referencing Assayas’s 1996 Irma Vep film) with the actress Jade Lee (who represents Cheung). And both of René’s Irma Vep projects are adapted from Louis Feuillade’s Les Vampires. Now read that again.

“I even got lost—still get lost—and it gets worse with every episode,” Vikander laughs on the phone, speaking from Paris, where she’s finalizing the last two Irma Vep episodes and meeting with Assayas and members of the crew. “I think that’s the beauty of it,” she adds.

In a time when the entertainment industry feels like one big reboot machine, Irma Vep is refreshing, with its cheeky self-awareness, and at times, self-mockery. It’s almost as if Assayas is saying, “I know how bizarre this all looks.” It doesn’t shy away from the issues with making reboots, either. René voices his insecurities about recreating an iconic work of cinema. Characters discuss whether the story of Irma Vep is fit for a series, whether it’s bingeable, whether it’s too niche for a mainstream audience. “It’s the kind of conversations that I think, especially for people in the film industry, if you’re doing that, that’s what you talk about,” Vikander says. She credits Assayas’s “brilliant mind” for writing a realistic-sounding script. “He writes like people talk.”
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“I feel like I have my armor on,” she said as she readied for the red carpet in a copper column gown.

Alicia Vikander hit the red carpet Sunday evening for the premiere of her upcoming series “Irma Vep” in a custom Louis Vuitton copper column dress, readied as if going into an extremely stylish battle.

“I feel like I have my armor on, a very beautiful Cannes version. I’m excited to see the light hit it when we are on the red carpet,” Vikander told WWD as she dressed in the Louis Vuitton suite minutes ahead of the premiere.

The gown blended two looks from last week’s cruise show in San Diego with warrior cues in copper beading. Created with Nicolas Ghesquière, the pair started on the look as soon as the festival lineup was revealed in mid-April. It took two weeks and over a thousand hours to construct the sculptural gown.

Vikander, who has been an ambassador for Vuitton since 2015, said she has developed not just a creative clothing partnership with Ghesquière but also a friendship.

“The incredible thing is he has such an eye to make beautiful creations and gowns, but he also sees me as a person wearing it. It’s incredible when I get the sketches, it’s defined that he knows me and I can see that,” she said. “The thing with Nicolas is that his own style is very much looking back and honoring classic fashions or styles, honoring those materials and craftsmanship and bringing it out and mixing it up to become something almost ahead of its time,” the actress added.

When she started on the “Irma Vep” project with director Olivier Assayas, she saw some synergy and brought the two together.

“The most exciting thing was that both Olivier and Nicolas, I had separately heard them talking about each other and say that they are fans of one another, so it was one of those things that I was so happy to make sure they met and made that connection,” she said. The result was Ghesquière designing all of the costumes for Vikander’s character in the series.

The series is a remake of Assayas’ own 1996 film “Irma Vep,” which itself is a remake of the 1915 soap opera “Les Vampires” from Louis Feuillade. The new series plays with those contradictions in time as well as toys with the idea of being a movie within a movie, confusing what is real and what is part of the plot.
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