Alicia Vikander by Hans Feurer in Grunge Remastered for ELLE UK October 2020

Actor Alicia Vikander covers the October 2020 issue of ELLE UK, styled by Hortense Manga in edgy, grunge-remastered looks lensed by Hans Feurer. Hannah Nathanson conducts the interview.

The five-years Louis Vuitton ambassador escaped Paris, where she attended Paris Fashion Week, spending lockdown with her husband actor Michael Fassbender in rural France. No longer playing Ava, the AI robot she played in ‘Ex Machina’ or Lara Croft in the reboot of ‘Tomb Raider’, Vikander awaits the release of her next big project ‘The Glorias’ , where she’s one of four women who play Gloria Steinem across her lifetime.

Vikander plays the activist’s formative years from the ages of 20 to 40. Her first scene in the film is on a packed train in India, sharing chai with a carriage full of women in sarees. It’s during these travels that Steinem experienced the compassion of local activists who went into villages and listened to women’s struggles. Inspired, she returned to New York where she called off her college engagement and started out as a journalist, and later went on to found Ms., the groundbreaking feminist magazine.

Vikender on playing Gloria Steinem’s life, ages 20-40.

Nathanson writes that Vikander’s portrayal of Gloria Steinem is generating Oscar buzz. After reading the script, the actor engaged in long conversations with other women about Gloria’s life.

‘The first thing I did when I read the book was call my mum and some of my friends’ mums to hear their memories of her back in the day. I was blown away by the journey she’s done and women like her throughout history,’ she says.

Gloria Steinem is equally impacted by Vikander’s portrayal of her.

‘Only [director] Julie Taymor – a genius in every way, including casting – understood that a Swedish/European actor could inhabit me, an American from the Midwest. From eating lunch with my father in a very American diner, to travelling with women on a train in India, Alicia captured emotions that can’t really be described... She inspires that most rare and crucial quality: trust.’

Steinem has good reason to have trust issues, as she has been savaged and ravaged as a privileged, elitist white woman by Berners. Read the entire Alicia Vikander interview on ELLE UK.