Alicia Vikander: Oscar-Winner and New Tomb Raider Star

She’s played royalty and robots, and now Alicia Vikander is indulging her inner fangirl, bringing Jason Bourne up to date and leading the Tomb Raider reboot. Total Film meets the Oscar winner taking the world by storm.

- Matt Maytum

"It does feel quite unreal still...” It’s May 2016, and Alicia Vikander’s February Oscar win for The Danish Girl hasn’t sunk in yet. “Since that night, I left straight to go back to Europe and start filming. That’s been a little mad… It was a wonderful night, especially having my friends and family there. It was extraordinary.”

Extraordinary is one word you could use to describe the remarkable hot streak the 27-year-old Swedish actress has been on following 2012’s A Royal Affair. And ‘a little mad’ might describe her work ethic: since her breakout turn in that Oscar-nommed period piece, she’s shot no less than 14 films. A couple might have been forgettable (The Fifth Estate, Seventh Son), but she wowed in the double-whammy of Testament Of Youth and Ex Machina, released just one week apart in the UK. In the latter, she was the face of another 2016 Oscar – for Best Visual Effects – as eerie, enchanting AI, Ava.

An appreciator of science-fiction herself – her father read sci-fi and fantasy stories to her as a kid – Vikander’s Ava might have earned a place in the genre’s hall of fame, but it’s unlikely to be the only defining role of her career. Next up on the breakneck schedule is Jason Bourne – the return of Matt Damon’s brainwiped assassin – in which she represents a new generation of the CIA that encompasses technological and cyber warfare.