OSCAR-WINNING ACTRESS ALICIA VIKANDER ON PLAYING HENRY VIII'S LAST WIFE IN NEW FILM

When Alicia Vikander signed on to play one of the most famous women in British history in the new movie Firebrand, she knew it was important to get her portrayal right. But despite spending many hours researching the significance of Katherine Parr, the sixth and final wife of Henry VIII, she also acknowledges that becoming a mother she shares two children with her actor husband Michael Fassbender was invaluable when it came to getting into such a historical character.

- KATIE ELLIS

"As an actor, I think you always draw on your own life experiences and fantasies as well as your imagination," Alicia says.

"I had played a mother before I became a parent myself. I gave birth on screen three times before I gave birth for real. I definitely feel you get access to endless new emotions to draw on the second you become a parent. It impacted the way I did this film, for sure." The movie, in which Jude Law plays Henry VIII, is based on the 2013 biography Queen's Gambit by Elizabeth Fremantle and shows the many battles between the royal couple as the King, increasingly ill and in pain, takes out his anger on his wife and her progressive religious views. It is set during the king's final months in 1546-47 and the actress made sure she left no stone unturned when it came to learning about the woman she plays on the big screen.