Alicia Vikander says trans film The Danish Girl ‘feels extremely dated already’

Oscar-winning actress Alicia Vikander has said The Danish Girl, a movie about one of the first transgender women to undergo sex reassignment surgery, “feels extremely dated already”.

Swedish actress Vikander, 36, starred as artist Gerda in the film, who is the wife of Eddie Redmayne’s Lili, a character inspired by Danish painter and transgender woman Lili Elbe, who lived in the 19th and early 20th century.

Speaking to British Vogue, Vikander said: “I’m the first one to say it already feels extremely dated, which I think is a good thing.

“At that time, it was a pivot in something that it made (the subject of transgender lives) at least discussed.

“I hope that in a way it was a bit of an eye-opener and opened the way for art to cover those themes.”

Redmayne described his participation in The Danish Girl as “a mistake”, adding that he “wouldn’t take it on now” in an interview with the Sunday Times in 2021.

Vikander won an Academy Award for her role in the film, which was released almost 10 years ago, and adapted from the book of the same name by David Ebershoff.

Reflecting on her Oscar win and the subsequent media attention, she said: “It went so fast. I didn’t have any time to reflect what’s happening.

“It was a moment that probably took me years to understand, of realising how a public persona of you is created, one I too looked at and wondered, ‘Who’s that?’”

Vikander married German-Irish actor Michael Fassbender in 2017 and the couple have two children together.

Reflecting on her work/life balance, she told British Vogue: “It can be very long days, and a lot of the time you will leave before the kids get up and then maybe not be back before they sleep.

“So knowing that one parent is always home… With all the parent and mum guilt that you already carry with you constantly – I am battling that a lot, all the time.

“Now with the four-year-old we talk about it: ‘It’s time for Papa to go back and then I’ll be at home’.”

She added: “I love being a mum. I was terrified of what it is, going into it. I wasn’t really very maternal until I had my own children.

“But maybe even more after the second one arrived, I started to feel like, ‘OK, I know this a little bit now.’ I’m a bit kinder to myself too. ”

Vikander has starred in films including Ex Machina (2014), The Man From Uncle (2015) and Tomb Raider (2018).

The actress is to make her London stage debut in a version of Henrik Ibsen’s The Lady From The Sea, at the Bridge Theatre, in September and said she thought this day “would come sooner.”

See the full feature in the September issue of British Vogue, available via digital download and on newsstands from August 19.