Alicia Vikander: You Know Her Name In Jason Bourne

By Gill Pringle & Jessica Mansfield

Swedish born actress, Alicia Vikander, may just be the busiest woman in Hollywood, but she’s found time to take on Matt Damon in Jason Bourne. The much anticipated return of both Matt Damon and director Paul Greengrass for Jason Bourne also sees the recruitment of the recently Oscar-awarded Alicia Vikander (who delivered a stunning performance in The Danish Girl), who takes on the role of Heather Lee, a key member of the CIA. Coming off the back of an incredibly successful 2015, Vikander’s 2016 can only get bigger, kicking off with Jason Bourne before moving on to The Light Between Oceans later this year. When she sat down with FilmInk to chat about her upcoming film, Vikander discussed her experiences working with Matt Damon and the challenges of talking tech in English language films.

So tell us about this role, because you don’t strike us as a damsel in distress. “The Bourne films are pretty cool. It’s set in what you would imagine is still the real world. No, she is not a damsel in distress. I read the script several months ago, before I came on board this film, and that was the thing: she’s headstrong, she’s very intelligent, and she’s a career woman.”

So we’re used to seeing Jason Bourne kicking butt in all of these movies, but do you get to do those scenes too? “My character is a key member of the cyber research team at the CIA. In the beginning of this film, through a hack that comes through, she connects with Julia Stiles’ character. And then, of course, through that, she reconnects with Jason Bourne, who has been lost and gone for many, many years. But he’s still out there, and there might be a way to connect with him. She sees him as a tool because, in one way, he was created by the CIA, but over the years, he’s become their biggest fear.”

Had you met Matt Damon outside of this project? “No. There are a lot of actors that you do start to meet, and it’s nice when you get the chance to become friends before you maybe have a film putting you two together, but no, I hadn’t met Matt. I, like everyone else of course, know that he is an extraordinary actor, but so many people that I’ve met who know him or have worked with him, as soon as you mention his name, they have a similar reaction. It’s always like, ‘He’s just like the best and greatest guy. You’re going to have such a good time.’ He’s the kind of person who comes onto a set and knows everyone in the crew. He is so gentle and extremely professional, and he always has energy. Because these were long days – especially for him, because we were making such an action packed film. I was in awe at seeing how down to earth, and gentle and relaxed [he is]. And then he just knows how to turn it on and become Jason Bourne.”

And he worked on the screenplay too with Paul Greengrass and Christopher Rouse.  “Yeah, just to see them work together is great. They’re really good friends. Paul coming from a documentary background makes the Bourne franchise so special. You feel like you’re in it, and like you’re part of that world, or like it could be part of your world even. He’s very much into throwing things up in the air and changing the scenes in the morning. He and Paul are very open towards letting anyone in to kind of fiddle with the script.”

Did you change stuff? “Every day ended up being a bit different from what was in the script in the morning.”

Oh, that keeps it very interesting, doesn’t it? “Yeah, it’s hard sometimes to learn the lines, but it also makes you feel very eager to find a tone that feels very natural.”

We are so curious about your accent. We hear a very proper London accent, but also feel like there’s a bit of Berkshire or something. Who taught you? “No, it’s weird, this is just a mix. Sometimes people who have English as their first language, they’re like, ‘What’s your accent?’ and I was like, ‘But I don’t have one, because I didn’t speak English when I grew up.’ For me now, just being out here for a few weeks makes it change. It actually makes it go a bit more transatlantic, and I suddenly hear myself have certain American R’s and vowels. And then interestingly enough, many times I’ve heard that I sound Irish, and that’s because of the R’s again. As a Scandinavian, the Welsh connection has the same sounds. It changes a bit. It went from being much more Americanised, because three years back, my English was not in a place where I really felt [comfortable]. I was fluent, and I could have interviews and I could speak, but I didn’t feel like I could really express myself properly. It was always exhausting trying to and not getting there. I didn’t have the vocabulary to flourish my language the same way that I could do in Swedish. And during that time when my English really settled within me, I started to work in the language. I did a lot of films where I had to have a British accent, so that became what I feel really comfortable in. I started to get properly fluent when I was around British people, and also now because I have a base there as well.”

Do you dream in English? They always say that that is the test of when you’ve completely absorbed the language. “When I did Ex-Machina, I was reading a lot of science books, and I read about dreams and language, and something that they said is that language doesn’t really exist in thought. A thought is faster than how you describe things. You don’t think, ‘I’m going to take this bag and whip it up with my hand’, but you do it. Your thought has already gone through. It’s not until you maybe stand in front of a mirror and have a conversation with yourself where you actually use words, and a lot of dreams just happen faster.”

They don’t have words? “Sometimes they do, but it’s a bit like what I said with thoughts. Normally you go around by yourself and thoughts just go on, but they don’t actually happen in language. That wasn’t something that I had thought about myself. And when I started to think about my dreams, I was like, ‘I don’t know if I actually remember using English or Swedish.’ It’s just the thought of what people said. It’s more that I know what they said, and not what words they used to describe it.”

I understand. What did you learn for this film? Is there something that you had never done before? “I had never done so much expositional dialogue and technical things that I had no clue what they were. Thank God, just being in the hub sequences at the CIA, we had so many people who were extras who actually did the work that they do in real life. So I would come up to them and be like, ‘So what do you say if you want to say this?’ And they’d say something and I was like, ‘Really?’ It’s a lot of shortening of words and meaning. That was something that I hadn’t done. Normally as an actor, you can put some emotional thought behind what you say, but here, there was a lot of, ‘Down that lane, on that street, do that, call that.’ That was a new skill to learn.”

Any fighting from you in this action film? “I get to be pretty badass at the end of the film, but I’m going to leave that up in the air for people to see.”

Are there any Australian directors that you would love to work with? “Well, when I watched Mad Max Fury Road, I just wanted to be in that film myself! So, George Miller!”

Jason Bourne is released in cinemas on July 28.