Alicia Vikander, the Swedish actor who won an Oscar for her role in “The Danish Girl” in 2015, has taken on a remarkable range of characters in recent years – but is still stretching her boundaries, she says.

Speaking at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival, where she presented the historical drama “Firebrand” on opening night, Vikander says she’s now prepping for films that offer distinctly different challenges than her turn as Catherine Parr, the only one of Henry VIII’s six wives to outlive the marriage.

One character she admits she’s still deciphering is the central figure in the upcoming sci-fi feature “The Assessment,” a feature project with Paris-based writer/director Fleur Fortuné.

“I got the script sent to me,” says Vikander, adding that something about the story instantly intrigued her. Details are still under wraps, she says, but the film is set in a world of the near future in which the state decides who may have children. A couple is then notified that they are being considered as candidates to be parents.

Vikander, who will be half of the couple in question, according to reports, says Fortuné’s idea stood out from the stream of scripts she is usually sent.

“For Fleur it’s her first feature. But I got the script and I kind of knew. It was one of those things where I turned the page, then I met Fleur for the first Zoom.”

Vikander does her homework when considering a role, she says – “It’s like six months of my life.” What she learned about Fortuné’s work also intrigued her.

“I really had done like deep research. And she’s done a lot of short films and music videos and art work with a lot of very interesting people and she really has a clear voice. She’s really impressive.”

Fortuné, who has done wildly creative videos for Drake, Travis Scott and Skrillex, has also won over Elizabeth Olsen for “The Assessment,” which is being produced by Elizabeth Karlson and Stephen Woolley with Augenschein Filmproduktion and Number 9 Films.

“Quite instantly I just knew I wanted to work with her,” Vikander says of Fortuné. “And Lizzy Olsen, I think she’s really a terrific actress.”

While she can’t yet disclose extensive details, Vikander says, “It’s a pretty wild part. Even the producer says, like, ‘What are you going to do?’ And I said, ‘I don’t know yet.’ Which gives you a little insight.”

A key part of the appeal seems to be the challenge, says the actor, recalling how she’s shifted gears a dozen times in recent years from major action films like the 2018 “Tomb Raider” reboot to period dramas to Olivier Assayas’ HBO miniseries “Irma Vep,” about a conflicted star caught up in a dysfunctional production team trying to recreate a cult vampire classic.

“I’ve said a lot of times that I like to do parts that kind of scare me,” says Vikander. Fortuné’s concept fits the bill in that sense, she says. “I feel like I have not gone there before.”

Vikander confesses a passion for sci-fi projects such as the AI nightmare feature “Ex Machina,” which proved a breakout role for her in 2014.

“The Assessment” offers a similar dark view of where we may be going as a civilization, it seems. Vikander says it “has the sci-fi aspect in that it’s set in the close future and obviously it can bend certain rules. But when it comes down to it, it has some thriller aspects to it that I love in the genre. But it’s also quite an existential drama, with very human emotions.”

Vikander, who has husband Michael Fassbender and their toddler son with her in Karlovy Vary, says she’s in a place these days where she can be selective – and hold out for films that matter to her.

“My focus is more on the filmmakers and the people involved,” she says. “I really choose my projects based on the people I’m going to work with.”

Fassbender, whom Vikander met while filming “The Light Between Oceans” in 2016, will be onscreen opposite her again soon in writer/director Na Hong-jin’s dark fantasy “Hope,” another upcoming project.

“Besides my husband being one of my best friends, I think he’s one of the best actors of his generation. I’m super excited to work with him.”

Vikander confesses she still feels almost intimidated by Fassbender as an actor, especially when reviewing dailies of her performances. “If I’m home and sitting in our small cinema, that’s when I’m most nervous. When Michael’s going to see it.”

But Fassbender feels just as jittery about Vikander seeing his raw performances, she says with a laugh. “Obviously it’s work that we care about.”

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Ewan McGregor and Alicia Vikander will be the featured guests during the first weekend of this year’s Karlovy Vary Film Festival, where they will both receive the fest’s honorary President’s Award.

Alongside the celebrations, both actors will also present their most recent works. Vikander will bring her Cannes Competition title Firebrand, which will open the festival on June 30, while McGregor will host a screening of You Sing Loud, I Sing Louder.

Vikander began her artistic career training as a ballet dancer at the Royal Swedish Ballet in Stockholm and appeared in several stage productions and Swedish TV series before being cast in her breakthrough debut film role in Lisa Lansgeth’s feature Pure (2010). Since then, she has been best known for performances in pic such as Joe Wright’s Anna Karenina, Guy Ritchie’s The Man from U.N.C.L.E, and Alex Garland’s Ex Machina, for which she earned Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations. Vikander won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 2016 for Tom Hooper’s drama The Danish Girl.

Her latest pic Firebrand is a fictionalized story of Katherine Parr, the sixth and final wife of the tyrannical English King Henry VIII. Vikander plays Parr in the piece alongside an unrecognizable Jude Law, who suits up as King Henry. The pair debuted the film at last month’s Cannes Film Festival.

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EXCLUSIVE: We told you about Ron Howard’s survival thriller Origin of Species last fall and the project now has a killer cast with Oscar nominee Ana De Armas (No Time To Die), Oscar nominee Jude Law (Sherlock Holmes) and Golden Globe nominee Daniel Brühl (All Quiet On The Western Front) attached and Oscar winner Alicia Vikander (Tomb Raider) in talks to join.

Howard’s Imagine Entertainment are behind the buzz project with CAA Media Finance and Stuart Ford’s AGC Studios, the latter which is newly aboard to finance and will be selling at the upcoming Cannes market.

Shoot is being lined up for Q4, 2023, in Queensland, Australia. Script comes from Noah Pink (Tetris).

Based on two different accounts of the same true story, the film is being described as an “a darkly comic tale of murder and survival, set around a group of eclectic characters who abandon civilization for the Galapagos. They are all searching for the answer to that ever-pressing question that plagues us all: what is the meaning of life.”

This is the latest big package to hit the Cannes market, which despite the strike is looking like a trove of opportunity for buyers. Those with scripts further along — and the completed films in the festival —could be even more desirable with holes opening up in schedules due to the strike delaying some projects.

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Last month, Alicia Vikander attended the Louis Vuitton Womenswear Fall Winter 2023-2024 show as part of Paris Fashion Week at Orsay Museum in Paris, France. Check out photos below:

LOUIS VUITTON WOMENSWEAR FALL WINTER 2023-2024 SHOW AS PART OF PARIS FASHION WEEK IN PARIS, FRANCE | OUTSIDE ARRIVALS

MARCH 6 | LOUIS VUITTON WOMENSWEAR FALL WINTER 2023-2024 SHOW AS PART OF PARIS FASHION WEEK IN PARIS, FRANCE | ARRIVALS

MARCH 6 | LOUIS VUITTON WOMENSWEAR FALL WINTER 2023-2024 SHOW AS PART OF PARIS FASHION WEEK IN PARIS, FRANCE | FRONT ROW

EXCLUSIVE: Oscar winner Alicia Vikander (The Danish Girl) and Oscar nominee Michael Fassbender (12 Years A Slave) have been set for key roles in feature Hope, the first project from acclaimed Korean director Na Hong-Jin since 2016 hit The Wailing.

The largely Korean-language film will follow the residents of Hopo Port, where a mysterious discovery is made on the outskirts of the remote harbor town. Before long, the residents find themselves in a desperate fight for survival against something they have never encountered before.

Additional casting and pre-production is underway for a shoot later this year in Korea. We understand husband and wife Fassbender and Vikander will speak English in the film and wanted to take part after being impressed by the director’s previous work. It will mark the second time they’ve appeared together in the same film after The Light Between Oceans.

Hope sounds like it will be cut from similar cloth to the filmmaker’s previous films, all of which have been box office hits. 2016 thriller The Wailing played at Cannes before making $50M globally off an estimated $6M budget. That film charted how a mysterious sickness starts spreading after a stranger arrives in a village. A policeman, drawn into the incident, is forced to solve the mystery in order to save his daughter.

Hope will be produced under Na’s production banner Forged Films. Plus M is handling international sales and UTA Independent Film Group and Plus M are handling North America. The Korean firm is already eyeing additional IP opportunities for the project.

The director said today: “Oftentimes, a person’s goodwill can lead to unintended catastrophe simply because of differences in perspective. My hope for this film is to cinematically capture that phenomenon in a way that has yet to be seen.“

Upcoming, Ex Machina and Tomb Raider star Vikander will star as Katherine Parr opposite Jude Law as Henry VIII in Karim Ainouz’s feature, Firebrand.

Vikander is represented by UTA, Tavistock Wood, Tapestry.

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GÖTEBORG, Sweden — Alicia Vikander is at this week’s Goteborg Film Festival to help promote the Alicia Vikander Film Lab high-school initiative, and because Scandinavia’s largest film festival, held in her home town of Göteborg, southern Sweden, has always been part of her life.

Established in 2021 by Vikander (“The Danish Girl”), the Festival and the Sten Olsson Foundation for Research and Culture, the three-year film training program is for local high-school-aged students, with the program made available to educational establishments in the Goteborg area since last January.

“We’ve managed to get it on the curriculum,” said Vikander who is the biggest star at this year’s festival and a fixture at the event, reciting an Honorary Nordic Dragon Award, for instance, in 2018. “It’s a project where I’ve been able to get a lot of it done remotely on Zoom,” she told Variety at Göteborg.

On Monday at the Festival, a gala will take place presenting films by this year’s students. 12 short films will be screened. The films are between two and five minutes long. Since the launch, film teachers from the Festival have been visiting schools selected this year, once a month, and Vikander has visited the schools twice during the school year.

The participating schools in 2022 are Kannebäcksskolan, Nordhemsskolan and Skälltorpsskolan – the school that Vikander attended. Each year, three to four new schools join the project.

“For a long time, I wanted to find a way to give back,” says Vikander who trained as a dancer at the Royal Swedish Ballet School.

“My mum would never have had the possibility, for example, to pay for dance. If you get into the state Ballet, the state pays for you, and they also paid for my violin lessons. I played with the Philharmonic at 13. Then I did my first film in the Philharmonic. I got all these possibilities. Even if you don’t have financial support in Sweden you can get a cultural education.”

Another reason the initiative took flight is because she has a long-standing relationship with the Göteborg Festival.

“They have focused a lot on bringing in the next gen,” she said. “Now you don’t have to be 16, as you did when I was younger, to watch films. “Every child has a smartphone. We want to give them more technical tools. Where I went to school in the suburbs, there was more of a lack of things to do. From 12-15, before you go out into the world you need some direction.”

Vikander made a donation to help launch the venture. Additionally, she committed a SEK 300,000 ($290,000) scholarship grant that she received in 2021 from the Sten A Olsson Foundation to the lab.

Since leaving Göteborg aged 15, Vikander has established herself internationally as a star with films like “Tomb Raider,” “Ex-Machina,” or the mini-series  “Irma Vep.”  But she’s not too big for Sweden’s second largest city where she grew up.

“I love being back here, especially for the film festival,” she tells Variety.  “Every year, it  was a big event for my mother and her friends. I’ve been going to the festival for a long time, also often during the past ten years.”

Vikander says her time with the Royal Swedish Ballet School helped her understand movement on camera.

“In a way it’s my education because I never went to theater school,” she said. “But I went for nine years to the Royal Ballet School. It’s storytelling as well. You don’t use words. Filmmaking and theater is very much about movement, and knowing what transcends through a lense, movement wise. The awareness of movement in space with your body, even the blink of an eye. I’ve realized over the years that’s what we did. From a young age we learned how to use space.”

She hasn’t given up dancing altogether. In other interviews she said she feared she lacked the passion of her classmates to take dance further.

“I dance a lot. I’m a dancer person,” she said. “Now part of me feels like I can’t even claim I went to ballet school. I have a vague memory of how tough it is. I see that when I go to the Opera for example.”

Vikander’s success in acting has meant that she has worked for a long time knowing what’s next. Still, she’s had doubts, like others in her profession, given the project by project nature of the business.

“Even when my career was on a high, that hunt for the next job was still in me.  Or fear of what’s not next was still in me,” she said.

These days she and husband Michael Fassbender take every second project to accommodate having a child, born during the pandemic.

“At the beginning of my career, just to get work in the beginning then you know you are super privileged. Then you get work and can do this full time. Then I never stopped and was already prepping the next film. When the world closed down, I had my child in the second lockdown,” she said. “Your priorities get very clear which is nice.”

Vikander’s next film release is “Firebrand” a Tudor drama directed by Karim Aïnouz, co-starring Jude Law.  She’s expecting to film her next project this summer, but isn’t giving too much away.

“It’s going to take me far away from home and my culture. It begins in the summer with a director I’ve been a fan of for a lot of years. Work is taking you wherever you need to be,” she said.

Post-Brexit,  the couple call Lisbon home. “My husband had been in London for 18 years. I had been there for seven. He and his friends were talking about moving south where it’s warmer. I had spent two years renovating my house in London,” she says.

“Then Brexit happened. It was a bit of a bummer. It was an emotional decision. We fell in love with a place there and told our friends we were moving.  I was only home six weeks a year in London anyway, as busy as I was.”

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