![]() Pennywise appears in the town of Derry, Maine every 27 years, feeding on local children by exploiting their darkest fears. You’ll know the story of It, if only from legend. From now on, red balloons can only mean ‘get the hell out of here’. Once you’ve experienced Skarsgård’s performance as shapeshifting clown Pennywise in It, where his every conjuring is marked by a wandering red balloon, you will understand how something so seemingly banal becomes major. ![]() Distraction ensues for a split-second – not that the actor notices. Want a balloon?īill Skarsgård is sitting on a couch in an east London studio, talking in full flow when, out of the corner of my eye, I catch someone walking past with a red balloon. And Francis’s inner self revealing itself on the canvas.Stepping into the shoes of Stephen King’s most iconic creation, Bill Skarsgård sets a new benchmark in terror as Pennywise the Clown. Not how we’re physically seen, but how we’re really feeling on the inside. They are paintings conveying an emotional truth. What do you like the most about Francis Bacon’s paintings? Mostly I just listened to our photographer, Tim Richardson. Seems like his portraits are paralyzed in a moving state of despair or maybe truth. What kind of mood/feelings did you want to convey by playing a Bacon’s character? And, just so I don’t come off as a complete pretentious buffoon, Hour of the Wolf by Bergman. Polanski’s Repulsion and Rosemary’s Baby. What are your favorite horror movies and why? What was the most difficult part about playing Pennywise in It / It 2?įor me, it was doing justice to Kings iconic character and at the same time, reinventing what Tim Curry already did so well. Numero: When did you start acting? What was your first movie?īill Skarsgård: I did my first role, playing Alex’s little brother, in a movie called järngänget in Sweden. It would have been a lot more difficult for me to take on the role of a real psychopathic human.” Instead, Skarsgård has used his humanity to satisfy the demands of photographer Tim Richardson for Numéro art, who skilfully blends real shots and digitally produced images in his Bacon-inspired series. “ He’s not human, which made playing him easier in a certain way. To play the role of the killer clown Pennywise in the new adaptation of Stephen King’s novel (which follows on the heels of two cult telefilms made in the 90s), Skarsgård had to get his head around a rather abstract character. Nothing can therefore frighten him in a movie business from which he deliberately takes a step back. One of eight children (of whom four others are actors) born to Swedish star Stellan Skarsgård (who has worked with Lars Von Trier, starred in the Avengers saga and will feature in Denis Villeneuve’s forthcoming Dune), Skarsgård started out young, at just nine years old. Skarsgård consequently seemed a natural choice to reinterpret Francis Bacon’s tormented figures in our homage to the late British artist’s work: the Swede’s chiselled features and ice-blue eyes, not to mention his ability to convey hidden emotions with the utmost economy of means, make him an ideal candidate for the exercise. Yet he remains sanguine about his career choices, joking in an interview that “there was something rather strange in saying to myself that my acting would be judged on my ability to traumatize children both on set and in movie theatres.” ![]() He first became known internationally for his role as a vampire in the Netflix series Hemlock Grove, but it was in his portrayal of the child-killing clown Pennywise in the movies It (2017) and It Chapter Two (out this September) that he took Hollywood by storm. At any rate the 29-year-old Swedish actor seems to like taking on rather perverse parts.
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