Bill Skarsgård may be gaining a reputation for enjoying transformative performances with roles like Pennywise in “It” and Count Orlok in “Nosferatu,” but like any other actor, he likes mixing things up too. Keeping it simple for his most recent outing, the close-quarters thriller “Locked” sees Skarsgård trapped and tortured inside the car of a sociopath played by Oscar winner Anthony Hopkins. Though his carjacker character is put through the ringer throughout the film, the part allowed him a nice change of pace from the various elements that went into making Robert Eggers’ “Nosferatu.”
“I was very happy because I had a bigger break than usual — four or five months, which I really needed in order to shake off Mr. Orlok,” Skarsgård said in a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly. “But I read the script for ‘Locked’ around the tail end of ‘Nosferatu’ production. And there’s something about it that was so different from what I have been doing, and I often instinctively want to go somewhere that’s the polar opposite of my current project, just to keep challenging myself. And it’s more fun that way.”
Skarsgård told EW it was the “street weasel quality” of his character Eddie that drew him to the project, but the idea of performing alone was more of a challenge than an appeal.
“It was awkward being alone for so long. You’re like, ‘Ok, where do I look? The camera’s here, and I’m not looking at a person.’ All of Anthony’s dialogue is spoken through the car. And it got to the point where there’s some really intense stuff happening throughout the movie. You have to perform it. That’s not always easy.”
There were some scenes Hopkins had recorded his dialogue for, but other times, Skarsgård only had the Assistant Director to perform with. However, he did eventually get to share the screen with Hopkins for the perfect denouement to a complex shoot.
“When he did show up in person, that was one of the high points. That scene that we have together at the end was a joyous moment of production,” Skarsgård said to EW. “It ended up becoming very improvised. So he was improvising, I was improvising, and the scene just kind of became. To get to play and improvise with one of the greats was a special thing.”
In our review of the film, IndieWire’s Christian Zilko said, “A remake of the Argentine thriller ‘4×4,’ and often too cheesy for its own good, David Yarovesky’s two-hander stars Skarsgård as a small-time carjacker who picks the wrong self-driving vehicle to break into. He finds himself trapped and tortured over the phone by William (Hopkins), a dying man who is sick of petty crime. The film’s attempts at exploring morality might be underwhelming, but ‘Locked’ finds plenty of silly opportunities to exploit its gimmick of a premise, likely to the delight of anyone who willingly buys a ticket to a movie about Bill Skarsgård being locked in a car.”
“Locked” is currently in theaters from The Avenue.
