This interview first appeared in Issue 20 of Wonderland, Nov/Dec 2009.

“I really thought people would know I was joking,” says Jamie Campbell Bower, a new addition to the Twilight film franchise who recently sparked a false nudity story about his character’s family of vampires’ appearance in New Moon. “I was at Comicon and the guy from MTV who was interviewing me was like, ‘So Rob [Pattinson] and Taylor [Lautner] get their shirt off in the movies – any chance of you getting your shirt off?’” he recounts of the moment the story started.  “And I though ‘alright, I am going to roll with this’ and was just like, ‘Yeah, actually.  Yes.  We are all naked’,” he laughs.  “I feel really bad because Chris Weitz, the director, had to write an apology note and I was like, ‘Oh God! What have I done? I’ve ruined everything… I’m never going to work again!’”

Fortunately his actions did not cost him his role and he seems confident he will be back to reprise his character, Caius, for the later installments in the series.  As a member of the Volturi – an order of Vampires that act as the law keepers to the Vampire community – Campbell Bower is joined on screen by Michael Sheen and Dakota Fanning who play Volturi leader, Aro, and mind meddling bloodsucker, Jane respectively. He describes the Vampiric family as having a sense of malice about them though he jokes they are “not villains, but educated leaders who believe in tradition – so they’re more like the Royal Family… [laughs].  Michael Sheen would definitely be Liz and Christopher Heyerdahl [who plays Marcus] would be Philip.”

Although many Twilight fans have been left disappointed that the naked scene was fabricated, Campbell Bower is only too keen to expand upon his own realisation of how the Volturi would make their entrance.

“It would be like that scene from The Dreamers,” he jokes.  “Me and Michael Sheen in a bath together and Dakota walking in saying ‘Oh! Sorry… sorry about that’, [adopting an assertive voice] ‘No, that’s fine. Hop in!’ – we’d all be there, smoking pot [laughs].”

Having discovered a thirst for performance at a young age, Campbell Bower began getting involved with school productions and the National Youth Music Theatre, and by the age of fourteen decided acting would be the career for him.  He later met with an agent Simon Beresford who sent him to audition for Tim Burton’s gothic musical Sweeney Todd.

“My first meeting, I met Susie Figgis, the Casting Director.  And my second meeting – when I was actually reading – was in front of [Burton],” he recalls.  “I was thinking, “Oh my God this is sooo bizarre – I should be in school right now.  This is freaking me out!”  Then on the same day I had to sing for Stephen Sondheim, the musical director and then about a week later I got a phone call saying I got the part.  So that was the beginning of the end!” he laughs.

“[On Sweeney Todd] I was eighteen years of age, fresh-faced, wide eyed and at work with all these amazing actors.  People were saying, ‘Hit your mark!’ and I was like, ‘Yeah, yeah,’ but inside I was going ‘What does that mean?  What am I meant to be doing?  What’s the mark?’ – I sort of blagged my way through a lot of it but it was a really good learning experience.”

Although the acting world is something Cambell Bower clearly enjoys, he does admit he is still adjusting to the Hollywood environment – in particular, the world of Twilight.  “It’s interesting to see how the whole Twilight world works.  It is very strange – I still find it very, very weird.  Just because I don’t think I would have been so obsessed about something like that in my entire life – that obsession with a particular work of literature.  [Filming New Moon] was really fun but also really scary,” he confesses.  “I don’t have an impact on the world and then you go in and you work with Rob and Kristin [Stewart] and Dakota and Michael – all these phenomenal actors who have made such an impact on the world and are so great at what they do.  It’s kind of like, ‘Fuck!  What am I doing here?’  But they’re really nice and very much eased me into it.”

And whilst Campbell Bower has enjoyed his time working on the vampire movie, he is pretty confident he will be able to remain relatively anonymous despite the films success, unlike Twilight lead, Robert Pattinson.

“I’m still able to walk the streets of London without people pushing me into taxis,” he laughs.  “The whole thing that’s going on with Rob is that he is a really great actor and he portrays his character fantastically.  People were obsessed with the books before the film even came out and obsessed with the character of Edward and I think that’s still what people are obsessing over.”

There is another fantasy-novel-turned-film-franchise that Campbell Bower has also recently managed to get involved with – Harry Potter.

“It’s a scary prospect going in to do Harry Potter.  Terrifying.  But it’s really cool to watch how much money they put into it and how amazing they can make it.  Leaveston Studios is now Potter Studios – I don’t think another film has been done there for years.  But all the people who are working on Potter also worked on Sweeney – which is really nice.”

Campbell Bower will be appearing in flashback scenes as one of the series key characters, Gellert Grindelwald – one of the few magicians to challenge the magical abilities of top wizard, Albus Dumbledor (played on screen by Michael Gambon) as well as being the only character to capture his heart.

“I’ve had scenes with a young Michael Gambon – not actually Michael Gambon, but a guy that’s playing young Michael Gambon,” Jamie explains of his experiences on set.  And despite playing on screen lovers, he cannot remember his co-stars name (it’s Toby Regbo).

“That’s awful,” he gasps.  “He is my lover – but we were only on set for one day.”

So was Campbell Bower a fan of the novel series?

“I was, yeah.  But I was much younger when the first book came out and then I kind of lost interest and became more interested in girls.  I was like, ‘Books are boring!  Girls are much more fun.  Fuck this Potter bollocks!  I’m off to go find myself a lady!”

And how did that go?

“Badly.  Really badly.”

So with Potter and Twilight both in the pipeline, can we expect to see Jamie Campbell Bower in more franchise films?

“I think what’s great about franchises is that you know you’re in a job for the next few years and I think that security would be absolutely phenomenal but in another way I do like having no idea of what’s going to happen next.  I could be off for a job for months and then I get another one that’ll take me to a completely different place and it’s a completely different story and it’s all very new and exciting and it gives me a lot more chance to sort of work in developing a character.  I’d like to do a franchise where I could be involved from beginning to end.”

Away from the world of franchising is the upcoming film, London Boulevard, where Campbell Bower is again joined by an array of high profile actors including Colin Farrell, Kiera Knightly and Anna Friel.

“I am a big fan of Anna Friel!” Jamie states somewhat protectively.  “She’s lovely.  I think she’s awesome,” he declares, having become a strong admirer of the actress since watching her in a recent production of Breakfast At Tiffany’s.  Of his role in the film, he says excitedly, “I get to play a character called Whiteboy who has fallen in with this drug world that he doesn’t quite understand and is kind of like a posh boy being a rudeboy.  He’s got dreadlocks and gold teeth, rings and gold chains and the like…”  This character description sounds so different to the actor’s current appearance that suspicion of another Jamie Campbell Bower joke could only be natural.

“No I am actually being deadly serious – this is true,” he insists, laughing.  “This is really true.”

Words: Seamus Duff
Images: Toyin
Fashion: Way Perry

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Like a lot of very beautiful people, Alexander Skarsgard has a not-quite-there quality. It’s not exactly aloofness – he’s a lively and very likeable lunch companion – but more the sort of absent air that is the result of never, ever having had to charm anyone.

He enters the restaurant at a langorous prowl, all six feet four of him looming large in the diminutive and expensively shabby surroundings of Prune in the East Village. In jeans and a snug white t-shirt he slowly draws off his sunglasses and confirms himself a kind of joke of handsomeness.

There’s no sign of the hangover he claims to be suffering from, but as if to prove it, he orders a burger, “fatty and salty, just what I need”. Our waitress, or rather waitresses – we somehow appear to have acquired three – virtually melt as they pour water into his glass and ask how he’d like his burger. (“Medium rare”. I resist a vamp joke.)

Since he was cast in the camp sex-n-gore fest that is HBO’s wildly popular vampire series True Blood, Skarsgard has unwittingly spawned website after hormonally-charged website that pore over his every move and pronouncement. I tell him that in my research I found a website selling mugs that read “That’s Mrs Skarsgard to you”.

“Oh really?” he smiles, and allows himself a small chuckle. He then adds, jokingly, “I own that website.”

He plays Eric Northman – vampire, Viking and owner of “Fangtasia”, Louisiana’s first vampire-friendly bar, in which he does a lot of predatory lowering. But this year he’s about to prove he can do much more than just look buff and bloodthirsty: True Blood has not only made him an object of lust, but also looks set to propel him into the Hollywood stratosphere of “Serious Actor”. He has two major films out this year (Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia and Straw Dogs, a remake of Sam Peckinpah’s controversial 1971 thriller) and two already slated for next year. I ask him if he had any inkling that the series would get so big.

“No one knew, you know? I was excited about it but no one said, ‘just so you know, there’s going to be a massive hit.'”

The first word of it he heard from his agent, “was basically ‘viking vampire’. So at first I was like ‘whaaat? Fuckin’ vampire – what is this?’ Then the second sentence was “HBO and Alan Ball’ so I was kind of intrigued.”

It was at the launch of Season Two at Comic Con in San Diego, witnessing crowds of hysterical fans, that he realised what a big deal the show had become. So why are we all obsessed with vampires then?

That pretty much encapsulates his character’s appeal: Eric was introduced as something of a villain but as the plot continues to thicken he’s shown glimmers of tenderness. It’s all deliciously unsettling, and, somewhat bizarrely, we have David Attenborough to thank for some of that.

Skarsgard happened to be watching a nature film about lions and, “I d’know, I was just fascinated. It was just something about the male lion, the way he kinda carried himself. And there was this one moment when he clocks the camera man and it’s just this deadpan stare. He just looked so fuckin’ confident. He didn’t do anything. He almost looked bored. And it was fascinating because you didn’t know if he was going to pounce and fuckin’ kill the cameraman, or if he was about to yawn and fall asleep. I just thought that was really intriguing – the downplay. That, in a way confidence, isn’t it? – You don’t have to be big or loud if you know that you’re the shit. Right?”

(Right.)

“The only reason you get like that is because you’re insecure,” he continues. “And I thought it would be a good thing to have Eric lethal and know it, so he doesn’t have to show off or prove it.”

Does he get a lot of fake blood over his stuff when he’s on set?

“Oh god yeah,” he says, with a housewife-y eye roll. “Sometimes you have to shower with your clothes on after a long day. It’s very sticky that blood and when it dries your clothes stick to your skin and you can’t get it off. A couple of years ago we did a night shoot and when we wrapped I was so tired – we have showers in our trailers but I was just like, ‘I want to go home, take a nice hot shower at home and go to bed.’ So I just put my boxer briefs on and got in my car, covered in blood and dirt, and drove home. It was like five in the morning and I didn’t think about it when I got in the car but as I was driving I was like shit, I hope I don’t pass a cop or anything…”

Skarsgard insists that he avoids reading about himself online or elsewhere and as for weird letters and gifts from fans, “my manager and publicist kind of screen that. So I don’t get the crazy-crazy stuff.” He laughs “– they kind of try to protect my innocence.”

But when it comes to deranged fans, Skarsgard has been here before. His first professional acting job came at age seven, in his native Sweden.

“My dad’s friend was a director [his father is the actor Stellan Skarsgard] and he asked him if he could ask me if I wanted to be in the movie and I said ‘yeah’. I was excited because we got free cinnamon buns on set, that’s what I remember.”

Then, at thirteen, he starred in a Swedish TV movie called The Dog That Smiled and it made him a national celebrity. Girls used to hang around outside his parents house.

In fact, he makes his upbringing sound like something out of a catalogue for a Scandinavian clothing company. He’s the eldest of seven and he says, “there were always big dinner parties, every night, and we all lived in the same apartment building. So it was always like, people smoking, drinking, talking – a lot of artists and music. It was fun, it was wild. A very artistic, urban environment, surrounded by hippies y’know…cigarettes and red wine.”

At nineteen, he decided it was time for something a little more challenging. “At that point I still didn’t want to be an actor. I’d spent twelve years in school and I didn’t want to study, I needed a break from that. I didn’t really feel like backpacking in Asia like most people do, or moving to London to sell shoes like a lot of Swedes do.”

Instead, he signed up for Swedish military service.

“I mean, I’m a pacifist, I don’t wanna go to war, so I did it for myself. I didn’t do it because I loved guns, you know? It was tough and I hated it sometimes. It taught me a lot. You learn how much more you can do than you think. And I was a sergeant so it taught me a lot about leadership and how to motivate your men.”

That all came in pretty handy when he was cast as Sergeant Brad “Iceman” Colbert on HBO’s Generation Kill, a series based on the true story of a Marine battalion in the first days of the Iraq war.

“We had a huge responsibility because we set out to show people back in the States what their sons and daughters were going through out there. We wanted to show the boredom, how chaotic it can be, how little they know about what they’re doing, what the mission is. It was definitely the most important job I’ve ever been part of, for sure. And it was very special because we premiered it at a Marine base in front of four hundred marines.”

And what was their reaction?

“Well…” he says with a smile and a shrug, “I’m still alive, so…”

After his year of military service, Skarsgard spent a year at Leeds University where he decided to give acting one last shot. He and his “buddy” went to the university library, “found some monologues and he filmed me on an old VHS camera and sent it to New York.”
It worked, and, aged 21, he was accepted at Marymount College. His time there seems a particularly intense period of his life.

“New York can be the greatest city on the planet but it can also be a horrible place when you’re heartbroken and you walk down the street and see all these parties and people laughing.”

He’d fallen for a girl back in Sweden, three weeks before he left for New York and, “the long distance relationship didn’t work, she went back to her ex-boyfriend, I was fffuuucking devastated. Plus I was a student, I had no money, nothing, I couldn’t even afford to eat. So to walk down the street and see all these parties, people laughing and in love, it was just like…” he inhales, making a winded, death-rattle sound – “it killed me. School was fantastic and I immediately felt how much I’d missed being on stage, so creatively I was supercharged, but I just couldn’t breathe because I missed her so much.”

Back in 2009, before he’d graced magazine covers and been fawned over on national television, he starred in the video to ‘Paparazzi’ as Lady Gaga’s aristocratic bit of man-candy who gets papped, then finally poisoned. Now, of course, he gets followed by real paparazzi, who were particularly ravenous when it came to pictures of him and Kate Bosworth. Last month the pair broke up, having been together for two years since working on Straw Dogs together. When I broach his new-found singledom he looks awkward.

“I d’know,” he squirms. “I don’t wanna talk about dating and all that. I’ve always watched my dad and how he’s dealt with attention from the media. I get it, I understand that people are curious and intrigued but my job is to try to push that focus as much as possible, to tell people I’m actually an actor, that’s why I’m here. You’re so watched and in the spotlight constantly, it’s important to have things in your life that you don’t share with other people, other than your loved ones. So I don’t think you’ll ever see one of those, “Alex and his girlfriend invite someone to their house…” and it’s us, like, by the pool.”

Does he have a career plan? “Plan?” he says, sounding incredulous. “No.” Instead, he just goes with “gut feeling”.

“Because of all the attention True Blood’s getting, a lot of the offers I get are basically Eric but with a different name and without the vampire make up. But that’s not what I’m looking for: I want to do something different. Again, that’s why Melancholia was so amazing, because it was so far from an alpha male as you can possibly get.”

In that he played Kirsten Dunst’s slightly ineffectual husband but his next character calls for more backbone. He’s just about to start filming What Maisie Knew, an adaptation of a Henry James novel in which he plays a father battling for custody of his six year old daughter.

“I met Renate, the little kid, for the first time yesterday, she’s just adorable,” he says, going gooey. “We just played for an hour and a half and she immediately just opened up and connected and it was lovely, really lovely.”

His hamburger and fries demolished, our waitress (one of the phalanx) arrives to take his empty plate.

“Thanks,” he says a little absently, “that was great.”

And she twinkles so hard at him that she looks in danger of combusting.

Words: Hermione Hoby
Images: Bjarne Jonasson
Styling: Way Perry

The post Flashback Friday: Alexander Skarsgard appeared first on Wonderland.

Video by Rhys Frampton
Styling by Way Perry
Find the collection at: OriginalPenguin.co.uk
@penguineurope
Original Penguin

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Collection: Katie Eary AW12
Directed by: Vicky Lawton
Fashion Editor: Way Perry
Hair: Gow Tanaka using Bumble & Bumble
Make-up: Adam De Cruz at the Book Agency using Shu Uemura

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Catharsis from David Terranova on Vimeo.

Filmed at Town Hall Hotel, the short follows model Ilona through the luxe, five star Edwardian-style hotel in London’s east end.

Art Director/Stylist: Way Perry
Director: James Mountford
Director/music: David Terranova
Makeup: Holleigh Gallon
Hair: Oliver de Almeida Waqued
Model: Ilona @ Union (Frankie)

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In this sultry, sexy motel-room romp, music comes courtesy of one Kanye West, with fashion by Wonderland’s Men’s Fashion Editor Way Perry.

The post Katie Eary Spring 2012 teaser appeared first on Wonderland.

What is your most memorable fashion moment so far?
Meeting with Edward Enninful one-on-one was special to me, I think he’s genius and It’s great that he could relate to me and give me advice on approaching the industry at a young age.

Celebrity or model you’d most like to work with?
I’ve worked with a lot of models I look up to. I feel so privileged to have lately shot the likes of Agyness Deyn, Eliza Cummings, Lily Cole and Jourdan Dunn.

Favourite designers?
I don’t have a favourite designer, I can appreciate and respect all. My taste changes constantly. As does most in fashion.

Did you meet Walter von Beirendonck/what was he like?
I met Walter, he was great, a genius! I’m always obsessing over crazy, fun and out there characters, Walter has no boundaries, his mind goes wild when it comes to work, it’s his life and I relate to and respect that.

How did von Beirendonck’s archived collections influence your photography?
Of course with such cool and wild designs it allows you to have fun with it and play! My favourite! No boundaries.

Favourite haunts in London to eat, shop and generally hang out.
I spend a lot of my time in model agencies (Select), catching up with friends and hanging out – they are like family.

Photography: Damon Baker
Styling: Way Perry
Interview by Eunice Jera Lee

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This September, Wonderland’s “Priceless” issue celebrates all the things that money can’t necessarily buy – specifically: talent, style, taste and supreme luxury. Cover stars Kirsten Dunst and Alexander
Skarsgård take the lead, talking sex, danger, nudity and apocalypse in light of their starring roles in Lars Von Trier’s epic Melancholia. Joining them are rising film talents Jessica Chastain and Emily Browning, as well as a portfolio of young Hollywood stallions shot by renowned LA photographer Paul Jasmin. In music, we profile the world’s most defiantly un-commercial self-made musicians, from exciting new London label Night Slugs to Twitter rap sensation Lil B. In art, we go shopping with Tracey Emin, interview Auto Destructive art legend Gustav Metzger, and tap maverick fashion designer Walter Van Beirendonck to recommend some of his personal art heroes. Fashion taps into autumn’s key message: more is never enough, showcasing the season’s lurid skins, dark fetishes and strictly limited pieces. Then there’s commentary from the industry’s finest, including Tom Ford, Margherita Missoni, Peter Marino and Victoire de Castellane.

The Priceless issue is available in all good newsagents and bookshops from August 26 (next week). Until then enjoy the covers.

Photography: Miguel Reveriego
Fashion: Grace Cobb

Photography: Bjarne Jonasson
Fashion: Way Perry

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