Alexander Skarsgard

I wasn't like a Hollywood child actor - 'I'm five! I can sing, I can dance, I can act! I wanna be a star!' ”

There was this sausage factory a block away from my childhood apartment. It didn't smell nice, like chorizo or something; it was pretty foul. Just nasty. But that smell reminds me so much of my childhood because every morning when I was going to school, I would smell that. ”

I grew up in a very urban, bohemian family where everyone was a hippie or a pacifist. It was artistically and intellectually stimulating, but they were definitely not into outdoor sports or activities. ”

When you meet someone, of course you want it to last forever. It'd be very depressing if you didn't feel that way. But things change, and you maybe grow apart. You have to accept that. ”

The system in Sweden is great because you get free healthcare and free education; someone who doesn't have a lot of money can become a doctor or lawyer. There's good paternity and maternity leave - the U.S. is probably the only civilised country in the world that doesn't give parents anything. ”

Swedes are such a civilised, perfect society - at least on the surface. There's a great safety net, a huge middle class, free education, free health care. People are very polite, they wait their turn. They're not too loud, they're not too quiet, but sometimes it's a little too perfect. ”

We are civilized human beings, but we're all animals deep down, and that creates a certain friction in all of us. ”

I spent a summer in Texas when I was eight, in Fredericksburg, which is, like, real Texas. It's, like, cowboys and stuff. That was my first time in the States, and I was eight years old. It was also the first time I tasted Dr. Pepper, which blew my mind. ”

There's something I love about how stark the contrast is between January and June in Sweden. In a way, I feel that time doesn't exist in LA. Sometimes I don't know if it's February or April or October, because you're always sitting outside on the same patio, and it's 70 degrees. ”

People don't know much about what's going on on the ground in Iraq: what you see in the media is heavily censored. ”