By Reuben Lazarus and Gill Pringle
“He plucked his hair out, like hair by hair with a tweezer, because he felt that the character would look a certain way,” says Alexander Skarsgård’s The Hummingbird Project co-star Jesse Eisenberg. “I had never seen an actor undergo actual, physical pain to change their look. Normally, you would just have to shave in the morning. But he literally had to pluck his hair out one by one for hours and hours and hours.”
“We shaved it up here,” Skarsgård points about his forehead. “It looked fake because when you have a straight line like that, it doesn’t look natural. You want the kind of nice, softer transition. We started to pluck the hair, and it was torturous, my entire scalp was pulsating. We did a camera test and it still didn’t look good enough. So, the solution was that we would cut it and glue on a little lace line of thinning hair so that you would get that nice little transition of hair and slowly it softens.”
Written and directed by Kim Nguyen, The Hummingbird Project is a thrilling drama about cousins Vincent (Eisenberg) and Anton (Skarsgård), who are involved in high-frequency trading and ultra-low latency direct market access.
“That’s how I envisioned the character when I read it, and fortunately Kim liked the idea,” admits Skarsgård of the transformation. “I think most actors love an opportunity like that and really embrace it, and it’s part of the job. When you can make such a drastic transformation, it’s incredibly rewarding and fun.”
His performance in The Hummingbird Project definitely benefitted, however the look did spark some interesting reaction off-set. “I had to walk around like that for three months,” Skarsgård remembers. “I even went to some fashion thing in New York! It looked very strange on days off because when I didn’t shoot, I obviously didn’t have to shave it, so I would have stubble up here, and then this almost monk-like little hairline appeared. I got a lot of weird looks!”
The Hummingbird Project is in cinemas April 25, 2019
