Oscar winner Alicia Vikander has opened up about the intense experience she had filming her new movie with boyfriend Michael Fassbender.
The Swedish actress, who scored an Academy Award for her role in The Danish Girl opposite Eddie Redmayne, met the Irish actor on the set of romantic period drama The Light Between Oceans.
The adaptation of ML Stedman’s 2012 novel, which was written and directed by Blue Valentine’s Derek Cianfrance, required the two stars to camp in trailers in a remote part of rural New Zealand, where they were completely exposed to the elements.
The film follows the emotional story of Australian First World War veteran Tom Sherbourne (Michael), now a lighthouse keeper, who struggles to have a baby with his wife Isabel (Alicia).
They are gifted with what appears to be a miracle baby washed up in a boat wreck, but their blissful family life is soon thwarted.
Michael and Alicia have enjoyed a low-profile relationship since meeting on the film’s set in 2014 but the actress said recently they have never hidden the fact they are a couple.
Seated beside Michael and Derek, she said: “If you do a movie in London when everyone goes home to their family at the end of the day it’s one thing, but in this situation you create a community and work very intensely together and that takes a lot and Derek really wanted us to try to be out on the set.
“Maybe I felt even more because of the emotional aspect of this film that I had to go back to my hotel and have a proper dinner and relax and then get back the next day but then we got out there.
“One of the best perks of this job is you end up going to places that I don’t know how I would have ended up there if it wasn’t for my job. Every morning and evening I saw a new sunset and new sunrise.
“It was Monday to Friday and then we went back to our little town at the weekends but to experience that nature, I never felt so small in the world.
“You realise what that kind of isolation means, and that wind that never stops, it kind of could drive you mad at night.”
Derek, who also insisted Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling live together during the day for Blue Valentine, said the isolation was crucial for the film.
He said: “It was an hour and a half away from any civilisation, from any town or cute hotel.
“I always wanted to live there, I thought the isolation would be the X-factor in making the movie, we had nowhere to go, no technology to escape to, we only had each other.”
However, he said the heightened emotions could be hard to contain, adding: “These characters are emotional, they are in a ripe, emotional state all the way through the movie so I think all we thought about was trying to approach those emotional moments as honestly as possible.
“There was a time early on, I must confess, when Michael cried in the movie and I thought to myself ‘yeah, way to go’. But eight weeks into it before a scene we would be saying ‘whatever we do, let’s not cry’ but it was so ripe with emotion the whole movie was snotty crying the whole time while we were shooting it, we couldn’t help it.”
The Light Between Oceans will be released in the UK on November 4.
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