Alicia Amanda Vikander, a Swedish born actress has received such accolades as an Oscar Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award. two Golden Globes, and three BAFTA Awards.
Child Actress
Born and raised on October 3, 1988 in Gothenburg, Vikander began acting as a child in minor stage productions at the Gothenburg opera house and trained as a ballet dancer at the Royal Swedish Ballet School in Stockholm.
The daughter of Maria Fahl Vikander, a stage actress, and Svante Vikander, a psychiatrist. Her parents separated when Vikander was two months old, and she was raised by her single mother. She has five half-siblings on her father’s side. Her ancestry is Swedish and one-quarter Finnish.
Vikander began her career as an actor at the age of 7, starring in a production of Kristina från Duvemåla at The Göteborg Opera, which was written by Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson from ABBA, performing in the play for three-and-a-half years. She appeared in several musicals at the Opera, such as The Sound of Music and Les Misérables. In 1997 she participated in the TV4 kids’ singing show Småstjärnorna; she performed the Helen Sjöholms song, “Du måste finnas”.
Ballet Training
Vikander trained in ballet from the age of nine with the Svenska Balettskolan Göteborg (1998–2004). At the age of 15, Vikander moved from Gothenburg to train at the ballet’s upper school in Stockholm, living on her own. She trained one summer at the American Academy of Ballet in New York.
She began her professional acting career by appearing in Swedish short films and television series and first gained recognition for her role as Josefin Björn-Tegebrandt in the drama series Andra Avenyn (2008–2010).
Feature Debut:
Vikander made her feature film debut in Pure (2010), for which she won the Guldbagge Award for Best Actress. She gained wider recognition in 2012 for playing Kitty in Joe Wright’s adaptation of Anna Karenina and Queen Caroline Mathilde in the Danish film A Royal Affair.
Vikander achieved recognition for her roles as activist Vera Brittain in Testament of Youth (2014), a humanoid robot in “Ex Machina” (2014), for which she was nominated for the BAFTA Award in a Supporting Role, and painter Gerda Wegener in The Danish Girl (2015), for which she won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar.
Marriage: Actor Michael Fassbender
In 2016, Vikander was listed by Forbes in its 30 Under 30 list. She has since held a supporting role in the action film “Jason Bourne” (2016), and starred as Lara Croft in the adventure “Tomb Raider” (2018).
In 2014, she began a relationship with actor Michael Fassbender, and they made their first public appearance together at the 2016 Golden Globes ceremony, where Vikander was nominated twice—for her roles in The Danish Girl and Ex Machina. The couple met during filming of The Light Between Oceans (2016), which was shot in Australia and New Zealand. They wed on October 14, 2017, in a private ceremony in Ibiza, Spain. As of 2017, the couple reside in Lisbon, Portugal.