Mr Porter

Mr Porter is a retailer of menswear combined with an online editorial fashion magazine. Bill Skarsgård was interviewed by the website and photographed in menswear by Angelo Pennetta for an article published on March 2, 2017.

Article Highlights
Article by Dan Rookwood, Mr Porter US Editor
 * He has not had a home for seven years and owns neither a house, a car or furniture, saying “I’m essentially homeless. I literally live out of a suitcase. That’s my life. What’s in the suitcase kind of changes with the seasons, but I’m pretty good at travelling light. I’ve been doing it all my adult life.”
 * He grew up travelling with his family when his father brought them along on film shoots. He stayed in Cambodia for three months when he was 12 and Mexico at another time.
 * Bill's granddad invented the Skarsgård family name when the Swedish government encouraged patriarchs to pick new names in the 1940s because there were "too many Nilssons, Johnsons, Johanssens and Svensens."
 * He grew up in an "open-door community of actors and artists. His upbringing was extremely liberal and bohemian, with raucous family dinners every night."
 * On the acting industry: “That’s why I have a hard time living here [in LA],” he says. “I like being here for a month or two or three, and then I need to leave. It affects what you value. Acting is a very brutal and unkind industry. It’s a vulnerable job and you constantly have to win the approval of other people, who are judging you not only by your performance, your ability, but also on your looks and how you sound, how tall you are and all these different things. I wouldn’t want my kids to be actors."
 * He rents Airbnb homes instead of staying in hotels because he likes to host large dinner parties regularly, as is tradition in his family.
 * On portraying horror characters: “I’m able to tap into that very unflattering side of yourself,” he says. “I do find them really fun to play. I enjoy exploring the disgusting darkness of yourself. My goal has been to portray as disturbing a clown as possible. That being said, I do want to stay versatile, so that the perception of you is not the scary child-eating clown.”
 * Describing his role in Atomic Blonde: a “small but fun part playing a German punk who gets shit done."
 * “I never know where I am going to be more than a couple of months ahead,” he says. “You see a lot of the world this way, but it’s this kind of a nomadic circus gig.”

Photoshoot
Photography: Angelo Pennetta

Styling: Dan May

Location: Palm Springs and Joshua Tree, California, USA

Resources

 * Mr Porter Article: "How to be a Modern Nomad by Mr Bill Skarsgård"