Noomi Rapace

Noomi Rapace might not be what you would expect. Even five years after the Swedish actress said goodbye to the cult Millennium trilogy character Lisbeth Salander, a small part of me was still waiting, almost hoping, for a monosyllabic and aggressive punk to walk into London’s Claridge’s on the hottest day of the year. Instead Rapace, all blonde haired and tanned, resembled more a hot hip-hop groupie in black and gold, and chatted warmly and wittily about fashion, film and dreams, while not kicking off at staff who asked her to remove her baseball cap due to the hotel’s “strict no-hat policy”. Who knew? But with an impressive list of notable movies set to be released within the next year, and numerous cerebral blockbusters scheduled for filming, Rapace has quietly become one of the most significant actresses of her generation, which actually is what we had expected all along.

KAY BARRON: “I’m not sure I would have recognised you in the street. I hear that you change your look all the time.”

NOOMI RAPACE: “I always believe in changes. It doesn’t matter if you talk about work, fashion, love, life – you need movements to be able to grow and change and to learn. For me, I always embrace changes.”

KAY BARRON: “Is your hair blonde for a role?”

NOOMI RAPACE: “Yes, it was for Alive Alone and then they pushed it back, because one of the lead actor’s family members was really sick. I have also bleached my eyebrows. I did this shoot in LA and I loved the make-up artist and I said, ‘Shall we do my eyebrows white?’, and he said, ‘Fuck yeah.’ We ran out and bought bleaching product and he said, ‘Are you going to walk around like this?’ and I was like, ‘Yeah, whatever.’”

KAY BARRON: “You don’t seem to be vain at all and are happy to take risks with your appearance. Have you always approached it like that?”

NOOMI RAPACE: “When I turned 13 or 14, I started to listen to punk music and rock’n’roll. I read all about Nancy Spungen, I started to get into Vivienne Westwood, The Clash, all those kind of punk bands. I bleached my hair, I was all into it, did lots of piercings on myself, I combined lots of military clothes but then my interest for clothes and how much it affects you, the knowledge of that, woke up, in a way. I was like, ‘If I dress like this, if I’m girly, people will approach me in one way’ and if, on another day, I was in boots and a big hoodie and baggy jeans they would treat me completely different.”

KAY BARRON: “So you were aware of the impact of fashion really early on?”

NOOMI RAPACE: “I started to act when I was 16 in a soap opera and then I realised the power of the message you send out, and my interests in fashion started to grow, but I couldn’t afford to buy what I wanted. So one Christmas, when I was 18, my mum gave me this old-fashioned machine and I started to make my own clothes. I was working in the daytime, working in a bar in the evenings and making clothes when I got home.”

KAY BARRON: “Can you remember the first thing that you made?”

NOOMI RAPACE: “Yeah, I made a bright pink – super-, super-tight – skirt and a mini jacket with a big hoodie for New Year’s Eve. The skirt was Barbie pink and in this plastic fake leather and then I went out dancing. I couldn’t afford things, but I wanted something spectacular. And then of course, later in the evening, when I was dancing, the whole thing ripped. The whole side of it! I stole a guy’s scarf and tied it around me.”

KAY BARRON: “Fashion is a language that everyone understands, whether they like it or not, and sometimes it’s terrifying and sometimes it’s empowering.”

NOOMI RAPACE: “Definitely. I find it really interesting how strong that language is and how much you can communicate. I was in Soho House in LA two weeks ago for a meeting, and I had on these animal-print pants and top that looked like a jumpsuit from Dolce & Gabbana and then some earrings. I walked down the stairs with my son, and these two black guys, who looked so fucking awesome, dressed in loads of necklaces and shit, said, ‘Fuck, you the best-dressed mum I ever seen.’ My son was like, ‘Do you think so?!’ They said, ‘Yeah, she’s fucking dope!’ I was thinking about my son’s awareness of fashion, we were talking about clothes and I told him people judge you quite fast. When I started doing The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo I had this shaved head and black mohawk, lots of piercings, and people were so rude to me.”

KAY BARRON: “People didn’t know what you were filming then, did they?”

NOOMI RAPACE: “Exactly! That’s also why I love the designers I love working with, and the beauty in fashion is people are artists. I love the ones who are really brave and try new things, because I know that it’s almost like a skin for me and it will affect my whole day. If I’m doing a press day, what I’m wearing can help me or it can make it much harder, so it’s quite interesting.”

KAY BARRON: “It’s important. But it applies to your working life, too, as when you embrace a role, you really embrace it.”

NOOMI RAPACE: “Yeah, I go all the way. I can show you a picture from Child 44. I had contact lenses in to change the colour of my eyes, and my hair was kind of dirty blonde.”

KAY BARRON: “Have you finished filming it now?”

NOOMI RAPACE: “Yeah, in October. I’ve just been doing sound synchronising in LA. We filmed it in Prague.”

KAY BARRON: “That book is so amazing. That’s a trilogy, too, and I always think it’s a smart move when actors get involved with trilogies, as it helps to guarantee the next job.”

NOOMI RAPACE: “Same for Brilliance, which I am going to do, it’s also three books by Marcus Sakey and I’m reading them now. I love that you get so much more information about the character. You don’t need to build everything yourself, but at one point, you need to let go of the book and build your own.”

KAY BARRON: “You’ve got The Drop coming out in October with Tom Hardy and obviously Tom is in Child 44, too, and then you were going to be in Alive Alone with Idris Elba, and of course he was in Prometheus with you, too. You’ve created this kind of family that you keep going back to.”

NOOMI RAPACE: “If you work with somebody who is a kindred spirit, who you have a deeper connection with, that’s the best thing. I love it. I’ve been so lucky. I don’t know what happened, but I’ve been working with such an amazing group of people – Michael Fassbender, Tom Hardy, Idris, Guy Pearce, Gary Oldman, the best men out there. Then you almost taste something that you really like and want to go back and explore that. The amazing thing about Tom was that we went straight from The Drop into Child 44; I think it was five weeks between the two movies. They are so completely different – different characters, different personalities, different worlds but you don’t need to learn the whole dance to trust each other. In Child 44, the characters are supposed to be married for eight years, they’re supposed to know each other, so were standing on quite solid ground already and that was amazing. I have the same thing with some directors – you know that when you work with them you’ve gotten so far; next time we can go even deeper. Yeah, so it’s like a big dysfunctional family!”

KAY BARRON: “There are a lot of very important men in your life who you work with. Is that something you think you’re drawn to?”

NOOMI RAPACE: “It’s interesting. For me, I never see acting as a competition – it’s not about outshining each other, you know? Who is the best, who got the best reviews. I never read anything. I know that if I work with strong personalities, women or men, then I know that what we can do together can be so much stronger than if we were carrying something on our own from two different corners. I want to always improve, see if I can take it further and find ways to never be satisfied and always keep on working. When you work with people at a similar level, it feels like flying, it gives me a lot of happiness.”

KAY BARRON: “When you’re bringing out the best in someone, in any work, if you’ve got the right dynamic with somebody, then it produces the best work.”

NOOMI RAPACE: “I don’t know if you’ve seen some of my previous, earlier Scandinavian films?”

KAY BARRON: “I’ve seen Daisy Diamond and Babycall.”

NOOMI RAPACE: “Because both were really lonely. I felt so alone and I was so sad, in a way. I remember when I was doing Daisy Diamond, the other actors, who were the biggest from Denmark, only did three days. They came in and did their scenes and left, and I just wanted them to stay with me. I love the connection, I love to be there with somebody else.”

KAY BARRON: “Has Prometheus 2 been officially confirmed yet?”

NOOMI RAPACE: “Yes, they’re working on their script at the moment. They haven’t set a start date yet. They are still trying to figure out the story, as we really need a really strong script.”

KAY BARRON: “The first one was an amazing film.”

NOOMI RAPACE: “I love working with Ridley.”

KAY BARRON: “Another incredible man in your life. I read somewhere that he said that, ‘If you learn to speak English, you can do anything you want.’ How long did it take you to learn English?”

NOOMI RAPACE: “I first met him four and a half years ago and my English was so bad. I could hardly understand what people said. When I was doing The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, I didn’t speak English, but when I was filming Babycall, I was in Oslo and on my own in this hotel. I couldn’t sleep and that was actually when I started to learn English on my own – watching films, talk shows, reading anything, newspapers, magazines, books. It would take me eight hours to read a script because I had to look up every other word.”

KAY BARRON: “You still have your accent, but when you were saying something earlier, it sounded like north London. Where are you living now?”

NOOMI RAPACE: “Nowhere. I’m buying a place in London, but all my things are in storage. I’ve been travelling so much and I haven’t really had time to really look into it. I love London, it’s one of the best cities.”

KAY BARRON: “What is it about London that you like?”

NOOMI RAPACE: “I guess it feels like a boiling pot of life – there is always something happening, but there is also stillness and you can be on your own and it’s such a big city, so you can disappear or you can engage with a lot of people. A lot of creative people live here and lots of my really good friends. I like places where there’s not a roof, if you want to do something you can find someone to team up with. You can build a dream here and I love that. There are a lot of films being made here. I shot Sherlock Holmes here, Prometheus. I have two other projects that are probably going to be shot here, or part shot. I also need to be in Europe, because my son’s father lives in Sweden at the moment, so I want to be as close as possible. I fell in love with London the moment I came here. When my mum came here the first time, she said, ‘They call you “love”. Everybody is like, “You alright there, love? You need any help, love?”’ She loved it, it was a beautiful gesture – they would never do that in Sweden.”

KAY BARRON: “You moved from Sweden to Iceland when you were five. Were you interested in acting then?”

NOOMI RAPACE: “I did my first film when I was seven. I was a kid extra in the crowd and I loved it.”

KAY BARRON: “So where did that love come from? I know that your mother is an actress as well.”

NOOMI RAPACE: “Yeah, theatre actress. I went to the cinemas as often as I could. I was working in Iceland and, every second week, whenever I could, they screened a movie and it was American films. I was the first one there waiting, and I saw a lot of American films there.”

KAY BARRON: “Was it escapism?”

NOOMI RAPACE: “No, it was more like a dream world. Like a paradise. I remember when I saw Alien and Thelma & Louise. I remember I saw Romper Stomper, old Tarantino films – True Romance, Natural Born Killers – and they made such a deep impact on me.”

KAY BARRON: “Again, it’s strong women with a sense of rebellion in all of them and I hear that you were quite a rebellious teenager.”

NOOMI RAPACE: “Yeah but then I think most teenagers are, right? I’ve always had so much more energy than the people around me. I have quite a high temper and when I was younger I was quite frustrated with stuff and I kind of didn’t want anybody else to tell me what to do. I was really strong-minded and I’m still that way, I think. I still want to change the world, you know? If I read a script and I can’t fully understand it straightaway, or I can’t figure the character out, then it becomes like a hook in me and I want to find that key to open that box and understand that person.”

KAY BARRON: “But how do you do that?”

NOOMI RAPACE: “I think I need to run it through myself. Sometimes a physical preparation can help you and it can be a combination of psychological and physical preparation and sometimes it’s very much in me that I close the doors to the world around me to find this person in me, so it’s a version of me.”

KAY BARRON: “Would you describe yourself as a method actress?”

NOOMI RAPACE: “Well, I guess I have my own method, but it’s not like I’m on set and I want people to call me the character’s name. It’s not like I think I’m this other person, but it does affect me a lot, it takes over my life pretty much.”

KAY BARRON: “It must be hard to hold onto yourself during that time.”

NOOMI RAPACE: “I do lose myself. I do lend myself to someone else for a certain amount of time. That’s why my choices are so important to me. I know that this character is going to move in and stay there. I don’t just go in and do anything. I’d rather say no to a lot of things and wait for something that I know I really want to give myself to. I can’t just go in and do it for the pay cheques or just because it’s a ‘good move’, or whatever. Sometimes, I wish I could, it might be easier to be that kind of person, but I can’t. Because I’m giving myself to somebody else.”

KAY BARRON: “How does your son react to it? Is he 10 now?”

NOOMI RAPACE: “The other day we were talking to a friend of mine about this project that I’m going to do where I play seven characters [What Happened to Monday?], and my son said, ‘I don’t know how that is going to be because when mum is just one person she’s very different, but when she’s seven!’ But as long as I’m honest with him, then he is cool with it.”

KAY BARRON: “How does you family feel about your success?”

NOOMI RAPACE: “It’s funny – my mum always saw me as strong, so it doesn’t really surprise her. She doesn’t really get impressed, it’s kind of how she expected it to be. My family gave me the freedom to grow at my own speed, nobody really stopped me and I was supported and they trusted me. My mum said that I started to say I was going to move from Sweden when I was nine. I knew that I wanted to take off. It was my own instinct or dream.”

KAY BARRON: “What is the next dream?”

NOOMI RAPACE: “I’m writing and working with writers. I’m working with a guy – Ben Latham-Jones, the CEO of Ealing Studios – we’re developing three different things that are kind of just building up that I will do a year from now, or maybe two years from now. There’s a lot going on in my head. I have lots of awards and prizes and I always get nervous because I don’t feel like I’ve done my best film yet. Wait and see!”

Photographer: Norbert Schoerner

Fashion editor: Sophia Neophitou

Hair: Lyndell Mansfield

Make-up: Shinobu

Talent: Noomi Rapace

By Kay Barron