Alexander Skarsgard Is a Neck Man

The only Swedish import that ever stole my heart was IKEA. OK, maybe a Volvo. But then along came Alexander Skarsgard, the vampire bad boy with a true (though a non-beating) heart in HBO's True Blood. Skarsgard plays Eric Northman, the 1,000-year-old Viking sheriff of the undead, but he might as well be named Vampire McSteamy. Do we blame Anna Paquin for secretly fantasizing about him when the sun goes down? That smoldering face. That surfer-boy hair. Those chiseled cheekbones. (Article continued below...)

There are thousands, maybe millions, of women out there who are smitten with Alex (as I like to call him). He also charms the pants off men, like his costar Nelsan Ellis. "He's very humble, extremely talented, and so freaking Mount Olympus good-looking that sometimes I just want to be him," says Ellis, who plays another True Blood fan favorite, Lafayette, a gay, cross-dressing, short-order cook. "But, I want to say, 'Brother, please don't stand next to me.' " In that case, Alex, could you stand next to me instead?

Skarsgard's take on Eric is a little bit Gordon Gekko from Wall Street (he's so mean) mixed with a little Mr. Darcy (he's so misunderstood). His character lurked in the shadows in season one—"I was a glorified extra," he says—but he's quickly become a pivotal part of the show. Eric is the hunk trying to woo away Sookie (Paquin) from her vampiric main squeeze (Stephen Moyer), in a love triangle inspired by the Charlaine Harris books, that could get extra heated in the show's season finale this weekend. As True Blood has become HBO's biggest hit since The Sopranos, averaging about 5 million viewers a week, Skarsgard is the vampire of the hour. Paquin might have won the Golden Globe, but Skarsgard won over the blogosphere. "The real truth is, I was in Europe when season two started, and I had no idea how big the thing had gotten," Skarsgard says. "I landed in L.A., went to Comic-Con and it was absolutely crazy."

Skarsgard might suck blood on TV, but, so far, he's not going to be sucked into his own fame. He's a little bit of an anti-celebrity, even if his other major marquee credit was sharing a bed with Lady Gaga in the music video for "Paparazzi." Skarsgard is now in Shreveport, La., shooting the Rod Lurie (The Contender) "reimagining" of the 1971 Sam Pekinpah film Straw Dogs. The film raised a lot of eyebrows back in the day for an excruciating rape scene that seems to morph from violence to lust. The perp is Skarsgard's character, Charlie Venner. "It's something that we talk about every day on the set," says Skarsgard. "It's going to be tough. It's a painful scene, but it's also a crucial moment."

Skarsgard stays in character during our interview, and he speaks in a soft Southern accent that could make the toes of 1,000 middle-aged women instantly curl. He's humble and polite, and hispter smart about the indie- and punk-music scene (Glasvegas, the Buzzcocks, the Adverts, the Clash, and the Arctic Monkeys are all sprinkled into conversation). He's been so busy, he almost didn't celebrate his 33rd birthday this year. "I was chilling in my hotel room and a couple guys from the Straw Dogs set dragged me out to dinner," he says. "It was actually very casual. And it was very sweet of them to do this. I haven't been doing a lot for my birthdays the last couple of years."