‘Awards Chatter’ Podcast [LIVE] — Alicia Vikander (‘Firebrand’ and ‘Irma Vep’)

In front of an audience in the Campari Lounge at the Cannes Film Festival, the Swedish Oscar winner reflects on her transition from dancing to acting, the ups and downs of her life-changing 2015, her husband Michael Fassbender and her 2023 return to Cannes as the star of a film in competition.

Alicia Vikander -- who, at just 34, is already an Academy Award, SAG Award and Critics Choice Award winner, a three-time BAFTA Award nominee and a two-time Golden Globe Award nominee, and has been described as "the biggest Swedish export since IKEA" -- is the guest on this episode of The Hollywood Reporter's Awards Chatter podcast, which was recorded in front of an audience at the Campari Lounge within the Palais at the Cannes Film Festival.

The Swede, who is best known -- and won her Oscar -- for 2015's The Danish Girl, was at the fest with a project for the third year in a row. In 2021 she attended on behalf of the film Blue Bayou, which screened in the Un Certain Regard section. In 2022 she returned with the HBO limited series Irma Vep, which screened as part of the Cannes Premiere section, and for which she is now in Emmy contention. This time, for the first time, she was there with a film in competition, Karim Ainouz's English-language directorial debut Firebrand, in which she plays Catherine Parr, the sixth and final wife of King Henry VIII, played by Jude Law. (THR's David Rooney raved in his review, "Firebrand provides a great leading role for an actress to bite into, which Alicia Vikander does with gusto... It's her best work since [2015's] Ex Machina.")

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Over the course of our conversation, Vikander -- who was previously a guest on Awards Chatter back in 2016 -- reflected on growing up the daughter of a top actress (her mother, Maria Fahl Vikander, died last year); deciding to transition from dancing to acting; breaking out of the Swedish film industry and into an international career thanks to 2010's Pure; the ups and downs of her life-changing 2015; working with Michael Fassbender, who would become her husband in 2017, on 2016's The Light Between Oceans; and the challenges and rewards of playing the sixth and final wife of Henry VIII -- the one who, as the rhyme famously goes, "survived."