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TV vampire Alexander Skarsgard has a swinging time playing ‘Tarzan'

"The Legend of Tarzan" focuses on the life of the "ape man" eight years after he's returned to stately Greystoke Manor in England, along with his wife, Jane, and tells of the situation that brings them back to the thrills, dangers, and romance of Africa. Here's a prediction: After seeing the film, no one will have anything but huzzahs concerning the casting choice of 39-year-old Alexander Skarsgard as the iconic character. The Swedish actor (son of Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgard), best known to American audiences as sheriff and bar owner Eric Northman on "True Blood," is a perfect fit for the role — 6-foot-4, lean, lightly chiseled, and energetic. A Tarzan fan since he was a kid, turned on to the Johnny Weissmuller films by Stellan, who used to go to Tarzan matinees in Sweden when HE was a kid, Skarsgard was thrilled to win the part. He spoke about it last week in Los Angeles.

Q: You spend a lot of the film with your shirt off. What was your workout regimen to get in that kind of shape?

A: There were different phases. The first part was three months of bulking up while I was wrapping up "True Blood." So it was Tupperwares with 7,000 calories a day of steak and potatoes, and weightlifting. When I got to London about a month and a half before starting the movie, I had a great opportunity to work with the choreographer Wayne McGregor, and we worked on the physicality of the character. It was very important that Tarzan is flexible and agile when he moves through the jungle, so that he doesn't look like a bodybuilder. The goal wasn't just to get buff, it was to look athletic.

Q: What was the diet like once you started filming?

A: It was horrible (laughs). But I've got to give credit to our chef, Guy. He's an amazing chef, but he had his hands tied because it was a very strict diet: No sugar, no dairy. But when we wrapped the movie, my father was shooting the miniseries "River" in London. I got in my car and went straight to his house. My dad loves to cook, so I spent four days on his couch just being fed. It was bone marrow, fried mozzarella, pasta, red wine.

Q: There are two things every Tarzan movie needs: Scenes of Tarzan swinging on vines, and the Tarzan call. Your movie has both. Any good stories about how you did those?

A: We did quite a bit of the vine-swinging ourselves. But we had a trapeze artist who came in and did those incredible stunts on the vine. They had a 3D scan of my body, then they had Augusts (Dakteris), one of the greatest trapeze artists in the world, who came in, and it was a circus. We sat there with our coffees watching him do these amazing stunts on the vine. Then they would remove his body, use his movements, and replace it with my body. So I'm watching the movie, and I recognize myself doing these Olympic stunts, and I'm thinking, "Should I take credit for this?" But I felt that Augusts deserves that credit. The Tarzan call was tricky. You obviously have to have it in the movie because otherwise, people would be saying, "Where's the call? What's going on?" But you definitely don't want it to be a comedic moment. If I did it (the way Johnny Weissmuller did it) it would take you right out of the movie. I didn't come up with the idea of the way we did it, but I think it's really smart to, instead of having a cheesy shot of Tarzan doing the call, you see the impact of the call on the antagonist's face, because it makes it more eerie and haunting.

Q: The film concentrates on adventure and excitement but it also deals with political and human rights issues, and it takes a serious look at the fact that Tarzan is conflicted about the differences between living in England and in Africa.

A: There's a dichotomy that I felt was really interesting, psychologically: The fact that he's lost between these two worlds. Growing up in the jungle, surrounded by his ape family, he knows that he's a member of the family, but he knows he's different. He doesn't quite fit in. He doesn't look like his brothers. When we first meet him in the movie, he's in London, and he kind of looks like people around him, but he doesn't fit in. He's with humans around him, but his heart is still in the jungle. So where does he belong? That he's a sophisticated British lord who, deep down, is an animal, creates some very interesting friction between man and beast. It's told here on an extreme level, but I think it's something that all humans can relate to, because we all have that duality. We're civilized human beings, but deep down we have these animal instincts and urges.

— Ed Symkus covers movies for More Content Now.