Alicia Vikander and Michael Fassbender. Picture: PA
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Alicia Vikander has opened up about struggling for a baby with her husband Michael Fassbender.
The Oscar-winning actress has been married to the Killarney man since 2017 and the notoriously private couple share a one-year-old son together.
Speaking to Harper’s Bazaar, the 33-year-old said that she suffered a miscarriage over the course of the Covid lockdown.
“I tried to get pregnant for a while,” she explained.
“So I had tough times during lockdown. I struggled for a while. For a while I didn’t think that I could get pregnant.
“And I kind of stopped and thought, ‘Am I going to talk about this?’ But I think it’s universal and so many women go through similar things. And it’s tough.
Alicia said that she “didn’t think” she even wanted children until just a few years ago and added that, since welcoming her son into the world, her life has changed “in every way. It’s life. It’s so profound.”
Despite her pregnancy struggles, the Swedish star said that the pandemic offered her the opportunity to grow closer to her Irish-German husband.
Lockdown was “a chance for my husband and me to be at home, just cooking. We had a routine. We worked and we met up with five other families on Zoom and worked out Monday to Friday together,” she said.
She said that it’s allowed the pair to be better parents to their child.
“In my little family, with my husband and my child, we travel together, always. That’s the rule. We do jobs so one of us can always be with the baby.”
Vikander, 33, gained global recognition for her roles in the 2014 films Testament Of Youth and Ex Machina, and won an Oscar in 2016 for her role in The Danish Girl after beginning her acting career working on short films and TV programmes in her native Sweden.
Alicia also opened up about situations where she didn’t feel “protected” while working on nude scenes for films and said that intimacy coaches, popularised by the Netflix smash hit Bridgerton and RTÉ/BBC co-production Normal People, “should have existed at the beginning of my career.”
“I’ve been in situations that were not fine, where I didn’t feel I was protected,” she recalled.
“Everyone was busy doing their own thing and, in the middle, you have an actor who sits there naked for a couple of hours. And someone is supposed to arrive with a robe, and they don’t. It comes afterwards – [the knowledge that] that was not right. I should have been looked after.
“The only thing that can’t be improvised is an intimate scene – you have to make choreography and stick to it. It’s the worst thing ever to do those scenes. I am very comfortable with my body and I’ve done quite a bit of nudity and sex scenes, but it’s never easy.”
Irma Vep will be coming to Sky Atlantic and streaming service Now later this year.
The March issue of Harper’s Bazaar UK featuring the full interview with Alicia Vikander is on sale from April 7.