Sylvia Hoeks turned to real life horrors to prepare for The Girl In the Spider’s Web

DUTCH model turned actor Sylvia Hoeks dug deep into some dark, real-life cases to play Lisbeth Salander’s traumatised twin in The Girl In the Spider’s Web.

Sylvia Hoeks as Camilla Salander in a scene from The Girl In the Spider’s Web.

DUTCH actor Sylvia Hoeks went to some dark places to play Camilla, the estranged twin sister of Lisbeth Salander, in The Girl In the Spider’s Web.

The latest movie based on the characters created by the late Swedish noir author, Stieg Larsson, sees The Crown actor Claire Foy taking over from Noomi Rapace and Rooney Mara as the broken, vengeful hacker vigilante Salander. Early on in the story it’s revealed that Lisbeth is put on the path to become “the girl who hurts men who hurt women” by an abusive father whom she escaped — but her sister did not.

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So to try to understand the mindset of a young woman trapped in such a desperate situation, the model-turned-actress Hoeks, best known for her role as the murderous Replicant Luv in Blade Runner 2049, turned to recent real life abduction and abuse cases from her native Europe.

“I looked closely at Natasha Kampusch, who was abducted and held in a basement by Wolfgang Priklopil for eight years,” Hoeks says. “And I did some research about Josef Fritzl and his daughter — and I kind of moulded the character from understanding their pain, I guess, and feeling for them very much.”

Far from shying away from the darkness and grim reality of such a role, Hoeks embraced the challenge and the opportunity to discover more about herself by playing something so foreign to her everyday experience.

Camilla Salander (Sylvia Hoeks) and Lisbeth Salander (Sylvia Hoeks) as estranged sisters in The Girl In the Spider’s Web.

“It’s the kind of role I love, actually,” she says. “I am a fan of dark movies and dark complex characters and I love to take on a character like that. It’s an interesting thing because it opens up sides to you that you hadn’t really discovered before.

“I find those dark sides in people very interesting and I find there is a lot to discover by looking into those dark sides, and giving them space can make you a happier person.”

Hoeks says she was a big fan of Foy’s portrayal of Queen Elizabeth in The Crown but director Fede Alvarez wanted to keep the actors apart until late in the shoot, when Camilla makes her dramatic entrance to face off with her sister.

“I love her and I love working with her,” Hoeks says of the Golden Globe-winning actress, whose dark, cropped hair, multiple piercings and tattoos as Lisbeth form a stark contrast to her genteel British monarch with the cutglass accent.

“Actually, Fede really wanted us to not have too much contact because he was afraid that we would like each other too much,” she adds with a laugh. “He was afraid that with that pain and that history and having not seen each other in such a long time, that we would just giggle our way through the scene. But being on set with her was lovely.”

Lisbeth Salander first appeared in print in 2005 in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, the first volume in Larsson’s Millennium series. Although the author died in 2004, his stunningly dark debut and its sequels The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest have gone on to sell more than 80 million copies worldwide. Each of the books has been made into Swedish films, with Rapace in the role of Lisbeth. In 2011, David Fincher’s Hollywood version of Dragon Tattoo, with Mara starring opposite Daniel Craig, made more than $300 million and was nominated for five Academy Awards.

Actresses Claire Foy, right, and Sylvia Hoeks pose during the red carpet of the movie The Girl in the Spider's Web in Rome last month. Picture: AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino

The Girl In the Spider’s Web is the first Salander story not based on a book written by Larsson, but rather is adapted from the novel by David Lagercrantz, who took over from the Swedish author. Director Alvarez says that the #MeToo movement was “super present in our heads” when making his film adaptation about a female survivor and Hoeks agrees that Lisbeth is indeed a heroine, albeit a very broken one, for these times.

“I think it’s great to have her back in this time where the world has kind of caught up with Lisbeth Salander I guess,” Hoeks says. “Although she is as human as human can be, I think she is definitely a heroine because of her willpower and her belief not to give up and do everything possible to save what she believes needs to be saved.”

Hoeks also hopes that having a powerful female character such as Lisbeth, who drives the story and the action and doesn’t need to be saved, has the potential to inspire more roles in the same vein, especially on the back of box office hits such as Wonder Woman and the recent Halloween sequel.

“Hopefully it will open up ideas in the minds of producers and directors and the audience to see that there is a real want to see women like that,” she says. “There is a real opening for audiences to believe that woman are that way. Especially for young girls growing up, it would be lovely to see strong women who don’t necessarily need to be sexy or find that interesting. Or have to be the girlfriend or the mother. They can play complex characters that you want to follow and make you believe that you can be strong as well.”

THE GIRL IN THE SPIDER’S WEB OPENS ON THURSDAY.

Originally published as Sylvia Hoeks turned to real life horrors to prepare for The Girl In the Spider’s Web