Alexander Skarsgård

Alexander Skarsgård is a tall, lanky Swedish actor who is known to American audiences as the vampire "sheriff" Eric Northman in the cable TV series True Blood (2008, also starring Anna Paquin). A well-known TV actor in Sweden since his teens (the 1989 series Hunden somlog), Skarsgård's international breakthrough came with the 2008 HBO miniseries Generation Kill, the story of American soldiers in Iraq in 2003. He joined the cast of True Blood in 2008, and by the second season (2009), he'd become a regular cast member and a rising star. He then made the leap to Hollywood big-screen stardom as a threatening redneck in the 2011 version of Straw Dogs. Raised in Sweden in a family of actors, he's been onscreen since the age of 13. His roles include the Swedish romantic comedy Hundtricket (2002, The Dog Trick) and, as an ill-fated. mindless male model, Zoolander (2001, starring Ben Stiller).