In the luxury apartment of a West End hotel, the Oscar-winning actor Alicia Vikander is not quite feeling herself. ‘This makes me feel very small and a bit overwhelmed,’ she says, nodding towards the spacious sitting room furnished with embroidered sofas and hand-painted armoires. ‘This is really not who I am.’

Dressed in black leggings and an oversized navy cable-knit sweater, Vikander does look rather small. She opts to sit on a stiff dining chair, pulling it up close to the table. Her hair is pulled back into a ponytail, there is no make-up on her face and, at 29, she has the serious, youthful air of an international student.

People think of me as this art-house girl. But when I was a little girl in Sweden the films I loved were all those amazing action movies – Indiana Jones and The Mummy. The idea that I was being asked to do this movie…’ She pauses and shakes her head. ‘I am an actress from a tiny country where even just to think you can be in a movie seems like a dream, and then to be in a movie that you dreamt about as a kid just seemed completely surreal. So if I was going to do this, I was going to do it the very, very best I could. I was going to give everything. Everyone remembers Angelina Jolie [who played the character in the noughties], but I wanted to make Lara Croft my own. CONTINUE READING