Stellan Skarsgård on Borg McEnroe: 'It transcended from being sport into a drama'

Sitting in London’s Soho Hotel, Stellan Skarsgård is trying to improve my pronunciation of the name of his new Scandinavian co-star Sverrir Gudnason.

“Sev-rear,” he says. “Think of his butt!” Not exactly a pleasant image – though given the camera spends a lot of time trailing behind him in Borg McEnroe, it’s rather apt. The film captures one of the greatest sporting events of all time, the 1980 Wimbledon tennis final between Sweden’s Björn Borg (Gudnason) and America’s “super-brat” John McEnroe (Shia LaBeouf).

In the film, Skarsgård plays Lennart Bergelin, Borg’s coach and mentor, who spotted him as an unruly, temper-throwing teenager and gradually cooled him into the “Ice-Borg” that he became. Scripted by Ronny Sandhal, the film unearths some intriguing details about their relationship, their eccentricities and superstitions – not least testing the string tension of Borg’s numerous rackets by laying them all out across his hotel room and gently treading upon them barefoot.

After winning four back-to-back Wimbledon Men’s Singles titles, Borg was going for a fifth – against the tempestuous McEnroe. “I remember exactly where I was and where I saw it,” says Skarsgård, who back then was a rising star on Swedish television and theatre long before Hollywood snapped him up for blockbusters like Pirates of the Caribbean and The Avengers. Tuning in because his ex-wife’s family were tennis fans, he was spellbound by a titanic match. “It transcended from being sport into a drama.”

Researching his character was no mean feat. Skarsgård remembers Bergelin – who died in 2008 – as the one in the background, cheering, but there was little written about him. The best resource came from Borg’s girlfriend Mariana Simionescu. “I read Mariana’s diary, about their time together, which was towards the end of Borg’s career and how they lived together, the three of them, for years. They lived a very bootcamp-like life, in the midst of all the money and all the press.”

With Wimbledon recreated in Prague (quite brilliantly), Skarsgård didn’t have to endure the tennis training that Gudnason and LaBeouf went through. His big problem was wearing a bald cap to simulate Bergelin’s comb-over. “It was horrible!” he laughs. “It was in hot sunshine – we shot two weeks of tennis there in Prague. The bald cap, it got more and more filled with sweat. They had to drain it now and again, and it was really disgusting! It was like sapping trees!”

Curiously, this is Skarsgård’s second film with LaBeouf, the famously volatile American actor perfectly cast here as McEnroe. They were previously both in Lars von Trier’s two-part Nymphomaniac (Skarsgård’s sixth project with the Danish director) but – like Borg McEnroe – never shared a scene together. Nevertheless, since the film opened the Toronto International Film Festival, they’ve had time to hang out. “He’s so sweet,” he says, “[but] he’s calmer as McEnroe.”

Now 66, Skarsgård has arguably navigated Hollywood much more sensibly than LaBeouf (who has frequently derided former projects, notably Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull). His early appearances were bit-parts in films like The Hunt For Red October (as a Soviet sub commander) before playing the shrink in the Oscar-winning Good Will Hunting and a key role in Spielberg’s slavery drama Amistad, both in 1997, turned him into a studio regular.

Skarsgård has since enjoyed a hugely successful international career, although he modestly plays it all down. “I don’t work that much,” he protests. “Since I left the theatre in 1989, I’ve generally been at home, changing diapers and cooking for children, for eight months a year, and only shooting four months a year. So it’s not bad. I’ve had a good life.” With six children with his former wife My Agnes and two more sons with his second spouse Megan Everett, whom he married in 2007, he’s seen a number of his offspring follow him into the entertainment business.

Earlier this week, eldest son Alexander won an Emmy for his role in the HBO show Big Little Lies while Bill is playing the scary clown Pennywise in It, the Stephen King adaptation that has become a runaway hit at the box office ($371 million and counting). Gustaf, meanwhile, is in Westworld and Valter, Skarsgård’s fourth son to go into acting, has just starred in Jonas Åkerlund’s Norwegian metal music tale Lords of Chaos. “They’re really good at what they do, and that’s nice,” he says. “And they’re nice people.”

Was he ever worried that one might become more successful than the other? He nods. “Alexander had four years of doing casting sessions in Los Angeles without landing one single job. I know they’re good, I know they should work, but it doesn’t mean they necessarily do all the time. And if they have anxiety about it, then I have anxiety about it. It’s not about their careers, it’s about their well-being. Even if It is an incredible commercial success for Bill…none of his siblings takes it really seriously!”

Certainly, the Gothenburg-born Skarsgård’s mellow attitude to his own work has rubbed off on them, but the directors just keep coming. He recently worked for the first time with Terry Gilliam on his long-gestating The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, a Cervantes-inspired project that has been revitalised after collapsing fifteen years ago. “I’ve liked him since [he was in] Monty Python’s Flying Circus,” says Skarsgård. “It’s a joy to be in films that you haven’t seen already: unique ideas, unique language and a unique way to treat a story.”

Then there’s Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again. The sequel to the mega-hit ABBA-infused 2008 sing-a-long romance Mamma Mia!, Skarsgård is reprising his role as sailor Bill, one of three possible fathers to Amanda Seyfried’s character. “They’ve started shooting and I got through the humiliation of singing one of the songs in front of [ABBA star] Benny Andersson when we recorded it,” he says. “I saw the pain in his eyes and his ears and in his face, when I was slaughtering an ABBA song.”

A bit like Björn Borg, ABBA is a Swedish institution – although Skarsgård was not a fan back in the Seventies. “When ABBA had the "Waterloo" song out, you heard it on radio ten times a day every day for months. I hated it! It wasn’t my kind of music and I was too artsy-fartsy and snobbish to succumb to ABBA.” But since Mamma Mia! he’s changed his tune – and his fans. “I didn’t have a very solid fanbase amongst 4 year-old girls before that! It’s good for the future. They’re [almost] 14 now!”

'Borg McEnroe' opens on 22 September