The Crow's Bill Skarsgård hails FKA Twigs as 'a true artist' in remake

Watch The Crow's Bill Skarsgård and FKA Twigs discuss working with each other:

They say never meet your heroes, but that doesn’t apply to The Crow co-stars Bill Skarsgård and FKA Twigs.

The pair star in the reboot of the cult favourite 1994 gothic superhero movie, which was marred in tragedy thanks to the on-set death of its star Brandon Lee. Skarsgård plays Eric who, after striking up a passionate and intense relationship with FKA Twigs’ Shelly, is thrust into a world of bloody revenge when she is killed in front of him by mysterious, villainous figures.

"We got along very well, just right from the start," Skarsgård tells Yahoo UK about the pair’s immediate chemistry on The Crow set. "I was a big fan of Twigs’ music and music videos, so I only had this, kind of, ethereal rock star idea of who you were, so when I met you, it was like, ‘Oh, okay. She's a true artist’, and I think very different from the persona that you portray."

He added: "You're incredibly magnetic and queen-like when you do your music, and then you meet Twigs, the real person behind it [and she's not what you expect]."

Read more: Why did The Crow remake take so long to arrive?

And the feeling was very much mutual. "We just got on. And Bill is so funny. I'm just so happy just to be laughing all the time again” says FKA Twigs. “I think the main thing I found working with Bill was he was incredibly generous to me and the people around him and very present in their lives.”

The Crow is FKA Twigs' first leading film role after a smattering of smaller parts over the years, though the instantly recognisable celestial vibe of her musical performance style is present in the new, fleshed-out character of Shelly Webster.

Skarsgård, whose bloodthirsty Eric Draven is also given a much more troubling backstory in this reboot, says there was never a moment where FKA Twigs was out of her depth: "This is Twigs’ first lead role in anything, but her being so versatile and [creative] as a true artist was like, ‘Okay, this is going to be a lot easier to build the story together’. Because instinctively, she just understood storytelling, which really is what acting is."

Still, the whole process of making The Crow was a learning curve for the singer. "I think stamina, that's the biggest difference between film and music," she says about the things she’s learned from leading her first movie.

"In the past when I've done a music video, It's been two, three days tops. But with film, you're on day five, and you're up at 3am, and maybe the schedule is changing so half a week you’re doing days and the second half you're doing night. So it's really, I find, about energy regulation.

"Because if one person is in a bad mood, even in the trailer, it just drags everything down."

The Crow premieres in cinemas on Friday, 23 August.