Alicia Vikander Has Mixed Feelings About Her Controversial Oscar-Winning Role

Empathy is critical to the creation of art. Donald E. Westlake was not a thief, nor was he an unrepentant killer, but he wrote about the kinds of people who work in these disreputable fields with deliciously savage aplomb. Patrick O'Brien completed 20 novels about the high seas adventures of Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin during the Napoleonic Wars, but he apparently knew little about the practical aspects of sailing. And there is no documented evidence that Mary Shelley ever brought a dead body back to life.

It gets tricky, however, when you attempt to imagine the experience of being persecuted for your appearance or beliefs. To paraphrase Atticus Finch in "To Kill a Mockingbird," you never know a person until you stand in their shoes and walk around for a while, but empathy only gets you so far in understanding what it's like to be discriminated against simply for being you. That's a story that's best told from the perspective of the person facing such viciously ignorant prejudice.

This is especially true for actors. Yes, performers are walking empathy machines, but it's best to cast people who share a character's ethnic/cultural background. And when it comes to portraying people of a particular race or a member of the LGBTQ+ community, there's no excuse for casting a person who lacks the general lived experience of a character — not only because it's obviously the right thing to do, but also because there are loads of talented actors of any given persuasion waiting to knock that role out of the park.

This was abundantly clear when Eddie Redmayne took on the role of a transgender woman in Tom Hooper's "The Danish Girl," and it goes without saying that the film is now considered a fatally compromised work devoid of cultural value. 10 years after its release, its actors regret participating in the project — even Alicia Vikander, who won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance in the film.

In a recent interview with British Vogue, Vikander said, "I'm the first one to say it already feels extremely dated, which I think is a good thing." She hopes that the film — a fictionalized drama about the lives of real-life painters Gerda Wegener (Vikander) and Lili Elbe (Redmayne), the latter of whom was one of the first people known to have undergone gender-affirming surgery — "was a bit of an eye-opener and opened the way for art to cover those themes." But, overall, she feels the movie is not relevant.

She's not alone in holding this opinion. In a 2021 interview with The Times of London, Redmayne had this to say about "The Danish Girl" and his performance in the film:

"I made that film with the best intentions, but I think it was a mistake. The bigger discussion about the frustrations around casting is because many people don't have a chair at the table. There must be a leveling, otherwise, we are going to carry on having these debates."

Vikander still believes Redmayne turned in a "wonderful performance," but they both seem eager to put the film well behind them. As for Hooper, he followed "The Danish Girl" up with an abominable movie adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's stage musical "Cats" and served roughly six years in director jail before announcing his next project ("Photograph 51") this year. Sadly, there's no going back in time and undoing his Oscar wins (Best Picture and Best Director) for "The King's Speech." Those trophies should be in the hands of Joel and Ethan Coen for their adaptation of Charles Portis' novel "True Grit," which is aging splendidly.