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Alicia Vikander is, without question, an impressive actress, with turns in movies including Ex Machina and Tomb Raider and a best supporting actress Oscar for her work in 2016’s The Danish Girl. But she says she hasn’t always felt confident, particularly when she was playing a mom before she was a mom in real life.
“I gave birth four times on screen before I did it myself. Your job is to pretend as an actor, but every time I had to give birth, I said to every woman on set, ‘I’m sorry,'” the Firebrand star explained to Elle U.K., in an interview published Wednesday. “I felt like such an imposter.”
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Vikander and Michael Fassbender, her husband since 2017, welcomed their first child, a son, in 2021. The actress acknowledged in the magazine feature that she had given birth once more, although she didn’t specify when.
“All women have such different experiences, and going through it a second time was definitely harder for me,” Vikander said. “But I think training made it easier. Going through those nine months is like a marathon, so it does help if you’re strong going into it. It’s so physically demanding, and I have so much admiration for any woman who has done it.”
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Though Vikander keeps her family life mostly private, she told PEOPLE in September 2021 that becoming a parent had given her “a whole new understanding of life in general.”
She added, “That’s pretty beautiful, and obviously will give a lot to any of my work in the future.”
In July 2022, Vikander revealed to The Sunday Times that, before the birth of her first child, she experienced an “extreme” and “painful” miscarriage.
