Alicia Vikander: Ava | EX_MACHINA | Alex Garland, 2015

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"One thing that Alicia brought over and above her straight acting ability – and she is a phenomenal actress – is her training as a ballerina. That role involves quite a complicated physical performance where you are playing a machine, but you don’t want to telegraph that you are a machine. You don’t want it to be any stronger than a sense of otherness. That’s something that a dancer who has trained in a particular way is suited to provide. It is such subtle things in terms of posture or the way you walk across a room. Of course we know acting is not just about control of face and intonation of speech, it is physical, but there is something about her training as a dancer that informs what she does and helps to elevate it."

"She has got that dancer’s stoicism. She’s pretty tough, Alicia, and it is not an affectation. Somewhere in her she is hard as nails."

Alex Garland

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Alicia Vikander: Ava | Ex Machina | Alex Garland, 2015