Alicia Vikander Shares Her Personal Experiences With Miscarriage and Infertility
In a recent interview with the Sunday Times, Oscar-winning actress Alicia Vikander shared her recent personal experiences with miscarriage and infertility. While Alicia played a woman who went through a miscarriage in 2014, it was only in the last few years that she experienced it for herself. After losing her own child, the star views her on-screen performance in a different and more thoughtful light.
She met her husband, actor Michael Fassbender, on the set of The Light Between Oceans. After filming, they struck up a relationship which they kept under wraps.
“We met on that job and have been seeing each other since,” said Fassbender.
Since they believed in setting personal and professional boundaries, they secretly tied the knot in 2018.
In The Light Between Oceans, Fassbender and Vikander played a couple who experiences pregnancy loss. After going through similar challenges, Vikander was quick to note the dark irony as she said, “We have a child now, but it took us time.”
Like their on-screen roles, the two experienced a miscarriage shortly after their wedding. “[The miscarriage] was so extreme, painful to go through, and, of course, it made me recall making that film [The Light Between Oceans]. That film has another meaning now,” she reflected.
While miscarriage is difficult enough on its own, Vikander admitted that it was even more challenging when one is under public scrutiny: “Sometimes you go through things that are tough in life and if you have an office job you can step away for a bit. But there are times that myself or colleagues have been through something and, well, I can’t understand how they went on to the red carpet afterward. To be met by people asking, ‘How are you doing?’ Given what they had just been through? Most people would not be able to step out of their house.”
At the height of the pandemic, Vikander admitted trying to conceive and going through some “tough times.” She went on to candidly reveal to Harper’s Bazaar UK, “For a while, I didn’t think that I could get pregnant.”
According to the actress, it gave her some relief to be able to stay at home during the lockdowns and not have to face the public when she and her husband were struggling. She also confessed to only realizing how much she wanted to be a mother after experiencing her own personal loss. Despite maintaining a low profile for most of her career, she revealed that she struggled with infertility.
“I kind of stopped and thought, ‘Am I going to talk about this?’ But I think it’s universal and so many women go through similar things. And it’s tough,” she said in the same interview.
To the couple’s relief and joy, they finally welcome a healthy baby boy after several attempts. He is now 17 months old and his devoted parents always make sure to alter their schedules so at least one of them is with him at all times.
In her latest TV mini-series for HBO, Irma Vep, Vikander again played a lead character who suffered a miscarriage and is shortly after told to continue working. The series aired in June with a 98% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Vikander’s performance was described on the site as “spellbinding.”
