Bill Skarsgård is best known for his horror roles: as two very different vampires in Hemlock Grove and Nosferatu, as a confused house guest in Barbarian, and, of course, as Pennywise the Dancing Clown in It and its sequel. He’ll don the makeup and red wig again when he reprises the role in the new TV series It: Welcome to Derry — but that isn’t where his talents end. He’s also played superheroes in Deadpool 2 and The Crow remake, done battle with Keanu Reeves as the Marquis Vincent Bisset de Gramont in John Wick: Chapter 4, and gotten butt-kicking revenge in Boy Kills World while playing a martial arts pro who’s lost the ability to hear and speak (only to be voiced by H. Jon Benjamin).
In the titles below on Netflix, he adds two roles to the list that couldn’t be more different: a war veteran struggling to be a good father and a famously charming Swedish criminal.
The Devil All The Time
Tom Holland leads this Southern Gothic psychological thriller from director Antonio Campos about people from two small towns whose stories interweave over the course of the mid 20th century. Skarsgård plays former U.S. Marine Willard Russell, who returns to his hometown in West Virginia after World War II. Haunted by his time overseas, he passes his trauma to his son, Arvin (Holland), who carries the burden through showdowns with a preacher, a police officer, and a pair of serial killers. Robert Pattinson, Sebastian Stan, Riley Keough, Jason Clarke, and Drew Starkey co-star.
Clark
Skarsgård is front and center in this six-episode Swedish series about the real-life career criminal Clark Olofsson. Known for his good looks and charisma, Olofsson was beloved by the Swedish public in the 1970s despite being convicted of robbery, drug trafficking, jailbreaks, and attempted murder. In fact, he was so well liked that he inspired the term “Stockholm syndrome” (the psychological phenomenon in which an abductee develops a bond with their captor) when he endeared himself to his hostages in the 1973 Norrmalmstorg bank robbery. Clark examines Olofsson’s life, crimes, and the public’s adoration of him.
