Face tattoos, smeary makeup, and nihilistic despair. Bill Skarsgård goes for the full goth aesthetic in "The Crow." But there is one thing the actor wishes he could change about the way he looked.
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00:00Face tattoos, smeary makeup, and nihilistic despair, Bill Skarsgård goes for the full
00:05goth aesthetic in The Crow, but there is one thing the actor wishes he could change about
00:09the way he looked. In 2024, undead antihero Erik Draven rose from his grave to wreak vengeance
00:14for the first time in decades. In the new version of cult favorite The Crow, Bill Skarsgård
00:18takes over the role that was originated by Brandon Lee, who died tragically during filming
00:22on the project in 1993. And obviously, all eyes are on Skarsgård's jokerified transformation
00:27into the goth icon of the 90s. The new version of Erik starts off with more than a few face
00:32tattoos, but after he and his fiancée are killed, he re-emerges with dark, smeary makeup
00:36and pitch-black streaks down his face.
00:38I'm gonna kill them. Every single one of them.
00:42In the latest issue of Empire magazine, Skarsgård admitted that it wasn't actually the character's
00:46aesthetic that he wished he could have a redo on, but his body type. He told the outlet
00:50with a laugh,
00:51I felt very strange being in great shape for Erik. I wanted him to be really skinny.
00:55It's easy to see what Skarsgård means. The character has all the hallmarks of the type
00:58of mentally unwell fictional being that's typically shot staring at their bodies in
01:02the mirror, like Joaquin Phoenix's Joker. Yet he's more than a little ripped. Too ripped,
01:07in fact. That's thanks to the film the actor was working on just before The Crow started
01:11shooting.
01:12According to Empire, Skarsgård had just wrapped the dystopian action flick Boy Kills World
01:15when he went to work on The Crow, and had been abiding by an intensive training regimen
01:19and diet for that film. But as Skarsgård said of the character he plays in The Crow,
01:24he's not a person that worked out. Ever.
01:26In the original 1994 film, Lee's protagonist was a rock musician. In The Crow Reboot, which
01:31draws in part from James O'Barr's 1989 comic book series, Erik meets his fiancée Shelley
01:36in an institution. While it might make sense for the undead superhero version of Erik to
01:40appear buff for head-smashing reasons, it apparently doesn't fit with the character's
01:44lifestyle otherwise.
01:46Skarsgård explained,
01:47In a perfect world, he would have been a lot less fit in the first half of the movie.
01:50Skarsgård, whose commitment to his craft shines through in roles like that of Pennywise the
01:53Clown in 2017's It and its sequel, once again gave his all to his role in The Crow. He told
01:59Empire that he doesn't know any other way of doing a performance like this without getting
02:02deep into the character's psyche. Skarsgård was particularly interested in the character's
02:06descent into nihilism, telling Empire,
02:08That became very important to me. That it's not just a guy putting on makeup and thinking
02:12he's badass and saying catchy one-liners. This is someone who has lost everything, and
02:16the only thing that he has left is his hate. And hate is destructive.
02:20As with his performance as Pennywise, the actor's turn as the Crow sounded pretty exhausting.
02:24He told interviewers,
02:25You do get a little bit consumed with that state of mind. I was kind of burned out at
02:29the end of it, for physical reasons, mental reasons, all of it. It was a lot.
02:33One thing he didn't seem to have difficulty with? Tackling a story with ties to the complex
02:36legacy of the original. According to the actor, the differences are key. He explained,
02:41I think I would have been more hesitant if it felt really close to the original, but
02:44the fact that it felt so different from it, the separation of it, made it feel like I
02:48could make this my own thing, as opposed to trying but failing at something that's
02:51already been done.