Musings of the ghost

Actor Skarsgard talks about his portrait of Spanish painter Goya and the need for films that have a political tone.

Stellan Skarsgard may play the title character in Goya's Ghosts, but the Swedish actor is just fine with the film not being exactly about the famous Spanish painter. Rather, Francisco Goya is merely the person from whose point of view the story is told, so Skarsgard had to let his co-stars, Javier Bardem and Natalie Portman, take centre stage. And that was OK with him: ''I'm not very ambitious.''

Varied roles

Perhaps not, but he is certainly active. With more than 70 films under his belt, the 56-year-old actor has taken roles that vary wildly.

In Goya's Ghosts, written and directed by Milos Foreman, Skarsgard plays the Spanish painter, a portraitist to the Spanish Crown, who died in exile in France in 1828.

The plot revolves around Ines (Portman), the daughter of a wealthy merchant and Goya's muse, who is jailed during the Spanish Inquisition and becomes the object of obsession for an Inquisition insider, Brother Lorenzo (Bardem). When Ines's father asks the painter to help, Goya is torn between his affection for Ines and his fear of ruining his career — or, worse, getting called before the Inquisition. Fast-forward 15 years, and the artist reunites with both Ines and Lorenzo as Napoleon's army invades Spain.

Rising star

Skarsgard's own path from teen star in Sweden to busy international actor shows no evidence of his self-proclaimed lack of ambition. After playing the rascally Bombi Bitt in the Swedish miniseries Bombi Bitt and Me at 16, Skarsgard picked up a steady stream of roles in film and theatre, eventually winning a Best Actor award at the Berlin Film Festival in 1982 for the lead in The Simple-Minded Murderer. That propelled him to Hollywood.

Skarsgard was drawn to Goya's Ghosts because, after several visits to the Prado Museum in Madrid, Spain, home to many of Goya's paintings, he became a fan of the artist. Skarsgard based his portrayal of Goya on the artist's different sets of works: his playful portraits of royalty and young models in the beginning, then his more macabre paintings later in life.

The film is not just a costume drama or historical fiction, Skarsgard says. It mines the dark sides of the conflicting ideologies in a tangle of political, personal and military storylines. ''People tend to want things to be less complicated than they really are,'' says Skarsgard, praising the film's intricacy. ''I think there should be more political films like Goya's Ghosts,'' he says.

It would be hard to talk about the Inquisition without touching on the torture of accused heretics to get confessions. But Skarsgard points out the link to the issue's re-emergence in today's war on terror. In Portman's buzzed-about nude torture scenes, viewers are confronted with the barbarity of the practice.

Though he is clearly revved up talking about torture and obsessive artists, Skarsgard must return to rehearsals for Mamma Mia. He plays Bill Austin, a former beau of Meryl Streep's Donna in the screen adaptation of the hit Broadway musical featuring songs from 1970s pop group Abba.

While he hopes Goya's Ghosts will get people talking about torture and ideology, Mamma Mia, he promises, will be less intense. ''You'll laugh your head off,'' he says.