Alicia Vikander opens up about 'painful’ miscarriage before son
Alicia Vikander has opened up about the emotional and physical pain she suffered after following a recent miscarriage.
The 33-year-old actor, who welcomed her first child - a baby boy - with her husband Michael Fassbender, 45, in 2021, discussed her experience of loss and motherhood during an interview with The Times.
Vikander said of her and Fassbender's path to becoming parents: "We have a child now, but it took us time."
The actor recently portrayed a pop star who is forced to go back on stage after a miscarriage in Sky Atlantic TV show Irma Vep. She said dealing with painful circumstances on screen has helped her manage her own grief.
The Oscar winner also compared her real-life experiences to her 2016 film The Light Between Oceans, which saw her and Fassbender play a couple who are unable to have children, but adopt a baby girl lost at sea.
Vikander said: "[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 added: "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 afterwards.
"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."
Vikander and Fassbender met on set of The Light Between Oceans and later married in 2017.
While she typically avoids publicly discussing her son, she opened up to Harper's Bazaar earlier this year about motherhood.
She said: "In my little family, with my husband and my child, we travel together, always. That's the rule. We do jobs so one of us can always be with the baby."
The couple may be fiercely private, but Vikander also previously discussed her and Fassbender's previous fertility experiences with the same publication.
"I tried to get pregnant for a while. So I had tough times during lockdown. I struggled for a while," she said.
"For a while I didn't think that I could get pregnant..."
Vikander explained that her reasons for talking openly about her fertility issues was to help support other women going through similar battles.
: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 explained.
Despite not explicitly revealing that she and Fassbender were planning on starting a family before the news of their son's arrival was public knowledge, Vikander previously told us: "I’ve often thought to myself, If I were to have a kid, would I put them in ballet school? I do really treasure a lot of my work ethic and things that I got from that education, but it either makes you or breaks you.
"And it could have as easily have gone the other way [for me]."
If you have been affected by any of the content in this article, please contact Tommys on 020 7398 3400 (Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm) and midwife@tommys.org.
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