Alexander Skarsgård lies on the bed in a room at the Soho Grand Hotel, his boots kicked off to the side. “Grab a robe and join me!” he says with a laugh, when The Post showed up to interview him. “Welcome to my lair.” It sounds like a line his seductive vampire alter ego, Eric Northman, might say to Anna Paquin’s Sookie on their hit series “True Blood,” as he lures her into something sordid.
It’s no wonder the sexy 36-year-old Swede is the biggest thing to come out of “True Blood.” He’s got two movies in theaters now: “Disconnect” — the “Crash” for the digital age — and the emotionally riveting tale of a child in a torn family, “What Maisie Knew,” an updated version of the Henry James novel of the same name, which opened Friday. Later this month, he stars in “The East” alongside Ellen Page and Brit Marling, in a thriller about an anarchist group seeking revenge on corporations.
“I definitely don’t get enough sleep,” he says. “But it’s great. I’m genuinely so excited about all three films.”
Each movie seems hand-picked for an actor on the rise, one making a bid for a varied career. But don’t tell Skarsgård that.
“[It’s] not like, ‘Hey look at me I’m versatile!’” he says.
“[It’s] just creatively to stay true to myself.”
In “What Maisie Knew,” Skarsgård sheds his bad-boy image to play Lincoln, a bartender who forms a strong bond with a little girl in need, Maisie.
Onata Aprile, the 7-year-old actress who plays Maisie and likes to draw “kites and people and things with nature in it,” grins from ear to ear at the mention of Skarsgård, whom she lovingly calls Alex. “He was really fun and funny,” she says, squirming in her seat. “I like to climb on Alex.”
Skarsgård confirms: “I was kind of like a tree trunk. When we’d walk down the street, she would use my arm as a branch.”
The directors of “Maisie,” Scott McGehee and David Siegel, were unfamiliar with Skarsgård’s “True Blood” work when he expressed interest upon reading the script. Their frame of reference was his role as a moronic model in “Zoolander.” Spoiler alert: He dies in a gasoline fight.
“So we knew that he had a funny bone,” says McGehee. “But we didn’t really know what he was like as a person.”
There was also the little problem of audiences possibly wondering why there was a vampire in the middle of an indie drama.
“It was a big concern,” says Siegel. “It wasn’t that we were worried about his acting chops. We just thought, ‘How far can he step outside of that?’ ”
Step out he did. The directors were onboard with Skarsgård after meeting him. But it was his relationship with Onata that confirmed they were right in casting him. “It took us by surprise how good he was at bonding with Onata,” says McGehee. “From the first time they met, he was down on the floor at David’s apartment, coloring with her and making these little cutout people.”
“I mean she’s kind of in love with him in a way that’s really sweet,” laughs Siegel. “It’s a lovely, little 7-year-old crush.”
Though “Maisie” showed Skarsgård’s softer side, his role in “Disconnect” showed him literally softer. The lean and buff star made the character choice to try to pack on the pounds. “I tried, yeah,” he says. “I put on a little bit of weight, but I didn’t have much time because we shot it right after ‘Maisie.’ I just obviously didn’t work out, and I ate a lot of bad food.”
It’s a bold move for a man at least partially known for his abdominals.
“If I feel that a guy that I’m about to play looks a specific way, I have to stay true to that,” he says. “I can’t be like, ‘Hmm, I’m a sex symbol, so what are the fans going to say?’ It’s not like, ‘Oh, look at me! I can actually play ugly!’ F – - k that.”
A more muscle-y big-screen role may be in his future, though. He’s in talks to star in a sure-to-be blockbuster, David Yates’ “Tarzan.” “The script has so much depth, and it’s such a rich, interesting character,” says Skarsgård. “If you find that in a movie like ‘Tarzan,’ great. It’s all about finding something that you’re excited about.”
A schedule like Skarsgård’s takes planning. “True Blood” films for more than half the year and then Skarsgård precisely crams in his movie projects. During one break a year and a half ago, he filmed all three of his current projects back-to-back.
“Coming back to ‘True Blood’ after six months of that, I am very fulfilled creatively,” he says. “It’s actually nice to come back to the crew and the cast, [who] have kind of become a little surrogate family in LA, thousands of miles away from my family in Sweden.”
But isn’t he growing a bit bored of bloodsucking?
“It doesn’t feel repetitive,” he says.
“I think the writers on the show are so good, and they keep it interesting for us actors. Every season, I feel like I’m evolving and learning and growing.”
“But the day you wake up and don’t feel that,” he adds, “then it’s definitely time to move on.”

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