After playing Nosferatu‘s Count Orlok, It‘s Pennywise the Clown, and the 97th Oscars’ June Squibb, there was only one place left for Bill Skarsgård to go: a parking lot.

In David Yarovesky’s new thriller Locked, the Swedish actor plays Eddie, a down-on-his-luck thief who finds himself trapped in a locked SUV after attempting to steal it. Eddie quickly discovers that he was lured into the vehicle by William (Anthony Hopkins), the car’s wealthy sociopathic owner who tortures criminals (and mocks them over the car’s phone) after a life-changing encounter with muggers.

Skarsgård spent almost the entire duration of Locked‘s 19-day shoot alone in the car, enduring a series of physical challenges as his character is electrocuted, starved, shot, and overheated — all while Hopkins’ antagonist cackles over the phone. 

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly — fittingly conducted over the phone in the back of a moving car — Skarsgård reflects on the challenges of filming a thriller without a scene partner, the joy of collaborating with Hopkins, and his unrecognizable turn as June Squibb at the 2025 Oscars.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: You shot Locked after finishing Nosferatu. What was it like moving from the intensity of that project to this one? 

BILL SKARSGÅRD: I was very happy because I had a bigger break than usual — four or five months, which I really needed in order to shake off Mr. Orlok. But I read the script for Locked around the tail end of Nosferatu production. And there’s something about it that was so different from what I have been doing, and I often instinctively want to go somewhere that’s the polar opposite of my current project, just to keep challenging myself. And it’s more fun that way.

You’ve been known to undertake fairly intense preparation strategies for Nosferatu and other projects. How did you prepare for this particular role?

I liked this street weasel quality about Eddie. I felt like I’d never really done that before. This kind of urban deadbeat dad, little street weasel. There’s all these little hints to where Eddie is in life and what he’s been through throughout the script. But it was important for me to flesh out his life up until the point that you meet him in the movie: his relationship with his daughter and his relationship with his ex and so forth.

Speaking of Nosferatu — that movie was nominated for the Makeup and Hairstyling Oscar, and in the presentation of that category, June Squibb went up on stage and said that she was you, Bill Skarsgard, under heavy makeup. Did you see that segment?

No, it was me.

Wow. It was a transformative performance.

Yeah. Yeah. Thanks, man. Thanks. That’s one of my three — the big three performances.

What were the challenges of filming a movie where you’re trapped in a car alone?

This was a very solitary experience for me in terms of performing it because it’s just me and a camera for most of the movie, stuck in this f—ing car. So I really missed my castmates because so much of what I love about acting is dancing with a scene partner. And there’s a little bit of dancing towards the end of this with Sir Anthony Hopkins which was just for sure an incredibly cool experience.

But it was awkward being alone for so long. You’re like, “Okay, where do I look? The camera’s here, and I’m not looking at a person.” All of Anthony’s dialogue is spoken through the car. And it got to the point where there’s some really intense stuff happening throughout the movie. You have to perform it. That’s not always easy. It literally can be a quite torturous journey when your character’s tortured throughout the journey. 

I remember in the scene where Anthony’s character dials up the cold in the car, and it’s supposed to get freezing, and then he dials up the heat, and it’s supposed to be really sweaty, and he’s using the thermostat as a torturing tool. But the car was never actually on, so it didn’t have a functioning AC. So when I’m pretending to freeze, I’m covered in layers of clothes, and I’m actually sweating. And then, in the scene where Eddie is sweating profusely, I’m actually freezing. That sort of summarizes the whole experience. It was some real acting gymnastics.

Was there one particular scene that was especially difficult to shoot?

Yeah, yeah, for sure. The scene where William remotely controls the car to chase Eddie’s daughter. That one was really, really very difficult and hard, and there were certain things about it that I was unsure about. Because I was doing that in a car that was on a stage — it wasn’t even moving. There’s parts of it where we were actually moving, but we couldn’t finish that on that day, and we hadn’t figured out exactly what the car was doing with the little girl. 

So all of this is literally me acting on eye lines of a f—ing tape cross somewhere. I have daughters myself, so I’m trying to pretend that the worst thing possible is happening in front of you. You’re just by yourself in an unmoving stage car acting with tape. That was the hardest, for sure.

What was it like working with Anthony Hopkins? Did you rehearse with him at all before shooting began?

It was an absolute treat to meet him and work with him. I’ve been a fan of his for a very long time — he’s such an icon and a real heavyweight when it comes to an actor’s actor. He’s one of the greats, but the function of production like this, he didn’t come in until later into the shoot.

We organized this one day where we were going to read through the scenes and he was actually calling into a rental car over the phone, and I’m reading opposite him inside the car. So kind of creating the setting of the movie, and I would move around and try to find blocking for basically all of the dialogue scenes in the car. I’m like, ‘Okay, I’m really looking forward to this.’

But then the reception was so bad — I was heading in and out, and the flow of the dialogue didn’t work. He couldn’t hear me, and I had a hard time hearing him. It was a very awkward thing. 

But then eventually, when he did show up in person, that was one of the high points. That scene that we have together at the end was a joyous moment of production. It ended up becoming very improvised. So he was improvising, I was improvising, and the scene just kind of became. To get to play and improvise with one of the greats was a special thing.

Based on what I know about how production sequence normally goes, I would assume that Anthony recorded his audio for those scenes after you had already done your part on set. What were you reacting against?

There were talks about Anthony doing an actual dial-in at some point, so he would actually feel like we would do the scenes together, but just technically and logistically, it was so challenging. What ended up happening was he recorded all of his lines, and I had an earpiece, and then they would deliver his lines in the earpiece. But there were also times when our great first assistant director, with a lot of enthusiasm, would read William’s’ lines. So it was a mix of both those.

I actually don’t think we had the earpiece in the first couple of days of shooting. And then at some point, I’m like, ‘I f—ing need this,’ because Anthony was doing something very particular with the character, and he was doing a lot of improvisation — adding things, rewriting things, and he was very, very playful with it. Once I got the earpiece, I could feel him, and it felt a lot more connected to me performing it. 

And then, in post-production, they re-edited or rewrote or re-fitted Anthony’s dialogue to fit better with what I was doing on the day. And I think he had a fun time with it. He got to sort of play off of the scenes as he was watching them. So even though it was months later, he was playing in an ADR studio in front of a microphone off of the performance I was giving on screen. I think that must have been pretty fun for him.

Locked is now playing in theaters.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Want more movie news? Sign up for Entertainment Weekly’s free newsletter to get the latest trailers, celebrity interviews, film reviews, and more.