Lögberg-Heimskringla - 09.09.2005, Side 8

8 • Lögberg-Heimskringla • Friday 9 September 2005
PLAYING THE
PHOTO COURTESY OF STURLA GUNI'JARSSON
Though J.R.R. Tolkien later became fa-
mous for writing some trilogy about hobbits
and a ring, he made a bold claim in 1936 with
his radical take on the ninth-century poem
Beowulf. What if, he wrote, the monsters in it
aren’t embarassing remnants of a pagan cul-
ture, but are actually important to the story?
Cue the main monster, Grendel, portrayed
in a new movie by lcelandic actor Ingvar E.
Sigurðsson...
Iceland’s National Theatre
School from 1986 to 1990. At
that point, he began working in
both film and theatre. If he did
more of the latter, he says, it’s
because “The film industry is
so small compared to the the-
atre here in Iceland.”
He’s starred in several
high-profile movies, such as the
acclaimed Englar alheimsins
(Angels of the Universe), for
which he won an Actor of the
Áslákur. Áslákur recently fol-
lowed in his father’s footsteps;
in Kaldaljós, he played the
younger version of Sigurðs-
son’s character Grímur.
Sigurðsson is fluent in both
Icelandic and English and has
performed in both. (His entry
in the Icelandic Theatre Asso-
ciation includes “Scandinavian
languages,” but Sigurðsson
is more modest. “I once per-
formed in Danish in a festival
was very interesting studying
Grendel,” he says, “because
be is not really a human being.
Grendel is much bigger then the
average man, about 2.35 metres
tall, very hairy — another kind
of a ‘man,’ and is usually called
‘the monster.’”
Director Sturla Gunnars-
son’s approach with the film
was to forego computer-gener-
ated special effects and “unre-
alistic” stunts á la The Matrix.
David Jón Fuller
Ingvar E. Sigurðsson is a fa-
miliar face to theatre- and
moviegoers in Iceland.
Now he finds himself in a
big-budget intemational pro-
duction, playing an archetypal
figure out of an Anglo-Saxon’s
deepest nightmare. Sturla Gun-
narsson’s new movie Beowulf
and Grendel, a coproduction
between Iceland, Canada and
the U.K., has its world premiere
this month at the Toronto Inter-
national Film Festival.
Bom in Reykjavík in 1963,
Sigurðsson studied acting at
Year Edda (Iceland’s equivalent
of the Oscars) in 2000 and Kal-
daljós (Cold Light) for which
be won another Edda in 2004.
He has also acted in Hollywood
movies such as the Harrison
Ford vehicle K-19: The Widow-
maker.
Sigurðsson is father to
two children, Snæfríður and
in Sweden; I was an understudy
for another guy, and that was
quite a challenge because my
Danish is very bad.”)
Not really a human being
' The challenges for Sig-
urðsson in his latest role were
physical as well as mental. “It
Sigurðsson, as a result, was
heavily made up and costumed.
“I think the big challenge was
to give the prosthetics I was
wearing a kind of life, as if they
were a part of myself.”
In terms of character, in the
original poem Grendel is hardly
described at all — his main ac-
tions are murdering and eating
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