The Danish Girl’s Alicia Vikander is the new Lara Croft
The actress replaces Angelina Jolie in the iconic role.
Oscar winning actress Alicia Vikander has been unveiled as the new Lara Croft, heroine of the Tomb Raider franchise.
The Danish Girl actress won the title role in the heavily-anticipated movie from MGM, Warner Bros and GK Films.
She is thought to have beaten Star Wars actress Daisy Ridley, who recently said she’d love to play the role, as well as Game of Thrones’ Emilia Clarke.
There have already been two films in the series, starring Angelina Jolie: 2001’s Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and 2003 sequel Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life.
In February, Vikander won the best supporting actress Oscar for her role in Tom Hooper’s transgender drama The Danish Girl – the film’s only award.
Before the film’s release, the director explained why he chose to cast Eddie Redmayne as the lead role in the film, instead of casting a trans actor.
The Danish Girl is based on the true story Lili Elbe, a landscape painter who realised that she was transgender after posing in women’s clothes for her wife.
She became known after undergoing one of the first gender reassignment surgeries.
However, some trans activists are none too thrilled the casting of Redmayne – questioning whether transgender roles should be played by cis actors.
Hooper discussed the problem with sourcing trans actors – saying he hoped the film would help “champion” the trans community and highlight the lack of diversity within the film industry.
“Access to trans actors, women and men, to roles, both trans roles and cisgender roles, is utterly key, and I feel that within the industry at the moment there is a problem,” he told Variety.
Rebecca Root, star of the BBC sitcom Boy Meets Girl, originally auditioned for the role of Elbe but landed a smaller role in the film.
She later said that cisgender people shouldn’t play transgender roles.
