Unarguably, Bill Skarsgård has become one of his generation’s most compelling actors. While many know him best for his chilling portrayal of Pennywise the Dancing Clown, Skarsgård’s dramatic range reaches far beyond horror. His choices reveal a performer drawn to complexity, emotional depth, and characters that challenge audiences in unexpected ways. Skarsgård’s career has been defined by his willingness to take risks and delve into uncharted emotional territory.
Each of these roles, whether grounded in reality or heightened by fantasy, has demonstrated his commitment to truth in performance. However, beyond his new fame as a “creature actor,” there’s a lot to his dramatic side that has flown under the radar for far too long. The Swedish actor’s journey in Hollywood might only be a decade long, but his performances are truly deserving of recognition, especially from the Academy. Here are XX of Bill Skarsgård’s most impressive dramatic performances.
1. Roman Godfrey in Hemlock Grove (2013–2015)
Roman Godfrey stands as one of the most psychologically layered characters of Bill Skarsgård’s career. The Netflix horror series Hemlock Grove gave him the opportunity to explore that complexity over three seasons. Roman was the wealthy, arrogant, and deeply troubled heir to the Godfrey family, living in a town plagued by brutal murders and supernatural secrets. On the surface, he presents himself as detached and cruel, often hiding behind sarcasm and emotional distance.
Beneath the privilege and bravado is a young man grappling with abandonment, identity, and the horrifying truth about his own nature. Skarsgård captures Roman’s inner conflict through restrained body language and quiet moments of introspection. His relationships, particularly with his mother, Olivia (Famke Janssen), and friend Peter (Landon Liboiron), become central to revealing Roman’s need for connection and acceptance. For audiences, Roman Godfrey was the role that first revealed Bill Skarsgård’s remarkable dramatic potential.
2. Henry Pearl in Battlecreek (2017)
In Battlecreek, Bill Skarsgård takes a dramatic turn away from the supernatural and physical extremes of portraying Pennywise the Dancing Clown. He plays a more grounded performance as Henry Pearl, a character both vulnerable and quietly resilient. Released in 2017 and directed by Alison Eastwood, Battlecreek is a romantic drama that centers on Henry’s journey of self-discovery and emotional awakening in a sleepy Southern town.
Henry is a young man living in near-isolation due to a rare skin condition that makes sunlight dangerous for him. This forces him to live nocturnally and under the close watch of his fiercely protective mother, Tallulah (Paula Malcomson). His world is composed of quiet routines: working night shifts, painting in solitude, and drifting through familiar streets.
However, everything changes when he meets Alison, a mysterious woman stranded in Battlecreek. Their connection begins to pull Henry out of his self-imposed darkness and towards a future he has scarcely dreamed of. While Battlecreek might not have reached blockbuster status or the critical acclaim of some of Skarsgård’s other projects, his work here stands out for its humanity and emotional sincerity.
3. Mickey in Villains (2019)
In Villains (2019), Bill Skarsgård starred as Mickey, a small-time criminal whose bad decisions spiral into something far more disturbing than he ever anticipated. The film begins with Mickey and his girlfriend Jules (Maika Monroe) as reckless lovers on the run. Skarsgård subtly grounds the character in insecurity and emotional immaturity rather than playing him as a stock outlaw. Mickey isn’t hardened or fearless; he’s impulsive, anxious, and clearly unequipped for real danger. As the story shifts into darker territory, Skarsgård’s dramatic instincts become even more apparent.
Faced with genuinely sadistic antagonists, Mickey’s confidence crumbles, revealing fear, guilt, and an almost childlike desperation to survive. Skarsgård carefully tracks this emotional unraveling, allowing the audience to see Mickey’s humanity beneath his criminal façade. While Villains blends thriller and dark comedy elements, Skarsgård never undercuts the emotional stakes, treating Mickey’s terror and moral reckoning with sincerity. The result is a performance that elevates the film, proving that even in genre-bending stories, Skarsgård can anchor a character with authentic dramatic weight.
4. Kane in Nine Days (2020)
In the fantasy drama Nine Days, Bill Skarsgård delivers one of the quietest yet most emotionally resonant performances of his career. In the movie, he played Kane, a soul waiting for the chance to be born into the human world. The film unfolds in a metaphysical space where unborn souls are interviewed and evaluated. Kane stands out immediately for his gentle curiosity and emotional openness.
Unlike many of Skarsgård’s more intense or physically demanding roles, this performance relies almost entirely on subtle expression, tone, and presence. Kane’s desire to live isn’t driven by ambition or ego, but by an earnest wish to feel pain, joy, and connection, even if it means suffering. In Nine Days, Skarsgård starred alongside Winston Duke, Zazie Beetz, Benedict Wong, and Tony Hale.
5. Willard Russell in The Devil All the Time (2020)
In The Devil All the Time, Bill Skarsgård delivers a haunting, dramatic performance as Willard Russell. His character is a World War II veteran struggling to rebuild his life in rural Ohio. Traumatized by the brutality he witnessed overseas, Willard returns home deeply scarred, clinging to faith as a way to make sense of his suffering. Skarsgård plays him as a man quietly unraveling, someone whose love for his family is genuine but warped by grief, fear, and unresolved trauma.
Skarsgård communicates Willard’s internal torment through tight body language, weary expressions, and a constant sense of emotional exhaustion. His scenes with Tom Holland’s Arvin are particularly effective, as Skarsgård captures the character’s desperate need to protect his son while simultaneously passing down his own psychological damage. Willard’s rigid belief that suffering is tied to divine purpose feels frighteningly authentic, and Skarsgård never pushes the role into melodrama.
6. Clark Olofsson in Clark (2022)
In 2022, Bill Skarsgård portrayed his first real-life characters as Sven Stolpe in Burn All My Letters and Clark Olofsson in Netflix’s Swedish miniseries Clark. Skarsgård delivers one of the most daring dramatic performances of his career by stepping into the shoes of real-life Swedish criminal Clark Olofsson. The series chronicles Olofsson’s life of crime, self-mythologizing, and manipulation, all told largely from his own unreliable perspective.
Bill Skarsgård fully commits to portraying a man who is simultaneously charismatic, reckless, selfish, and deeply broken. Rather than presenting Clark as a straightforward villain, he leans into the contradictions that made Olofsson both infamous and strangely magnetic in Swedish pop culture. By refusing to sanitize or romanticize Olofsson’s crimes, Skarsgård turns Clark into a complex character study.
7. Eric Draven/The Crow in The Crow (2024)
In taking on such a culturally significant and psychologically layered role, Bill Skarsgård demonstrated once again his willingness to tackle characters with deep emotional and dramatic stakes. Eric Draven is not just a figure of vengeance, but a tragic lover, a broken soul, and a man reshaped by trauma. Stepping into this character in The Crow was no small feat, with Eric Draven being an iconic figure in pop culture, immortalized by Brandon Lee in the 1994 classic.
At its heart, The Crow is a story of love, loss, and revenge, and Skarsgård anchors these themes with a raw, visceral performance. Eric and his soulmate Shelly (FKA Twigs) are brutally murdered early in the story, and Eric is resurrected with supernatural powers by a mystical crow to exact vengeance on those responsible. While The Crow (2024) received mixed to largely negative reviews from critics, Skarsgård’s performance remained a point of interest.
8. Count Orlok in Nosferatu (2024)
Bill Skarsgård’s portrayal of Count Orlok in Robert Eggers’ 2024 reimagining of Nosferatu stands as one of his most daring dramatic performances. While the character is inherently supernatural, Skarsgård approaches Orlok with a careful blend of menace and melancholy, making the vampire more than just a figure of horror. He conveys the character’s centuries‑long loneliness and obsession through subtle physicality.
What sets this performance apart is Skarsgård’s ability to humanize a legendary monster, revealing Orlok’s inner conflict and desire in ways that evoke empathy even amid fear. Unsurprisingly, critics praised his performance. Through this role, Skarsgård proved that even in a film dominated by supernatural elements, his dramatic range and emotional depth can anchor the story, leaving audiences both unsettled and profoundly moved.
9. Eddie Barrish in Locked (2024)
In the minimalist but intensely visceral thriller Locked, Bill Skarsgård starred as Eddie Barrish. His character is a desperate man thrust into a nightmarish situation by Anthony Hopkins’ character, which tests both his physical endurance and emotional core. Unlike many of his previous roles rooted in the supernatural or period pieces, Locked finds Skarsgård inhabiting the psyche of an ordinary person pushed to extraordinary limits. The film’s plot places Eddie at the center of a tense psychological battle after a petty criminal act goes horribly wrong.
Confined to a limited physical space for most of the film, Skarsgård uses his expressive eyes, shifting body language, and shifting vocal tones to communicate Eddie’s slipping grip on hope, fear, and grit. He portrays Eddie as a complex human being, flawed, desperate, and ultimately sympathetic even as he fights for redemption. Although the film itself received mixed reviews, with some finding the premise stretched over its runtime, many agreed that Skarsgård’s commitment to Eddie’s plight elevated the material beyond its genre conventions.
10. Tony Kiritsis in Dead Man’s Wire (2025)
Bill Skarsgård’s portrayal of Tony Kiritsis in Gus Van Sant’s Dead Man’s Wire is a departure from the mostly genre‑heavy roles that first brought him widespread attention. Inspired by the real-life 1977 Indianapolis hostage crisis, Tony Kiritsis, a financially desperate man, took his mortgage broker hostage and held him hostage with a shotgun in a terrifying standoff that gripped the nation.
The standoff unfolds on live media and becomes a media spectacle, forcing the public to confront its own fascination with crisis and chaos. As the international media narrative swirls around the standoff, Kiritsis becomes an unexpected symbol of resistance for some, and a cautionary example of rage unleashed for others.
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