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" It&amp;#039;s five o&amp;#039;clock in the afternoon and Alexander Skarsgard, the face for Calvin Klein&amp;#039;s latest cologne, Encounter, needs a caffeinated pick-me-up. &amp;quot;I was a barista, so I can make a mean coffee,&amp;quot; the former employee of Wayne&amp;#039;s Coffee \u2014 Sweden&amp;#039;s Starbucks \u2014 says. &amp;quot;I like a macchiato, but I drink regular coffee. I&amp;#039;m not a coffee snob like that.&amp;quot; And even if this is the actor&amp;#039;s first time heading up a major fashion campaign, you may remember the current star of True Blood as a male model in Zoolander where his character met an untimely death due to causes inflicted during a freak gasoline fight. We caught up with him on Thursday to find out what it&amp;#039;s like to lend your name and face to Calvin Klein \u2014 and, you know, to hang out with supermodel Lara Stone while you&amp;#039;re at it. ESQUIRE.COM: Do you have a favorite scent? ALEXANDER SKARSGARD: Well, I have one that&amp;#039;s pretty odd. I grew up in south Stockholm, and it used to be a working class neighborhood. It&amp;#039;s become trendy but not when I was growing up. There was this sausage factory a block away from my childhood apartment. It didn&amp;#039;t smell nice, like chorizo or something, it was pretty foul. Just nasty. But that smell reminds me so much of my childhood, because every morning when I was going to school I would smell that. So if I ever find myself near a sausage factory, I like it. It reminds me of my childhood. ESQ: Is there a scent that you hate? AS: I don&amp;#039;t like those artificial air fresheners. They just smell so fake. It&amp;#039;s too much. I know that it&amp;#039;s weird to say that you don&amp;#039;t like the smell of those but like the smell of sausage. ESQ: Was the Calvin Klein label big in Sweden when you were growing up? AS: Yeah. I mean, the Kate Moss campaign was pretty huge. I remember when that came out. I mean, she was so hot. When I was a kid, there was only two state-run channels in Sweden, and there were no commercials. Now there are hundreds of channels but we still have those state-run channels, like the BBC in England, and they&amp;#039;re still commercial free. You weren&amp;#039;t exposed to advertisements. It&amp;#039;s not like when you&amp;#039;re in Los Angeles and you see all these billboards, Sweden wasn&amp;#039;t like that. There was nothing. But when you took the subway, that was one of the few places you actually saw advertisements and C.K. was the big one. I remember all the kids were running around wearing Calvin Klein underwear. ESQ: What was it like filming the Encounter campaign with Lara Stone? AS: [Calvin Klein has] never worked with a male actor for a fragrance before so I was honored and flattered that they asked me. I dug Lara a lot \u2014 she&amp;#039;s really laid-back, casual, and easy-going. So when this came up and I knew [who was working] on it, and the idea behind the short film \u2014 the fact that it was going to be a short film instead of a commercial \u2014 and that it was going to be dark and cinematic and very film noir, I felt like that would be something fun to do. ESQ: How is shooting an advertising campaign different than shooting a film? AS: There was no dialogue, so you get to play around and create a lot of it in your head. It gave me great freedom to create a character and play around with it. The energy is interesting in a room like that because it&amp;#039;s very intense during the shoot; they&amp;#039;ll play music to help you get into a certain mood, and then it&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;cut&amp;quot; and you go to lunch and everyone&amp;#039;s just chatting. ESQ: What&amp;#039;s up with your next film project What Maisie Knew? AS: It&amp;#039;s based on a Henry James novel and it basically follows a custody battle where you follow this little girl, Maisie, and her parents, played by Julianne Moore and Steve Coogan, as they divorce. Julianne&amp;#039;s character remarries my character but she&amp;#039;s not really there for her daughter. She&amp;#039;s a fading rock star and she&amp;#039;s on tour a lot, so I end up taking care of her daughter a lot, and we form this relationship. It was a really special project because of this really amazing girl who plays Maisie, Onata Aprile. She&amp;#039;s just phenomenal. Check out Skarsgard and Stone in the Encounter campaign, below      "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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