After living as one of the world’s biggest models, Frida Gustavsson is now moving from the fashion world to the theater scene. Plaza offers an excerpt from the portrait of a superstar on the lookout for the next dream: to become an actress.
“Oh, my god!”, screamed Frida Gustavsson’s agent on the other side of the line. “We just received a phonecall from Disney!”
It was October 1 morning last year when Frida got the call from IMG Models in New York. Just returned from Paris fashion week, she got up drowsily out of bed and tried to grasp what her agent told her.
“They want you to cast for the lead in Star Wars!”
Frida Gustavsson had dreamed of an acting career since she was six years old playing up her own plays for her parents at home in Hässelby. But it was only recently that she had begun to think about making serious plans. She had never imagined of suddenly getting a call from the producers of Disney’s upcoming follow-up trilogy of Star Wars.
Frida got the script sent home and recorded a short video, where she was reading her lines as she then budade over to casting agents in Hollywood.
- They replied at once: “Perfect! You must come and see us”, says Frida. - So I flew to Los Angeles to read for director JJ Abrams and the casting team. The response I got was very positive, and that was when I thought, ****, maybe I can do this anyway.
I meet Frida Gustavsson in an early summer day in her bohemian furnished three-room apartment at Mosebacke Torg in Stockholm. She is dressed casually in worn blue jeans and light denim shirt. Before we sit on the teak table, she set up strawberries and fresh pressed Presses. On the other side of the room flickers morning news on mute.
- Excuse me, I always leave it on during the morning - she says, and turns off.
Although Frida Gustavsson is just 21 years old, she exudes an unmistakable world accustomed confidence. It depends, of course, that she is probably Sweden’s most urbane 21-year-old. The past six years have been Frida traveling 290 days a year. She is the youngest person ever to be honored with SAS EuroBonus Level Pandion - an exclusive customer club consisting of 1 500 people flying more than the pilots themselves. Then she as 12-year-old was discovered by a model scout in Stockholmsgruppen, she has become one of the world’s most sought after fashion models, and the last five years she has harvested some of the industry’s heaviest assignments: from editorial jobs for American and Italian Vogue to campaigns for Dior and Valentino. She attended Victoria’s Secret prestigious fashion show and last year she became beauty company Maybelline’s official spokesperson and public face. A mission that is done: she ended up on Models.com specific list of the world’s highest paid models: The Money Girls. Frida Gustavsson has, according to her, fulfilled every dream she had as a model.
- I’m very proud and happy with what I have done - she says - Everything that was once a mirage on a non-existent horizon: getting to shoot with Steven Meisel, ending up on the cover of Italian Vogue, doing a Prada Campaign, I’ve done that.
That is precisely why we have an appointment to talk about her next career step: to leave the well-paid, roving life model for this fall begin a full-time education at the Boulevard Theatre in Stockholm. It is time for Frida Gustavsson to realize his great life’s dream: to become an actress.
Frida Gustavsson was born in 1993 in Hässelby. She describes herself as a shy and precocious girl who reads a lot and started school a year earlier because her parents did not think she would be “wasting time in kindergarten”. She has two brothers, one younger and one older, and acting tendencies appeared early.
- When I was little, I used to force my brothers to dress up in ballet clothes and perform in front of mom and dad. To dance and play, to find the different characters and get adults to believe in what I said - it was the funniest thing I knew.
Frida’s theater dreams, however, fell quickly to the side when she started school. Bashfulness took the upper hand and she started practicing athletics several days a week. When she was twelve, she was in an Ikea visit and was stopped by model scout Jenny Mardell from the agency Stockholmsgruppen.
- I thought it was a joke. “Does not she see the way I look? I can not become a model”. They approached me several times, but I was not interested at first. I was supposed to be the new Carolina Klüft! The problem was that I was growing too fast and it was hurting me all the time. Suddenly, everyone around me was much better than I do. Then I gave up on athletics and became a model instead.
It was not long before she was elevated to the top of the modelling world. With her 180 centimeters and her characteristic face (the crooked nose is more prominent IRL than in the pictures), she was at the age of sixteen, and was one of the world’s most sought-after models.
- It went very quickly, almost too quickly. I went from going to ninth grade in Hässelby to living in New York, hanging out with people who worked at Vogue for forty years and being photographed by Irving Penn and Helmut Newton. Suddenly, I would be on their mental, intellectual level, and converse about art and fashion, how the past Balenciaga jacket was inspired by a certain movie, and how it affected the trends. It put very much pressure on me.
Not all fifteen year olds would think that you have to keep up with the calls.
- No, it’s true. For many models it was safe: “whatever, they’re talking about an old movie”, but for me it was important. I place extremely high demands on myself. I should do anything I want to be the best at it. Moreover, it is much more rewarding to sit and talk with [Vogue creative director] Grace Coddington than any fourteen-year old.
The big breakthrough came when fashion house Valentino’s new designers Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli would show their first couture show in Paris, autumn 2009. Frida was hired to be the model on which the seamstresses adjusts the clothes before the show, then the really big models begins.
- I was there for a week and saw all the super models walk past. No one cared about me. The last day was only the first and last model left. Suddenly turned Pier and Maria to me and said: “Now we will make your fitting!” I did not get it. What did they mean? “Yes, you’re supposed to open and close the show!” I sobbed and called directly to my dad.
Valentino led Frida to appear in the campaign images of the brand and to make her first major editorial photography for Italian Vogue. The following season, she walked 62 shows. That same year, she signed with the American modelling agency IMG Models in New York. The epithet “super model” began to be used in articles about her. But alongside the success, the idea of the future was also increasingly present.
- When I signed with IMG, we put up a three-year plan, a five-year plan and a ten-year plan. All that we have now achieved. I can not stand the thought that I must have reached my modelling career peak between sixteen and twenty years, and that I should live on the rest of life. That’s why I throw myself into something else. Something even more difficult.
When you are in Frida Gustavsson’s apartment, it becomes clear that her life leans more towards the cultural world than the fashion world. Hanging here, there’s a print by fashion photographers Inez & Vinoodh, but otherwise the apartment’s walls are dominated by the works of artists such as Christo, Marc Quinn and the Swede Makode Linde (“my guy’s best friend”).
- Art was probably the first thing I invested in when I started to earn money as seventeen year old - says Frida, who a year ago was moonlighting as an assistant to Swedish artist Carsten Höller and additionally reading an exploratory curatorial distance education of the University of Oxford.
Frida bought the three-room apartment about less than a year ago. Here she lives with her boyfriend, a photographer and crew whose parents worked with Ingmar Bergman and Bo Widerberg. The apartment’s location is interesting. Mosebacke has been for long the most prestigious address for Swedish cultural elite and the staircases are frequented by writers, actors and cultural managers.
- We have several men and ladies in the association, it is beautiful, says Frida.
The apartment is located just a few hundred meters from the Boulevard Theatre on Gotgatan, where Frida goes to her first theater training this autumn. The program duration is six months long, with a possible extension of one semester. For the first time in six years, Frida is going to stay for longer periods in her hometown.
- I’m looking forward to going into a class with other people. I have not done it since I was fourteen. My boyfriend jokes that some days I will find it amazing, while others, I will want to put me on the first plane to New York.
The temptation to become an actress has grown stronger as the moving image has become more prevalent in fashion shoots.
- When a great campaign is shot, a video about it is now often made. And Vogue photoshoots always have a behind-the-scenes film. When it started to happen, about two or three years ago, I noticed that there was a lot more fun. It became a kind of extension of the modelling territory. It is truer when it is a moving image. Much more challenging, but fun.
What are the similarities between being a model and actress?
Being a model is only a fraction of the interior that you have to have as an actress. But I do not think you can be a successful model if you do not think along the same lines as an actress. A good model not only stands there and looks great, but thinks about the story and the person she is embodying.
Can you bring something from the modelling territory into the acting profession?
People have always pointed out that I am good at adapting myself to different roles. Many models have that thing that will make they look the same. For me, the image has been important. It’s not about being good looking, but to realize my client’s idea. I also have a good body control. I have been a runner and I know how to run a flight of stairs in high heels and a weird dress that weighs 100 pounds.
After Frida read for the role in Star wars last fall (no, she did not get it, and no, she will not say which of the roles it was), she got herself an agent in Los Angeles to represent her as an actress. But the deals were often disappointments.
The only thing I got cast for was to play the nice girl in Transformers that does not say anything. It feels like it’s been a boring trend in recent years, with Victoria’s Secret models to stand and pledged babes playing next to Adam Sandler. It’s not really what I want to do.
Despite this, Frida says that the rumor about her Star Wars casting begun to circulate in Hollywood, which has generated some exciting proposals which she “stumbled at the finish line”. It has strengthened her determination to get an education.
After doing the Star Wars casting, I had not had anything to stand on. That’s why I want to do this thing in the autumn. For me it’s important that I do not become cast because I’m the one with a model personality, but because I can help with anything else. If you want to get the more interesting roles, you should have an education in the back.
Do you have any dream job?
To work with Bergman, but it will never happen. I would like to work with Wes Anderson, because I love his aesthetic, the characters, the music - everything.
Is Hollywood that attracts you?
No, and I’m not looking for becoming a celebrity. I want to work with something that I believe in, whether it is a traveling puppet show or an American film. I have worked so many years to realize the ideas of others. Now I want to do something for myself, something that comes from within.
How have your agents reacted?
More positive than I thought. My agent in New York, who also works with Gisele and Julianne Moore, said that all these “adds characters” makes me a better model.
Her current contract with Maybelline beauty company is the only modelling job she knows she will keep. In addition, she has been clear that she does not take any model jobs “unless they are really great fun and give me a lot of money.”
How does it feel to quit modeling?
It’s scary ****. My reality in the recent years has been a six-year of sitting on various aircrafts. Now staying home and challenging myself scares me more than to not ever going to travel. But I have chosen not to make it look like I have quitted, but like I’m taking a break. It is more mitigating for all involved. When the theatre classes end in January, maybe nothing happens. Or I do apply to a stage school. The only thing I know is that if I’m going to work on this, it will last a lifetime. So now I’ll release five-year plans, and I will take one step at a time. We’ll see how it goes.
