Is it fair to say that your modeling career is over?
"I think so. About a year ago I was considering moving back to New York and restarting my model career. Then I would've had to reinvent myself style wise and lose a lot of weight. I probably could've had five more lucrative years as a model. But I don't want to anymore. I've been a model for 11 years, that's the only thing I've been doing since I was 14 years old. Enough is enough."
”I'm proud of my modeling career. It's just sad that I can't remember half of it. It was such a fast paced life - so many shoots and so many shows - it all blends together. My lasting memory of these 11 years is me sitting alone at an airport with a suitcase in front of me."
On self-doubt and mental health:
"You become extremely self-conscious as a model, week after week you will be judged and rejected based on your looks. It has given me an unhealthy relationship to my body, which I still deal with. My body has always felt wrong: too long, too thin, or too thick. "
Frida Gustavsson says that throughout her career, she has struggled with low self-esteem and mental illness. In 2013, at the peak of her career, she suffered a severe burnout/depression making it hard to even get out of bed. Three years later, as she was divorcing the man she had married just a year before, it happened again.
"I've been melancholy in periods ever since I was little. But working as a model didn't help. If you're a teenager, with close to 300 travel days a year and every day having to live up to this twisted beauty ideal, who wouldn't get depressed? At times, it was cery difficult living up to people's image of me. "
Today she's doing well, she says.
"Better than ever actually. I enjoy not traveling as much and having a safe home base, and spending a lot of time in the stable in the countryside. "
About her transition to acting and upcoming feature film debut:
Five years ago, while her modeling career was in full swing, she applied to Scenskolan (National Theatre Academy) but didn't make the final cut. Instead, she started taking acting classes at Boulevardteatern during Fall 2014.
"At the end of the term we put up a play. The night before the premiere I had heart palpitations and couldn't sleep. It was the first time in years that I felt I was doing something that truly mattered, which was a sign as good any that I was ready to move on from modeling".
Around the same time, she was asked to audition for the lead in Måns Mårlind and Björn Stein's upcoming film, working titled Swoon. By then, the directors had already gone through a slew of established actors without finding the right person for the part.
"After several interviews and auditions, I landed the part in Summer 2015", Frida Gustavsson recalls.
"We were supposed to start shooting during 2016 but there were financing problems. For a long while, I only had sporadic contact with Måns and Björn and wasn't sure whether the film would ever be made"
The uncertainty was agonizing for Frida who was turning down other opportunies, as both she and the directors wanted Eld och lågor to be her big screen debut.
"I have to make smart career choices in order to be accepted as an actor. Multi-faceted roles like the one in Eld och lågor don't grow on trees. As a young woman with a modeling background, you're typically offered very limited roles, like playing someone's girlfriend, or a model, and I don't want to be pigeonholed like that. "
Eld och lågor is a reality-based Romeo and Juliet story, taking place in Djurgården, where there were two competing theme parks in the first half of the 20th century. The slightly fancier Gröna Lund, run by the Nilsson family, and the rugged amusement park Nöjesfältet, owned by the Lindgren family. Frida Gustavsson plays the upper class daughter Ninni Nilsson, who has a secret romance with the working-class son of the rival tivoli family.
(I hope it won't be as cheesy as it sounds lol)
The release date for Eld och lågor is set to mid February 2019, around Valentine's Day.
What the future holds:
For the past year, Frida Gustavsson has been fully focused on building her acting career. Together with her agent, she has had a series of meetings with directors and producers about upcoming film and television projects, both in Sweden and abroad.
She recently landed a lead role in a TV series produced for SVT (Swedish national public TV broadcaster) which is being filmed this Fall and she's currently in contention for several international productions.
There's no denying that her modeling background - resulting in among other things 193k followers on Instagram - opens doors worldwide. But Frida Gustavsson knows the importance of playing her cards wisely.
"I'd rather do a great role in a small film than star in a crappy blockbuster. I'm not looking for shortcuts - I'm prepared to do the work"
it was my highlight of the show.
