Alicia Amana Vikander, born October 3, 1988, is an Academy Award winning Swedish actress. She earned a Screen Actors Guild Award and a Critics Choice Movie Award for her performance in the 2015 romantic drama movie, The Danish Girl, directed by Tom Hooper, based on the novel of the same name by David Ebershoff. Take a look below for 30 more fun and interesting facts about Alicia Vikander.

1. In 2016, Vikander was listed by Forbes in its 30 Under 30 list.

2. Born and raised in Gothenburg, Vikander began acting as a child in minor stage productions at the Gothenburg opera house and trained as a ballet dancer at the Royal Swedish Ballet School in Stockholm and the School of American Ballet in New York.

3. Vikander began her professional acting career by appearing in Swedish short movies and television series.

4. She first gained recognition for her role as Josefin Bjorn-Tegebrandt in the drama series Andra Avenyn.

5. Vikander made her feature film debut in Pure, for which she won the Guldbagge Award for Best Actress.

6. In 2012, she made wider recognition for portraying Kitty in Joe Wright’s movie adaption of Anna Karenina and Queen Caroline Mathilde in the Danish movie A Royal Affair.

7. In 2014 and 2015, Vikander achieved global recognition for her roles as activist Vera Brittain in Testament of Youth, a humanoid robot in Ex Machina, and painter Gerda Wegener in The Danish Girl.

8. For her role as a humanoid robot in Ex Machina, Vikander was nominated for the Golden Globe and BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actress.

9. In 2018, she starred as Lara Croft in the adventure movie Tom Raider.

10. Vikander is the daughter of Maria Fahl Vikander, a stage actress, and Svante Vikander, a psychiatrist.

11. Her parents separated when Vikander was two months old, and she was mostly raised by her single mother. She has five half-siblings on her father’s side.

12. Vikander has said that she had the best of both world growing up, being an only child to her mother and being surrounded by a big family when she went to her father’s house every second week.

13. Vikander started her career as an actor at the age of seven, starring in a production of Kristina fran Duvemala at The Goteborg Opera, which was written by Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson from ABBA, performing in the play for three and a half years.

14. In 1997, she participated in the TV4 kids singing show Smastjarnorna. She performed the Helen Sjoholms song “Du maste finnas.”

15. Vikander trained in ballet from the age of nine with the Svenska Balettskolan in Goteborg.

16. At the age of 15, Vikander moved from Gothenburg to train at the ballet’s upper school in Stockholm and she lived on her own, working to become a principal dancer.

17. At the age of 16, Vikander almost left school to commit fully to the television series she worked on with director Tomas Alfredson, realizing her passion for acting.

18. Her dance career was sidelined by injuries in her late teens.

19. At one point, Vikander was admitted to law school but she never attended, following her dreams to become an actress instead.

20. In 2011, she was named as one of European films’ Shooting Stars by European Film Promotion.

21. The directors she dreams to work with are Lars von Trier, Terrence Malick and Quentin Tarantino.

22. Before she mastered the Danish language she had to use in A Royal Affair, she was able to practice all of her lines, since they had been recorded on her iPhone by one of her mother’s friends.

23. She has appeared in two period pieces set in Denmark, the neighbor country of her native Sweden, A Royal Affair and The Danish Girl.

24. Her favorite actresses are Marion Cotillard, Isabelle Huppert and Jennifer Lawrence.

25. She is one of six Swedish actors to be nominated for an Academy Award. The others are Greta Garbo, Ingrid Bergman, Ann-Margret, Lena Olin and Max von Sydow.

26. In an interview with the Daily Telegraph in August 2015, she confirmed that she and Michael Fassbender are a couple. They met while filming The Light Between Oceans in 2014.

27. Director Tom Hooper delayed production of The Danish Girl until after Vikander finished filming The Light Between Oceans to secure her for the role of Gerda.

28. In 2011, she made her home in London. After renting in Notting Hill, Shoreditch and Hackney, she bought an apartment in northwest London in 2013 and loves the old culture of Great Britain.

29. She stated in an interview on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon that she did most of her own stunts, and had to repeat some of them in Tom Raider.

30. She is the second Academy Award winner to portray Lara Croft in Tomb Raider. The first was Angelina Jolie in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life.