The Japan Times - Alexander Skarsgard and his viral 'Wicker' transformation

But when the time came to don the intricately detailed costume, which sent the internet into a frenzy, the Swedish actor admits his immediate reaction was "panic and claustrophobia."

The suit "was quite heavy and warm and glued to my face a little. I couldn't really take it off at all during the day," Skarsgard told AFP in an interview.

"Wicker," now playing in US theaters, is based on "The Wicker Husband," a short story by British author Ursula Wills-Jones.

In the movie, Skarsgard stars opposite British actress Olivia Colman, who plays the fisherwoman with the studly new spouse in a medieval, patriarchal village, where residents are known by their professions.

For the fisherwoman, it is a hostile place where she is an outcast for being independent, with no man supporting her -- and for smelling like fish.

So she defiantly asks the basket weaver (Peter Dinklage) to create a husband for her. A month later, Skarsgard's character appears -- a tall, sexy, carefully woven dream of a spouse.

His housework -- and his bedroom skills -- are quickly the talk of the town. The men are resentful because they can never match up, and the women are jealous.

"The movie can just be enjoyed at surface level, and it's this fun spectacle," said Eleanor Wilson, who directed the film with her work and life partner, Alex Huston Fischer.

"But underneath that, there's a lot going on that does feel very modern and relatable to us," she said, adding that she thinks it would not work as a fable set in modern times.

With its medieval setting and quirky cast of characters, "you can just see it more clearly," Huston Fischer said.

- 'Passion' -

Wilson said the pair "fell in love" with the story right away.

"It just examined how envy can corrupt love, and how we all sort of look at ourselves in relation to other people," she told AFP.

For Huston Fischer, the challenge was to rise to the challenge of creating a visual feast for filmgoers.

"We wanted to see what the wicker husband could look like," he said.

That task fell to Weta Workshop, a New Zealand special effects studio that worked on the "Lord of the Rings" films and Christopher Nolan's "The Odyssey."

The details in the wicker man's face parallel Skarsgard's own features, but the actor said the prosthetic made it difficult for him to convey emotion.

"I had to exaggerate all my expressions," he said.

With the mask glued to his face, "any subtleties would be lost, so a slight frown would read as nothing. We had to play around," Skarsgard said.

He said he felt like a "clown" in rehearsals, but Colman applauded his efforts.

"He's incredibly humble," said the Oscar winner. "All credit to Alex because to get that -- the love and the nuance and the humor and all of that -- through basically a basket is incredible, and not many people could."

The pair explained that filming began with the sex scenes. Clips quickly went viral, to the point that even Swedish big box furniture retailer IKEA ran cheeky ads promoting some of its rattan products as "made from husband material."

"There is so much, obviously, passion, intensity, but there's also a lot of humor and warmth and funny, awkward moments in those scenes," Skarsgard said, calling it "a good way to start the movie."

T.Maeda--JT