Rapace’s alternative upbringing

Noomi Rapace had an almost feral childhood, said Sheryl Garratt in The Daily Telegraph (U.K.). Born in Sweden, the Prometheus actress was 5 years old when her mother and stepfather, a horse breeder, moved to Iceland. When the family returned to Sweden two years later, Rapace was enrolled in an alternative private school. “They didn’t put me in a normal school because I was so wild,” she says. “I grew up in nature. I was always out playing with the horses.” Rapace enjoyed the school’s informal approach to education, but learned little. “I didn’t have any books. I couldn’t read until I was quite old.” In her teens, she started skipping classes and drinking heavily. After a particularly heavy binge at a music festival, Rapace decided she was wasting her life. “I was there for four or five days and I didn’t remember anything. I realized, this is not cool. It’s boring. So I asked myself, ‘What’s my dream?’” At 15, she moved to Stockholm to study acting at a drama school. “I was just looking at people, learning how to behave,” she says. “I’d never been on a computer. My spelling was horrible. So while everyone else was partying I was completely sober and studying.”

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