Alicia Vikander's Lara Croft is a 'lost' girl turned action hero

The Oscar-winning actor plays the video game icon in the new "Tomb Raider" movie as a girl trying to find her father -- and her place in the world.

Alicia Vikander remembers being "blown away" as a kid when she found out there was a video game with a female action hero at the center of the story.

Now two decades later -- and 15 years after Angelina Jolie first brought Lara Croft to the big screen -- Vikander stars in a fresh cinematic take on the popular video games series "Tomb Raider." The new film, which shares the game's name and opens March 16, definitely presents Croft as the kick-ass adventurer fans have known and loved since her 1996 debut. But Vikander says the goal was also to create an origin story audiences in 2018 could relate to: a tale about a smart, vulnerable and "lost" girl trying to figure out who she is and her place in the world.

"Trying to adapt a video game or any other story is the fact that you want to give people what they want about the character and the world that they so well loved. But we also wanted to surprise them and give them something new," the Oscar-winning actor said in an interview at CNET's San Francisco headquarters last month.   
"She has all the common traits that she is so well known to have. But she is also not afraid of showing her vulnerability. She's human," Vikander adds. "We get to be with her and then root for her while she's going step-by-step to becoming this action hero."    

Vikander, who won an Academy Award for her role in "The Danish Girl," and who played an AI robot in the 2014 sci-fi thriller "Ex Machina," spoke with me about playing video games, helping start the #TimesUp movement to combat sexual harassment and about having a "Tomb Raider Barbie" modeled after her character in the new flick. Here's an edited transcript of our conversation.