Alicia Vikander hesitated over filming at remote location

Alicia Vikander was initially hesitant to stay at the remote peninsula where she filmed The Light Between Oceans.

The Swedish actress plays the wife of a lighthouse keeper, as portrayed by Michael Fassbender, in the new romance drama which is set on a remote island in western Australia.

Director Derek Cianfrance chose to recreate the setting on a peninsula in a remote, windswept stretch of coast in New Zealand, and he asked his cast and crew to live there for the majority of the production.

But Alicia admits that she was very uncertain about living and shooting in the location at first, but soon changed her mind when she got to know the region.

"Derek really wanted us to try and be out on the set," she told reporters at a London press conference. "Maybe even more because of the emotional aspect of this film, I felt I had to go back to my hotel and feel like I could have a proper dinner and relax and then get back the next day... but then you got out there..."

The actors and crew spent Monday to Friday on the peninsula and went back into town on the weekends.

The Blue Valentine director added that one of the reasons he asked his cast and crew to stay out on the peninsula was because he believed the isolation would help inform the actors' performances.

"I like going to camp when I’m making a movie," he explained. "I thought the isolation would play into it, be an X factor to us in making the movie and I think it was in some ways. We had nowhere to go; we didn’t have technology to escape to. We didn’t have many distractions out there, we just had each other."

The Light Between Oceans hits U.K. cinemas on Tuesday (01Nov16).