By Gill Pringle
You worked with Anna Foerster [TV’s Outlander and Criminal Minds], a female film director, this time; how was it different? “I don’t think that gender has much to do with whether you’re a good director or not, but it’s cool for us to have a woman’s take on a franchise that has a female at the centre of it. Selene is a fairly emotional character for someone who doesn’t show a lot of emotion, so it’s nice that Anna was interested in that component of the character. I don’t know if that’s because she’s a woman or just because she’s Anna…but I think that’s pretty cool.”
This has been such a long chapter of your life. If you look back to the first one, what would you say now to the Kate of thirteen years ago? “I don’t think that I would tell her that you have to do four or five of these…because I was so expecting to be fired on the first one! Because it’s not my thing, it was such a big stretch for me. I was at a period of time in my career – I’m still sort of in it – where a big prerequisite was that if something really terrifies me and makes me want to hide under the bed that’s a good idea to do it. I just never imagined myself doing anything like that. We had quite a low budget. Very often, we had squibs blowing up, and we only had one go. I kept thinking, ‘I’m going to ruin it and they’re just going to get someone who does this for a living.’ It would have alarmed me if I’d known that there were going to be so many Underworld films.”
What’s your perspective on the evolution of the film industry since you began? “Quite a lot. There have been a lot of movies, aside from the Underworld series, that I have been involved with. Underworld has been quite nice because since the first one, I have been involved from ground zero, from the time that they came up with the script. The film industry has changed quite a bit in that time, some for the good, and some not so much for the good. One of the things about Underworld that is unusual now is that it’s not based on a comic book or a book or a video game. I don’t think that it would get made now. It’s really difficult to get an original science fiction horror movie made unless it’s already got a following. That’s one of the special things about Underworld: our following is just from the movie, so there are no real parameters about where we can go with the characters or the story. The fans like that too, and they can be quite opinionated about it too.”
The role of women has changed a great deal. How do you feel about the industry now, and their take on strong female characters? “Obviously, there have always been women like Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, but for that kind of movie at the time, we only had Linda Hamilton and Sigourney Weaver, who were amazing, but there weren’t a lot of references. Being a small part of moving that needle feels really great. I’ve got a daughter who is seventeen-years-old, and it’s very normal for her to have a female-led franchise that is number one at the box office. It wasn’t necessarily that for me growing up. I’m the youngest of four brothers, so it feels good! [Giggles]”
Is there ever a desire for you to pander to mainstream critics and to do something that will be a mainstream success? “My career has not really been like that. I’ve been lucky in that I have been able to travel back and forth between things. I don’t think that these kind of movies are necessarily what get critics really hot under the collar and excited. But one doesn’t just make movies for critics. And also, as an actor, it’s important to have a lot of different parts to your palette. For example, I didn’t go to drama school, I went to Oxford. I was used to doing literary adaptations, and I really did need Underworld in terms of physical training that I never got. So it’s been very useful for me in terms of other work that I have done, where suddenly I became really good at stuff that I sucked at, and that I was pushed to the limits on. So in terms of my entire career, Underworld has been a really great part of opening up my toolbox as an actor; it’s just not necessarily going to win me anything at the Oscars.”
Which women have inspired your career? “Gosh, a lot. The first woman that I really fell in love with when I first wanted to be an actress was Jeanne Moreau; I was having a big flirt with French cinema when I was about sixteen. I’d go and watch old movies at the theatre. Who else? I always wish that I got this question six days before, because I could come up with a proper list. Instead, all of a sudden, I can only think of men…”
What about writers? “I was very into poetry, so I was into Anna Akhmantova, Anne Sexton…it was more of a poet’s thing growing up. I did French, German and Russian, so all my literary study was in those languages. Nowadays, I really like A.M. Holmes.”
Will you be working differently now that your daughter is seventeen? “I stopped doing theatre when I had a baby, so I might go back to that soon. My daughter probably wouldn’t care if I didn’t come home now! But certainly that was prohibitive. I’ve just started writing… so yes, the slightly less hands-on motherhood thing has been an interesting thing. But I just have to watch out that I don’t have another one!”
Underworld: Blood Wars is released on December 1.
