Actress Kate Bosworth grabs a sword and gets grungy in new martial arts film
Woman 'Warrior'
* By Angela Dawson
Entertainment News Wire
* Ventura County Star
* Posted December 3, 2010 at 12:01 a.m
Relativity Media
Jang Dong Gun and Kate Bosworth star in “The Warrior’s Way,” for which she learned sword fighting, as did their co-star Danny Huston.
Kate Bosworth arrives for an interview looking model-perfect in a ruche violet mini-dress and bright red high heels. It’s a sharp contrast to her dusty, weather-beaten appearance in the Western/martial-arts hybrid, “The Warrior’s Way.”
“I love fashion, but I also like to kick off my shoes and go barefoot,” explained the blond beauty, warning she may do just that sometime during the interview.
Bosworth, 27, fought for her scruffy look in the arty action drama from Korean writer-director Sngmoo Lee. She thought the look would work for her character, Lynne, one of the few remaining residents of a once-thriving California gold rush town.
In the film, which opens today but wasn’t screened in advance for critics, Lynne is hell-bent on avenging her parents’ murders, committed by a ruthless colonel (played by Danny Huston). One day, she meets a drifter who claims to be looking for a safe place to raise his child. The drifter, Yang (Korean heartthrob Jang Dong Gun), is a former professional assassin who is now a target himself. To stay alive, he must keep a low profile in this small Western town. Inevitably, events arise that require him to take up the sword again.
Bosworth, last seen in 2008’s Vegas heist drama “21,” said the script intrigued her. “To get something this original, thoughtful, profound, beautiful and poetic — I didn’t see how I could say no,” she said.
Just as she learned to surf for “Blue Crush,” Bosworth learned to use a sword for “The Warrior’s Way.”
“They really kept us on our toes,” she said. “We had to trust each other quite a bit, especially Danny and I.”
“I had a stunt girl I was practicing the sword fights with, and Kate had a stunt man she worked with,” recalled Huston, son of acclaimed filmmaker John Huston. “But practically the first time we worked on the scenes together, Kate and I, was on the set.”
Huston, who like Bosworth learned sword fighting for the film, said he would look over his shoulder just before swinging to make sure the actress was aware of what he was doing so she could react.
Bosworth said the fight choreography was like learning a dance routine. “It felt so much more like it would have helped to have a dance or ballet background, because it was so specific with the footwork and balance,” she said.
Yet she and her co-stars muddled through, rehearsing and rehearsing until they got the fight sequences just right.
As for her character’s grungy appearance, that was Bosworth’s idea. “I was constantly asking for more dirt and dust,” she recalls. “I feel as the girl I get the short end of the stick for that. They’re like, ‘You need to be pretty.’ And I was like, ‘Ugh, I want to be covered in dirt and look grimy and real.’”
Bosworth can be quite persistent in articulating her viewpoint on set, and eventually she convinced Lee to do it her way. “I was very into making sure the fingernails and teeth were very dirty,” she said with a grin. “I was constantly telling them to put more yellow on my teeth.”
Her outspokenness contrasted with the quiet reserve of her handsome co-star, who makes his Hollywood debut with “The Warrior’s Way.”
“Dong Gun is so lovely,” Bosworth said. “There was just an ease between us from the beginning. Their relationship was well-formed on the page.”
Bosworth next stars in a remake of Sam Peckinpah’s classic “Straw Dogs,” playing the Susan George role. Instead of rural England, writer-director Rod Lurie has set the drama in the rural South, where a woman and her screenwriter husband find themselves increasingly harassed by the locals.
“You know, I’d never seen the original,” she said. “I read the script and was like, ‘Gosh, this is going to be quite a journey.’”
The thriller is slated for release next year.
“A certain amount of fear is a good thing,” she said with a smile.
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Originally Posted by Psycho Mantis
