Melissa George gets physical as martial-arts sleuth in ‘Hunted’
Australian actress masters street-fighting style for combat in new action series
By Don Kaplan / TV EDITOR
Thursday, October 18, 2012, 6:00 AM
Melissa George stars as spy Sam Hunter in Cinemax’s ‘Hunted,’ starting Friday.
George is also a fashion entrepreneur, devising and marketing the Hemming My Way gadget for adjusting pants length.
Say hello to TV’s hottest new action star — a pint-sized, bone-crushing bombshell — who is a millionaire inventor on the side.
Melissa George, the lusciously pouty-lipped actress from HBO’s critically acclaimed series “In Treatment,” now plays Sam Hunter — martial arts mistress turned master spy on Cinemax’s “Hunted,” debuting Friday.
“I literally get to snap their bones,” George told the Daily News. “And it’s so funny for me, because I’m sweet and so not that, but when I play Sam ... the fighting with the guys is real.”
For the part, George underwent intensive training to learn Keysi, a style of self-defense developed for street fighting.
In her fight scenes, when it came time to square off against far larger, more experienced stunt men, George pummeled them.
“There were black eyes, split lips, blood. I threw one guy down a flight of stairs,” she said.
The 5-foot-6 star, 35, said she even warned colleagues that she might hurt them — but they laughed it off.
“One of the guys is a trained mercenary in real life,” she said. “And I gave him a black eye because I did this really cool move that took me two months to learn ... I was so proud of it.”
She tried to apologize, “But he’s like, ‘Nah, give it to me more.’ ”
George is also the inventor of a best-selling device called Hemming My Way, an adhesive snap that women can use to instantly make their pants short while wearing flats and long when wearing heels.
The item sells in stores like Target and Duane Reade.
“I was walking down Madison Ave. one day wearing high heels and my feet were tired,” she said. “So I put on my flats to run for the subway and my hem was so long it was dragging on the ground.”
Oprah Winfrey caught wind of the invention and featured it on her daytime show, which led to a blowout sale on QVC. Soon retailers all over the world followed.
“It’s so funny. I go into Bed, Bath and Beyond to buy bedsheets and I see my product by the register, and I have this little smile to myself,” she said.
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