A decade ago, Mary Elizabeth Winstead stole scenes in Edgar Wright’s supernatural battle of bands cult classic Scott Pilgrim vs. The World — Ramona Flowers has since become one of Winstead’s most beloved roles. “But very few people saw it when it first came out, so it wasn’t like I was on the street being recognized as Ramona 10 years ago. That definitely wasn’t happening,” she told me this week from her home in Los Angeles. “It’s kind of weird, because I’ve spent my whole career feeling like no one knows who I am.”
But for years, horror fans have been all in on the actor giving unusual depth to “Scream Queens” and “Final Girls” — in Final Destination 3, Black Christmas, Death Proof, and The Thing. As Jacob Oller wrote at Film School Rejects around the release of 2016’s 10 Cloverfield Lane: “Bringing a compassionate, empathetic personality to a sorority girl about to be slashed or the endearingly fed-up Mary Todd Lincoln in Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (again, the only good part in that film) allows her to stretch genre roles to their limits.”
Winstead got her start acting on the soap opera Passions — and in a Donny Osmond-led Broadway revival of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. From there, she had a busy, but gradual rise along the dual-track of indies and genre flicks. In 2012, she played the vampire-hunting Lincoln’s wife the same year she starred in festival-darling Smashed. The next year, she played John McClain’s daughter in A Good Day to Die Hard and Miles Teller’s sister in another indie favorite Spectacular Now. In 2016, her star-turn in 10 Cloverfield Lane coincided with an appearance in the polarizing farting-corpse Sundance film Swiss Army Man.
A much-loved appearance as The Huntress in DC’s Birds of Prey (and a growing chorus of Film Twitter fanatics) finally made it clear to Hollywood that the woman who’d acted alongside Bruce Willis, Will Smith, and Kurt Russell should helm an action movie of her own. While shooting Birds of Prey, producer Bryan Unkeless asked Winstead if she’d be interested in starring in Kate: a revenge thriller about a fatally poisoned assassin kicking ass in Tokyo. “When I read the script, the character was just so much fun,” Winstead said. “And to have the opportunity to lead an actual film in this way was too exciting for me to pass up.”
Winstead plays a bruised and battered wrecking ball reminiscent of her movie father John McClain in the movie that premiered on Netflix last Friday. She spoke to GQ about how being too tall for ballet and having dreams to be both Judy Garland and Bruce Willis finally led her to Kate.
You’ve spoken in the past about your intensive ballet training as a kid. How has that helped with these action movies, especially with the stunt work?
The choreography is a lot to memorize, so that, in and of itself, is a skill that I’m grateful that I had because of the ballet training. I’m able to pick up choreography and remember it, so we were able to do longer takes and didn’t have to cut things up quite as much. Something I always loved about ballet was just expressing what the character in the ballet is going through with movement.
You said there was a certain point when you realized you were too tall for ballet? How has that played into action movie performances? Especially in Kate, your height feels like a real asset to the character.
Well, it’s interesting, because I had similar struggles when I first got into acting. I was too tall for a lot of roles, especially because when you’re starting out and you’re a young woman, you’re being sized up in terms of how you fit with whoever the leading male is. I was taller than most of the guys that were leading the projects. So I was often told, like, ‘Oh, you did a great job with the audition. But you know, you’re too tall next to the lead actor.’
So, it’s been so great to really embrace that while doing action films and to not have to worry about anybody else except me and my performance and what I’m bringing to it physically. To not shrink at all to fit someone else is really liberating for me.
Around the time 10 Cloverfield Lane came out, you told TimeOut: “I’d much rather play the smart ‘final girl’ in a horror movie than somebody’s girlfriend.” How have you navigated an industry where women are often cast as love interests, first and foremost?
I think it’s sort of twofold. In one sense, I just didn’t quite fit in the films where I was playing the love interest. And also, I just didn’t find them nearly as interesting. So I think it was one of those things where I would audition for those films and I wouldn’t do that well, partly because my heart wasn’t in it.
I wanted to be doing more than just being the girlfriend or the plot device love interest. And when you get into these genre films, you get to do it all. There’s something really, really exciting about that.
What were you watching to get ready for the role of Kate? Who are your action hero idols?
I didn’t watch anything to get ready for this part, because I didn’t really want to take any sort of direct inspiration in a way that would feel like an impersonation. So, I just brought myself to it as much as I could in hopes that that would be the thing that would make Kate unique: that Kate is kind of the action hero version of myself rather than of anybody else.
But of course, I grew up loving Sigourney Weaver and Linda Hamilton and Geena Davis — all these amazing, strong women in the films I loved when I was a kid. They totally live inside me, whether I’m watching them to prepare or not.
You’ve worked with Bruce Willis, Kurt Russell, and Will Smith, who are all in the American Action Hero Mt. Rushmore. I’ve heard people talk about the American action star being extinct, but I think it’s because people haven’t realized that the American action star is a woman now. What’s gained when the lead in an action film is a woman?
You know, that’s an interesting idea. It does feel like that right now, like there is a heavy presence of women leading action films, which is amazing, considering that that was never the case before.
After years and years and years of wanting to be the Bruce Willis — rather than Bruce Willis’s daughter, as much as I loved that — and it feels like that’s now within reach. Ten years ago, it didn’t feel like it was. I don’t know how true that statement is going to be in the long run. But my hope is that you’re right. I’m game for it.
In Kate, it was fun to see how haggard and beat-up you were able to be throughout. It felt very Bruce Willis-esque.
Yeah, that’s one of the big things that drew me to the character. With female action heroes, there can still sometimes be this sense of, ‘Oh, she looks amazing and cool. And she’s in high heels and kicking ass.’ And Kate is just a bloody mess. The script talks about her looking disgusting. The words that it used to describe her physically were so the opposite of what I was used to reading.
To get the opportunity to be this cool action heroine and to look absolutely horrifying for a good portion of the film was exciting to me. It felt like a rare opportunity to get to be real and raw and bloody and messy, and not slick and pretty or sexy in any sort of traditional way.
You’ve carved out an impressive niche in action and horror genre films, but is there any part of you that wants to take an Oscars swing?
I mean, anytime people love what you do enough to give you some sort of accolade is amazing, but I hate the idea of calculating it that way. Like, I would never think of something as, ‘Oh, this is my chance to try to get an award.’ If I got the chance to work with a renowned filmmaker who makes films of that caliber, that would be incredibly exciting. But I mean, if not, then cool. I’m okay either way.
So, you’re not planning your attempt at Margaret Thatcher? [laughs]
Right? I’m building my prosthetics right now. You know, I’ve got to get the fake wig or fake nose or something to try and take that Oscar swing. [laughs]
I was listening to Got a Girl, your musical collaboration with Dan the Automater. I need to know everything about how that project came about!
Oh, yeah! That was sort of a random happenstance kind of thing. He had done some music for Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, so he was around set a little bit. I was a big fan of this group called Lovage that he had made an album with, so I went up to him and said, ‘I’m such a fan of this album, and I’m a big fan of yours.’ Then much, much later when the film came out, we were at the premiere and he came up to me and said that he’d seen me singing in Death Proof and that he thought I had a really great voice. He said, ‘Maybe we should try and make a song together sometime.’ I was like, ‘Oh my god, incredible, okay.’
We exchanged information and he sent me a track — just basic beats and a melody. He said, ‘If you write something to this, and you come up with a melody, and you come up with some lyrics, and if it’s not shit, maybe we’ll record a song.’ [laughs] I think those were his exact words. So we just started that way. He would send me stuff. I would send him stuff back. It just kind of built over a period of like four years. And we made an album out of it.
I’m from the Bay Area, so his project with Del the Funky Homosapien Deltron 3030 is very important for me.
Yes! There was one day we were recording and he just threw me a Deltron 3030 track and he was like, ‘This one needs to chorus. Write something.’ And then he left for a few hours. And I was like, ‘Oh my god. Okay.’ So that was very exciting.
I got to perform with them a couple times, which is something I never imagined I’d be doing.
One of your first acting gigs was with another Mt. Rushmore Figure — Donny Osmond in a Broadway production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.
[Laughs] Yes, I was in that.
And Scott Pilgrim is a music movie and you sing in Death Proof and you put out an album. Do you think there’s a musical in your future?
When I was a kid, I wanted to be Julie Andrews, and certainly, judging by Kate, that’s not really the direction that I’ve gone in. But I wanted to be in The Sound of Music and Singing in the Rain and all those classics. That was what I dreamed of. I wanted to be Natalie Wood. I loved the glamor — it just felt so exciting to me. And I was really just mesmerized by the way that they moved onscreen.
There was a moment where I was almost going to do a musical on Broadway and it didn’t work out and then I was grateful that it didn’t work out because I was terrified to do it. So, I don’t know. It’s one of those things where it feels like a dream for me, but I’m not sure that it’s a dream that I’m cut out for.
That’s why I lean more into this action stuff: it’s my own way of using my body to perform — without the terror of a live audience.