Lena Headey stars as Mary Sandin in
Universal’s The Purge.
Considering it’s not quite the path she had envisaged, British
actress Lena Headey is quite the
action hero, and following on from roles in the likes of 300 and Dredd, she has
another chance to show us what she’s made of, in
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| Photo courtesy of UIP |
The Purge features Lena as Mary Sandin, who alongside her husband
James (Ethan Hawke) and two kids,
find themselves in severe danger in their own home, on a night where any crime
can be committed without consequence. Headey tells us what it’s like being an
action hero, her own aspirations as a filmmaker and she responds to Hawke’s
kind compliments about her talent.
Can you tell us a little bit abut your character Mary?
Mary is stuck, I guess it’s one of those things in life when you
want more money and you want more of this or that, but when you get it you realize
it’s a bit of a trap, so we kind of meet them when Ethan’s character is
successful and they’ve all just sort of died a bit in the comfort and started taking things for granted, and it
takes this night to go wrong for them to all realize what they’ve been living I
guess… The concept for this movie is really brave, it touches on a really
uncomfortable subject and it puts it in cinematic form and I like that it’s all
a bit suburban and a bit surreal in the beginning and then it turns on its
head, and this family have to wake up, their conscience is kicked back into
being and it hadn’t been there for a while. That’s what attracted me to it,
plus James DeMonaco is a really smart guy and he made the film he wanted to
make.
Ethan Hawke said that he has “never worked with anyone
better” than yourself. Were you aware that you’d had such an impact?
No, not at all, that is so funny and very lovely. I’m quite
shocked! Ethan is highly contagious because he is really passionate about
what’s going on. He is just very present and very unaware of himself when he’s
acting which is lovely, because you can be together in your work and there is
no barrier. I enjoy his company a lot, he is just really good fun and very
clever and yeah we got on very well.
Given the hypothetical scenario The Purge poses, I was
wondering what crime you would commit if you knew you could get away with it?
I would like to go and steal loads of shoes. That’s what I’d do.
Ethan said he’d be an environmental terrorist…
Yeah his is slightly less selfish.
You’re a real action hero at the moment, I was just
wondering if that was something you always dreamt of being when you were
younger, or if that’s just how things have turned out for you?
It’s not how I dreamt things at all [laughs] I’m still learning,
it’s a constant life schooling for me, but I started on little indies and
British dramas and all that stuff and I miss that. I love what I do and it’s an
adventure, it’s not fucking rocket science let’s be honest, but you’ve got to
enjoy the journey of it all. But no I didn’t think I would end up with machine
guns and knives fighting terminators and things like that, but like I say, it’s
all part of my journey, and I get to do something like The Purge which was a
tiny budget, and we shot for 19 days so it had that lovely energy that those
movies do, because they require it to keep it going.
At the heart of The Purge is the story of a family
uniting, and as a mother of a young child, is that something that also
attracted you to the role?
Yeah, when you have a kid you give birth to many other things
besides them and you explore that, so when there is a mother, especially a
mother whose children are in danger, then yes, I think there is some
sub-conscious attraction there for me, it’s definitely part of it.
“THE PURGE” is released and distributed by United International Pictures through Solar Entertainment Corp.
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