Hayley Atwell’s character in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One may be daring and capable, but don’t call her a ‘strong female character’.
“There’s such a buzz word that’s going round now that seems popular with female characters in genre films like this, which is ‘strong’ or ‘badass’,” Atwell tells 9Honey Celebrity.
“But that is, in and of itself, just as reductive as saying that she is a damsel in distress or the object of desire, as maybe was more fashionable back in the day.”
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There’s no denying that her character, Grace, has many of the traits we’ve come to expect from ‘strong female characters’, but she’s also vulnerable in a way few get to be.
That was a conscious choice from Atwell, who wanted Grace to be as grounded and multidimensional as women in the real world.
“She’s self-assured, [but] she has moments of real self-doubt. She’s panicking because she’s totally out of her depth,” Atwell says.
“She’s an agent of chaos, but she’s not calculating all these different elements to her, which for me felt like she was just existing in real time, making up as she goes along, kind of as I was,” she continues.
“That’s something that feels much more relatable. She’s not cool and slick… she’s a real human being going, ‘what am I doing?'”
WATCH: Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One
Atwell is constantly hunting for that kind of nuance in the character she plays and got to take it to the next level with Grace, a role that was custom made for her.
“[Director] Chris McQuarrie had come to see me in a play 10 years ago and said, ‘I want to work with you’,” she reveals.
“And then to get the call years later about this film, both he and Tom [Cruise] said, ‘we don’t have a character that we’re looking for someone to fit into, we want to find the actor we want to work with and then we’ll create the character with them as we go along.'”
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Having that freedom meant Atwell could really play around with the character, ad-libbing a lot of Grace’s dialogue and reactions to make her feel even more grounded and realistic.
Co-star Tom Cruise also became Atwell’s on-set mentor for her Mission: Impossible debut, which she’s hugely grateful for.
“Tom is a mentor to everyone he works with because he’s so gracious and naturally wants to impart what he’s learned about filmmaking” she says.
“He demystifies a lot of the departments that I suppose actors sometimes feel like, ‘I don’t know what that [does].'”
Not that Atwell isn’t a seasoned actor in her own right.
Audiences will likely recognise her as Peggy Carter from a number of Marvel films, including Captain America: The First Avenger, Ant-Man and two Avengers movies.
On the surface, Grace seems like a similar character to Carter – both are capable women surrounded by spies – so how did Atwell make them feel distinct from one another?
“I made Grace different from Peggy Carter because I’m a good actor. And I have range,” she says with a laugh.
“I loved playing Peggy, but I’ve also played so much classical theatre, independent cinema, you know, limited series period dramas. I have such variety.”
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It’s hard for actors to know which of their characters will become fan favourites and end up living beyond the screen, as Peggy Carter has, but Atwell has high hopes for Grace.
The actress has also held onto a few of Grace’s talents since filming wrapped, specifically ‘putpocketing’, which involves slipping items into someone’s pocket undetected.
“I can plant something on someone, whether it be a key or coins, or slip someone a note without them knowing and then they find it later,” she reveals with a grin.
“But the thing I’ve discovered is I’m a really bad liar. People read it all over my face when I’m trying to trick them. I’m just terrible at it, or I’ll out myself immediately.
“So if I putpocket something on someone, I’d immediately just kind of panic, laugh nervously, and then they’d go, ‘what? Why are you being weird?’ … I leave it for the screen.”
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is exclusively in Cinemas on July 8.
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