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The Action Sofia Boutella Wants to See
The busiest woman in genre film is asking writers and editors to treat her face-smashing characters as seriously as she does.
Her eyes remain profoundly still while the rest of her body — shaped by more than 30 years of dance training, which led her to star inNikeads and a Michael Jackson music video and go on tour with Madonna — performs a delicate breaking of bones and cartwheels around her scene partners. Boutella had no formal action training before she landed the role of the sword-footed assassin Gazelle in Matthew Vaughn’s franchise-creating Kingsman: The Secret Service,the henchman to Samuel L. Jackson’s billionaire villain who specializes in Tae Kwon Do–inspired brawls that end with her prosthetics slicing bodies into pieces. We’re talking between her film-shoot engagements ( Rebel Moon — Part Two is in post-production, and she’ll appear in The Killer’s Game opposite Bautista after that), and as she explains detailed action sequences she’s worked on, she uses her arms and the crown of her head to show me how she hits her mark and times her reactions, ensuring fear, mischief, preparation, and vengeance all come through in her movements, not just her glare.
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