STACK June 2017 Issue 152

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12 JUNE 2017
visit CINEMA FEATURE
I f audiences weren’t already familiar with
French-Algerian dancer Sofia Boutella from
her dynamic physical performances in
Star Trek Beyond and Kingsman: The Secret
Service , then there’s no excuse today.
As well as starring in the title role of The
Mummy, opposite Russell Crowe and Tom
Cruise, she lends her street-smart style to
Atomic Blonde’s Delphine, an ingenue double
agent.
Her Atomic Blonde co-star Charlize Theron
is certainly smitten with Boutella, even holding
hands at this year’s annual CinemaCon event
in Las Vegas – and after meeting with Boutella,
35, on the backlot of Universal Studios in
Hollywood last month, STACK confesses to a
bit of a girl crush too.
Boutella, of course, learned all her moves
touring the world with Madonna and Rihanna
also featuring in videos for Take That, Chris
Brown, Ne-Yo and Usher as well as for Madge.
Just five years old when she began training
in ballet, five years later she moved with her
family to Paris where she began rhythmic
gymnastics and joined the French
national team, aged 18.
Boutella is nobody’s fool and
relishes in her feminine power, her
Mummy bringing Cruise and Crowe
to their knees.
“Women are emotional beings
and I think that whenever you really
wound a woman, you attack her
pride and the reaction can be worse
than what a man would do,” she
muses. “In Ancient Egypt especially,
women were full of this pride, which is what
motivates my character. When she was young,
her father promised her that she’d become
pharaoh but she was deceived. All she knows
is honour and respect – even if that means
killing her father who is in the way.
“I did a lot of research about royalty at
the time and how someone who commands
respect doesn’t raise their voice beyond a
certain level. It took a while but the character
came to me. You can’t force it. You’ve just got
to get into the right headspace and then one
day you wake up and think, ‘Whoa, there’s
something happening’. I love feeling that
shift.“
The difference was
significant. “Once I found my
power, Tom [Cruise] told me,
‘You command the room’.”
Interestingly, Boutella
had no interest in taking
The Mummy role when it
was first offered. “I turned
it down because I had
just finished making Star Trek which involved
so much make-up,” says the actress, who
portrayed Jaylah in Star Trek Beyond.
But director Alex Kurtzman sold her on
delving into the psychology of the role first
made famous by Boris Karloff, although now
completely transformed by Boutella’s Princess
Ahmanet.
She didn’t complain when it turned out
that The Mummy took even more time in the
make-up chair than Jaylah. “It took 24 screen
tests to find the character in every single
aspect of the movie, because the tattoos
evolve from when we first meet her in
Ancient Egypt to her regeneration
and then her final form. The
longest make-up days took six
hours in the chair.”
Although she has just
one scene with Crowe,
she remains enamored of
Australia’s finest. “I was
frustrated because we
didn’t even exchange any
dialogue in our one scene
but, even so, he was around
and we still stay in touch. He’s
such a normal cool dude and I love
that about him. I remember the first
time he was on set, I whispered to
the director, ‘Can I stick around?’
because I was dying to see Russell
act. His voice transports me. I could
listen to him read the phone book.
As Princess Ahmanet, Sofia Boutella brings feminine power
to a classic monster in The Mummy. Words Gill Pringle
The Mummy is in cinemas on June 8
In Ancient Egypt,
women were full
of pride, which is
what motivates my
character