Natalie Dormer: Actresses have the power to say 'no' if they want better roles

The actress said she tries to keep her career as diverse as she possibly can
Emma Powell22 February 2016
The Weekender

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Natalie Dormer has said actresses have the power to say 'no' if they fear being typecast or want to move away from stereotypical roles.

Dormer, 34, has praised her latest film for giving her a role to “sink [her] teeth into” – something she described as rare for an actress.

Dormer – who has played scheming Queen Margaery Tyrell in Game of Thrones and the devious Anne Boleyn in The Tudors – takes the lead in psychological thriller, The Forest, as Sara whose twin sister Jess goes missing in Japan’s Aokigahara forest at the foot of Mount Fuji – a site notorious for suicide. Once inside, Sara descends into madness.

Speaking to Standard Online about her first starring role, she said: “I’d never really thought of doing a horror, but when I read the script I was intrigued by [the] original premise of a forest where you get your own unfinished business reflected back at you. We all have s**t that is unprocessed and we like to keep repressed.”

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Dormer continued: “I’ve helmed TV and stage projects so it’s a natural evolution that I was looking for a good character – or characters plural in this case. I was looking for something to sink my teeth into.

“As an actress you do not give a f**k what you look like. To look rough, to look tired, to have an emotional breakdown is kind of catnip to an actor, [but] those kind of roles are few and far between.”

Dormer – who turned her hand to writing the forthcoming revenge thriller, In Darkness, because she was “frustrated” by the lack of strong female roles – said the only way for actresses to step away from the stereotypical characters is to say ‘no’.

“Frances McDormand very famously once said the only power you have as an actor is to say ‘no’,” she said. “If you play femme fatales very well and you get nothing but femme fatales for a while the only power I have is to say no. If I get loads of costume drama roles I can say ‘no I loved it but I need to do something else now’. I try and keep what medium I work in and what genre as diverse as I physically can.”

Speaking about the recent #OscarsSoWhite debate – which has seen several celebrities voice plans to boycott this year’s ceremony – Dormer said progress is slow, but praised those who are pushing Hollywood in the right direction.

“There is now a dialogue and the fact that there is a dialogue about race, and a dialogue about gender, and a dialogue about sexuality and authenticity – the fact that we’re even having this conversation means that we’re moving forward,” she said. “Let’s cease on the positive and keep pushing Hollywood in the right direction. Yes the wheels are turning slower than they should have – but at least they’re turning.”

The Forest is set for UK cinema release on 26 February.

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