Time for a girl's own adventure

From Sydney Morning Herald: Time for a girl's own adventure

Mary Elizabeth Winstead is determined to avoid typecasting by the boys who run the show in Hollywood.

IF YOU have trouble recognising Mary Elizabeth Winstead in The Thing from her other films, good. That's how the 27-year-old actor wants it. Eager to carve out a lengthy career in a male-dominated culture of interchangeable ingenues, here-today-gone-already starlets and a poor choice of roles for women, Winstead has always been conscious of keeping her CV versatile.

''What's cool is when I do get recognised on the street, it's always for something different,'' she says from Los Angeles. ''A kid will recognise me for Sky High, a teenage boy from Final Destination 3, a 25-year-old girl from Scott Pilgrim vs the World. It's really cool to be slowly building a fanbase that's a little bit more broad.''

Winstead also played the kidnapped daughter of Bruce Willis in Die Hard 4.0, the sexy actress in Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof, the lead dancer in Make It Happen (she's a trained ballerina) and a sorority scream queen in the horror film Black Xmas.

In The Thing, an FX-heavy prequel to the 1982 John Carpenter classic, Winstead takes on the role of scientist Kate Lloyd who is stuck in an Antarctic station with other scientists and a shape-shifting thing from another world. Winstead plays Lloyd as a can-do gal who relishes the chance to fight back, usually with flame-thrower in hand.

''It is a rare role for a woman in film to be strong and powerful and smart but in a way that's realistic,'' she says. ''I didn't have superpowers, I wasn't perfect-looking or in Spandex. I was just a smart woman trying to figure out a way to get out of a horrible situation and stay alive.''

She says it's rare - but why is that? Winstead was born in 1984, the year The Terminator gave us female action icon Sarah Connor. Growing up, Winstead revered Connor and Ripley from the Alien films and admits that, by now, her character in The Thing shouldn't be an anomaly.

''I know, it's really strange,'' she says. ''It's not that it never happens because we do get occasional women superheroes but still, it seems like when we are kicking ass it's because we have some superpower. What's so great about Ripley is that she's just a kick-ass woman.

''For younger women like myself growing up in the 1980s, to see something like that was really empowering so I really want to find roles like that for that same reason, so that other girls will be able to say, 'Wow, she is a totally relatable woman who's able to be strong and kick butt'.''

After her appearance in Death Proof and the associated Maxim photo spread, Winstead suddenly became aware of how her sex appeal could begin to define her work. ''There's a lot more emphasis placed on sex appeal now for women and it's frustrating, because I certainly don't want to play those parts. That's just not me. It can be hard to find parts that aren't just focused on that.''

Is this because Hollywood is still primarily run by men for men?

''I think so, it really still is a boys' club, unfortunately,'' Winstead says frankly. ''Everything is from a male perspective. When Bridesmaids came out it was like this huge revolution, the fact that here was a comedy about women and written by women. It's sad that it had to be such a big deal. Even though there are amazing female directors and executives it is still really off-balance, so it is always going to be a struggle to find really great roles.''

And the Hollywood clock ticks faster for a young woman in the profession than for a young man.

''It is frustrating,'' she says. ''Men never seem to be held back by their age while women reach a certain age and, oftentimes, they disappear into smaller roles or they're relegated to do things that are not quite what they would want to be doing. There are actresses though who are pushing the boundaries, such as Melissa Leo, so I'm hoping that as time goes on we get more diversity.''

To enhance her longevity, Winstead is using her high profile - she'll appear next year in Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter - to do more challenging fare in smaller independent films such as Smashed, in which she plays an alcoholic.

''I'm just getting to the level where a producer who's doing a little movie will say, 'Oh yeah, you've done some big films; we can put you in this film and maybe we'll be able to get finance and market it.'''

She lets out a laugh. ''It's so interesting how you do big films sometimes to get to do the little ones. It seems backwards but it's kinda the way it works.''