Kate Mara Interview, Shooter

MoviesOnline recently sat down to talk with actress Kate Mara at the Los Angeles press day to promote her new film, "Shooter.” The film directed by Antoine Fuqua is an edgy, non-stop action thriller about a former Marine scout sniper and honorable marksman, Bob Lee Swagger (Mark Wahlberg), who is convinced by retired Colonel Isaac Johnson (Danny Glover) to come out of retirement because an assassination attempt on the President of the United States is imminent and only Swagger’s lethal skills and savvy expertise in long-range ballistics can halt the threat.

Swagger reluctantly agrees one last time to serve his country – but what he doesn’t know is that the entire mission is a set-up by a dark government cabal with its own agenda. By the time he realizes the event has been rigged, it’s too late. Suddenly, Swagger finds himself in the headlines as the lone gunman who tried to shoot the President. Hunted at every turn, with nowhere to hide and no one to help him except Sarah Fenn (Kate Mara), his former partner’s feisty widow, and a novice FBI agent (Michael Pena) risking his career, Swagger finds himself in a desperate battle which will put everything he knows to the test.

Bringing a feminine element to "Shooter” is Kate Mara, a young actress whose career has rocketed from television to the big screen, as the confused young widow who gives safe harbor, and ultimately tenderness, to Bob Lee Swagger. Mara was immediately drawn to the screenplay. "I couldn’t put it down,” she recalls, "it was just too suspenseful.”

She was also strongly drawn to the character of Sarah Fenn, a lonely, widowed schoolteacher who takes a risk on trusting a stranger who has put her in a very dangerous position. "I like that she’s a really strong Southern woman and she’s very different from anyone I’ve played before,” says the actress. "It’s hard for her when Swagger just shows up in her life, because he brings back all these demons and reminds her of the husband she lost. She’s sort of thrown into a tough dilemma – but she can’t help but care about Swagger and feel for him.”

"Sarah is basically the only person on earth who can help Bob,” notes Wahlberg. "I feel like the chemistry we have together helps to make the movie that much more accessible, even to women, inside this hard core story about survival. It’s not really a lust thing between them. They have this deeper understanding and they need each other in any number of different ways. Their relationship is extremely innocent and caring, in contrast to everything else that’s happening to him. This is just a character with an incredible arc.”

Mara was also compelled by the opportunity to work with Antoine Fuqua. "He thinks of wonderful things you never would,” she says of the director. "He always knows what he wants you to do with the character, but he has this wonderful way of making you feel like you’ve come up with it yourself.”

The filmmakers were especially excited about the chemistry that seemed to flow electrically between Mara and Wahlberg. Says producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura: "Swagger and Sarah have suffered tragedy around the same man so their common bond, their common wound, is a man who stands figuratively between the two of them. What’s fascinating about watching this relationship blossom is how they deal with the fact that there’s this man in the middle of them that they both cared deeply about, and it’s a hesitation for both characters to cross that barrier. There’s a lot of emotional texture to their relationship and it’s really a tribute to Mark and Kate because they took it to its fullest extent on an emotional level.”

Kate Mara was most recently seen in "We Are Marshall,” in which she stars with Matthew McConaughey, Matthew Fox, and Ian McShane. Mara also appeared as Heath Ledger’s daughter in Ang Lee’s Academy Award-winning drama "Brokeback Mountain,” and co-starred in a five-episode arc on the Fox Television Emmy Award winning series "24.” She will next be seen opposite Ryan Pinkston, Carmen Electra, and Teri Polo in "Full of It.”

Mara began acting at the age of 14. She first appeared in Sydney Pollack’s romantic drama "Random Hearts.” She co-starred in Gary Winick’s coming-of-age film "Tadpole,” for which the director and the film earned Sundance Film Festival honors in 2002, and co-starred in the independent feature "The Californians.” An accomplished singer, Mara made her professional debut at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in "Landscape of the Body,” with Lili Taylor.

Kate Mara is a fabulous person and we really appreciated her time. Here’s what she had to tell us about her new film, what it was like working with Mark Wahlberg, and what’s next in her busy career:

MoviesOnline:WHAT ABOUT THAT SCENE WHERE YOU HAD TO PERFORM THE OPERATION?

KATE MARA: I don't think it said in the script that he was lying there with just a

little towel over him (laughs). No, no, for some reason that kind of went over my head. It really did. I swear. I don't know, but yeah, that was the quickest scene we shot, just a quick shot.

MoviesOnline:SO THEY NEVER HAD YOU DOING IT?

KATE MARA: No. Actually the only other thing we had was just me walking in, but you never see anything.

MoviesOnline:NO PICKING OUT THE BULLET?

KATE MARA: No. That would have been fun though if I'd got to do that. I mean I would never be able to be a nurse or anything in real life, so I think that might be kind of cool to pretend to do.

MoviesOnline:THIS WAS A VERY PHYSICAL MOVIE. WAS ANYONE EVER INJURED? WHAT WAS IT LIKE SHOOTING ON THE GLACIER?

KATE MARA: I think Mark fell once when we were having a race. The boys act all tough like they're not cold or anything, and then by the end of the day, they're all freezing which is really funny. They kept making fun of me because I complained that I was going to fall over because I was so cold. And they were like ‘well get her fuzzy boots.’ But they weren't standing there in a skimpy little tank top and leather jacket. Yeah, that was a hard week, but it was actually really fun. I mean, you don't get the opportunity to shoot a movie on a glacier very often with a cast like that. And it was cool because we were all there. For me, all my scenes were with Mark except for those scenes at the end, so it was fun to get to be with all the other actors. It was nice to have other interaction, you know.

MoviesOnline:WHERE DID THE CAST STAY WHILE YOU WERE SHOOTING ON THE GLACIER?

KATE MARA: For that week we stayed in Whistler. It was so amazing.

MoviesOnline:YOU WERE HELICOPTERED UP?

KATE MARA: Yeah. It was incredible because it was in the summer and it was really, really hot. That was the hottest week, and then we'd get ready and be sweating down in our trailers and then take the helicopter up five minutes and it’s snowing. It was amazing.

MoviesOnline:DID YOU HAVE ANY PRECONCEPTIONS ABOUT MARK GOING IN TO THIS FILM, AND HOW WAS HE TO WORK WITH?

MoviesOnline:ELIAS KOTEAS IS GREAT AT BEING CREEPY AND REPULSIVE. HOW WAS HE OFF SCREEN?

KATE MARA: He's not creepy off screen. He's a really nice guy. He felt so bad. He had to torture me and pull my hair. I mean he would get clumps of my hair caught on his jacket on the glacier and he was so sweet. During that scene when he's got me kind of tied to the shotgun, I had that tiny little outfit on and during the faraway shots, my shirt kept like rising up and I would be shivering, and he could feel that I was shivering, and he was acting and making these scary faces, and like secretly, trying to help me. It was the sweetest thing. Like screaming at me, ‘I'm going to kill you,’ and pulling my shirt down [at the same time]. That's another great thing about being the only girl on set. Everybody's so nice and trying to make sure you're okay.

MoviesOnline:ANTOINE FUQUA SAYS WOMEN ARE RESPONDING REALLY WELL TO THE FILM. ARE YOU INTO ACTION MOVIES?

KATE MARA: Yeah, I actually get really, really, really into the action when I go to the movies. I'll cheer and stuff like that. When I watched "Shooter,” obviously I knew everything that was going to happen. I don't think I'd seen clips or anything like that, so it was really new for me watching it, and I got really into it. I kind of cheered when he killed a few people. And yeah, at the end . . . I kind of loved the ending, the new ending. There were numerous ones.

MoviesOnline:HOW MANY ENDINGS DID YOU PERSONALLY HAVE TO SHOOT?

KATE MARA: For me, because I'm not in that ending, that whole thing, but when Mark and I are in the car at the end, we shot a few different versions of the lines and things. But I really liked the way they chose to have it end now. It left me kind of wanting to see what's going to happen next or what possibly could happen next.

MoviesOnline:DID YOU DO ANY RESEARCH FOR YOUR CHARACTER?

MoviesOnline:HOW WERE THE ENDINGS DIFFERENT?

KATE MARA: I think in the first one they didn't die.

MoviesOnline:WAS IT BECAUSE THEY DIDN'T THINK IT WAS POLITICALLY CORRECT?

KATE MARA: I actually don't know why. Maybe because audiences didn't feel satisfied. I don't know. But I actually never saw that version, so I don't know which one feels better.

MoviesOnline:WAS THERE ANY ROMANCE AT ALL?

MoviesOnline:YOU’VE BEEN BUSY THIS PAST YEAR, HAVEN’T YOU?

MoviesOnline:WAS IT BEN OR SIR BEN?

KATE MARA: I never had the guts to ask him. I just called him Sir Ben. I just felt out of respect I should call him that. I didn't want to take a chance.

MoviesOnline:WHAT’S YOUR CHARACTER LIKE IN THIS?

KATE MARA: In the film I play this sort of… She's sort of Goth, I guess. She looks Goth. She's kind of mysterious. She doesn't say much which actually was really hard being in. We were there for a while and when you read a script like that, she surprises you. There's a few big surprises in the film about my character which I thought were really cool. She's dark and scary and doesn't talk much, and you keep wondering the whole time what's her deal? But then, when I was actually there, it was so much harder than I thought because just being in a scene and not having to say anything is so much harder than having to say a million things. It's like, okay, the next scene, I say one word again, and it became very difficult, but it was fun. I'd never played a role like her before. She was sort of this lost soul.

MoviesOnline:WHAT’S COMING UP NEXT?

KATE MARA: I don't know what I'm doing next. While I was there, I thought ‘I'm going to take a break.’ I did three movies in a row and now, of course, I'm home and I'm like ‘Oh, I could work next week.’

MoviesOnline:WHERE DO YOU FEEL YOU ARE IN YOUR CAREER RIGHT NOW? ARE YOU GETTING A LOT OF PHONE CALLS AND AUDITIONING?

KATE MARA: There's both of that. There's always two sides to it. I think with most movies that people do, it's like you do get those calls, but I really want to be careful about what path I choose. I really want to make the right choices. Sometimes you get offered a role, but it's not the right time for you to do that. But also as an actor, if I really like a role and they want somebody else with a bigger name or whatever, I would so much rather fight for that role and not get it, than take the other part that I was offered. It's a good movie, but I would so much rather fight for a role and try and prove them wrong. I really like the feeling of that when you accomplish it.

MoviesOnline:DO YOU THINK YOU’LL STILL PLAY SOME TEENAGE ROLES?

KATE MARA: I don't know. There's actually some really cool roles out there. Some really cool films. To play an 18 or 17-year-old or whatever, I don't know, I think I feel that I might be past that. Sometimes I really look like I am (laughs).

MoviesOnline:BUT YOU CAN GET AWAY WITH IT QUITE CONVINCINGLY?

KATE MARA: Absolutely. In "Brokeback Mountain,” I played 14 and I was not 14. Yeah, it's so much fun. I played 14 and 19 within one week. So that was really fun. I liked to do that.

MoviesOnline:WHAT’S THE OLDEST YOU'VE PLAYED?

KATE MARA: In this film. We never say my age. You'd have to ask Antoine how old I am.

MoviesOnline:WILL YOU DO ANY TELEVISION?

KATE MARA: I've done a lot of TV, but right now I'm a huge "24” fan. I was on the show for a little while, and then I sort of mysteriously disappeared, I think probably because I was shooting "We Are Marshall,” but that's something I would actually love to do again just because I'm a huge fan of the show. But right now I'm more interested in doing film.

MoviesOnline:WHAT ABOUT STAGE? YOU WORKED AT WILLIAMSTOWN.

KATE MARA: Yeah, I love stage. I love it. I would love to do that so much. That's how I started. That's basically how I learned how to act was in theatre. I think the first play I did, I was nine or something like that, just community stuff, and that was really my acting school. Being from New York, I just grew up going to see Broadway shows, and it actually made me want to be an actor. So yeah, that would make me feel really amazing if I ever got back to Broadway.

MoviesOnline:YOU MIGHT GET THE CHANCE TO SING.

KATE MARA: Yeah. Exactly. I would love to do a movie musical. It's so cool that they're coming back because I'm such a musical nerd. Yeah, that would be a dream come true, definitely.