Sofia Boutella Goes Nuclear In Latest Blockbuster 'Atomic Blonde'

Sofia Boutella ain't nothin' to fuck with. That was evident from the moment she started wreaking havoc and racking up casualties as Gazelle, the lethally gymnastic henchwoman to Samuel L Jackson's bad guy in Kingsman: The Secret Service back in 2014. And in the roles she's taken on since that breakthrough performance, after a career as a dancer that saw her working with the likes of Madonna and Rihanna, Boutella has made a vivid impression as an intergalactic badass with a penchant for the "beats and shouting" of classic rap in Star Trek Beyond and a resurrected Egyptian princess with supernatural powers in The Mummy.

Boutella is just as charismatic in her supporting role in the Charlize Theron action-thriller Atomic Blonde but adds a few new shades to her dramatic palette as Delphine, a relatively inexperienced rookie spy who finds herself a tad out of her depth as she gets entangled in some dangerous espionage involving secret agents and smugglers on both sides of a crumbling Berlin Wall in 1989. The plot has twists and turns, the violence hits hard and fast, the soundtrack is drenched in '80s synth-heavy bangers and Boutella and Theron have a pretty racy love scene. You're probably already in line for a ticket, aren't you?

The Algeria-born actor was in Australia a while back for the Sydney premiere of The Mummy alongside co-stars Tom Cruise, Russell Crowe and Annabelle Wallis, so I watched that movie and Atomic Blonde pretty much back-to-back. "That's a lot of Sofia," Boutella says with a smile when I meet her for an interview the following day. "Did it make you sick?"

Of course not. One can not have too much Sofia, even when she's playing villains out to conquer the world with the help of dark forces, as she does in The Mummy.

"I love the nemesis in film," she admits. "Darth Vader, Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter - they're characters I was always fascinated by because no one, not even a creature, is born evil. Something makes them evil. What's interesting is seeing what makes them or made them do what they do. You may not always agree with their methods or what they choose to do but if you understand them I think that's interesting."

"Darth Vader, Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter - they're characters I was always fascinated by."

Conveying the inner workings of a character is just as vital when the character is a sympathetic one like Delphine, whose naivete sets her apart from the cynical, ruthless Atomic Blonde colleagues played by Theron and James McAvoy.

"It was important that I make you understand her mission," she says. "Delphine is a spy but she also wants to have some fun in Berlin. She doesn't know the rules. She says to James' character 'I'm better at this game than you think', and I think she was trying to boost her own confidence by saying that because she was terrified. And with Charlize, she knew she to engage in some kind of romance to get what she needed and, like a kid, she fell in love a little."

While there's nothing naive in the way Boutella carries herself both onscreen and off, she says "I'm very green still in this profession" of acting. 

"But I love being curious and I embrace not knowing because there's everything to learn," she adds. "It tells me that I love it and I care about it. Every single film has taught me a different aspect of the profession. Working on The Mummy, I saw that Tom knows his craft so well and is so passionate about movies, and he communicates that so well. Just seeing someone love it so much is almost enough but then he would teach me so much about everything from working on a character to the lenses and the framing of shots."

But her days as a dancer proved beneficial as Boutella made the shift in career. "I definitely applied the discipline I learned as a dancer to acting," she says. "When I have to do my fights onscreen, I approach it as choreography. But I also observe a lot about the way people sit and stand and walk - that tells as much of a story about a character, and I think that comes from dance. My observation of body language is something I want to apply to a character every single time. In The Mummy I was more stiff and authoritative, and Delphine's body language is a little more giddy."

Speaking of The Mummy, Boutella's character is part of the 'Dark Universe' of intertwined monster movies presented by Hollywood studio Universal. But the actor plays it coy when asked if she'll appear in any future instalments. "I don't know. I'm not sure. We shall see," she says with a seemingly practiced ease. "It's such an honour for me to be part of this. I loved the Universal horror movies when I was a kid, so being able to walk in Boris Karloff's footsteps 80 years after his Mummy movie is so fascinating to me."

Atomic Blonde is on general release from 3 Aug.