Gwendoline Christie is no stranger to playing strong female roles. In the HBO series "Game of Thrones," she plays the extremely strong and loyal Brienne of Tarth, who will stop at nothing to fulfill the vow she made to Caitlyn Stark before she died. Now in the upcoming film "Star Wars: The Force Awakens," Christie will be taking on another strong female role - the villainous Captain Phasma.
Because Captain Phasma has her armor on the whole time, Christie noted that there were some challenges and limitations to acting, since her body movements and voice had to be put on the limelight.
"I found it to be a really interesting acting challenge, not just because of what I felt this character was representing...It meant that as an actor I had to focus on other things. I had to focus on what my body was communicating and what exactly my voice is communicating," she shared during an interview with Variety.
"It becomes about the way in which you hold your hand, the way in which you walk, where your weight lies and what you want that to mean, and I wanted to give the character identity. I thought it was interesting to make something about the character identifiably female in a non-superficial way, and I hope that comes across," she added.
It seems difficult to think how Brienne might be comparable to Captain Phasma, but Christie attests that there are some things she was able to tie between the two characters.
"I don't think many female actors get the opportunity to play a part where they're not having to think about the way their face looks, but I found exactly the same thing with Brienne of Tarth, and that was very liberating," she said. "It was great as an actor to work on your skills - that it isn't about holding your head so you look beautiful. It's about what you're transmitting, and to be in service of an idea greater than yourself, whether it's the character's overriding objective or, beyond that, hopefully something more sociopolitical."
Christie also said that she is very much in love with the character of Brienne, as well as all the female characters found in "Game of Thrones" because they have been written "with depth, with reality, with huge positivity and with faults." Usually, women are portrayed in a singular way in Hollywood, but the series has given them a diverse pool of female characters who are all unconventional in their own special way.
