Gina Cara­no: ​‘I nev­er thought I’d even­tu­al­ly be in a Mar­vel movie’

Gina Cara­no found fame as one of the lead­ing lights of the Mixed Mar­tial Arts are­na pri­or to meet­ing with Steven Soder­bergh and then accept­ing a lead­ing role in his superb 2011 spy fea­ture, Hay­wire. She is now part of the lat­est Mar­vel movie, Dead­pool, play­ing the role of Angel Dust, who is a shady hench­woman prone to bouts of adren­a­lin-fuelled vio­lence. Here she talks about what it’s like being a woman who makes action movies in Hollywood.

LWLies: Did you have any great love for Mar­vel movies before you came aboard Deadpool?

Cara­no: I must say, I wasn’t much of a Mar­vel or DC movie watch­er. I dun­no… I saw Iron Man and I saw The Avengers. But I nev­er watched them think­ing I’d even­tu­al­ly be in one. I’ve since watched them all and have devel­oped a new­found appre­ci­a­tion of the whole Mar­vel uni­verse. I just love that there are these fic­tion­al char­ac­ters that peo­ple are so pas­sion­ate about.

You go to Comic­Con, and you actu­al­ly find peo­ple who ded­i­cate their lives towards their own, sin­gle super­hero. You can ask some­one what their favourite sport is and you can find out a lot about them. I think the same goes for super­heros. I’ve found that it’s the cool­er peo­ple that I am more drawn to. I like the peo­ple who like Dead­pool and Wolver­ine. It’s become one of those things I ask peo­ple now. If some­one says Bat­man, if some­one says Super­man, well… If the answer is Dead­pool or Wolver­ine, they’ve clear­ly thought about it. I like the idea that they’ve done some­thing in their lives to make them come to that conclusion.

Aren’t Wolver­ine and Dead­pool the most vio­lent superheroes?

Yeah, right? I still think that’s interesting.

Since you’ve moved into movie act­ing, do you watch things with the thought of one day being in them?

Absolute­ly. It’s not that being in one of these types of movies hadn’t crossed my mind, but I think I’m a lit­tle bit if a nig­gler. If you have straight hair you want to have curly hair, and vice ver­sa. I have this real­ly nice skill of mak­ing action look real­ly real. When I throw a punch, I feel like peo­ple believe it. Of course, what I want to do is a roman­tic com­e­dy. Or a dra­ma. That’s what I want. All the stuff I watch I think, ​‘Oh it would be awe­some to tell this kind of sto­ry.’ But I’m over here in action land where every actress in Hol­ly­wood seems like they want to be.

Did you read com­ic books when you were young?

For this I did as much Angel Dust research as I could online, though there wasn’t a lot. When I moved to Van­cou­ver for the shoot, Ed Skrein [who plays Ajax] took me to a local com­ic book store and I bought my first com­ic. Which was of course ​‘Dead­pool’. He’s been super pas­sion­ate about this, espe­cial­ly help­ing to induct me into this world. This wasn’t some­thing I was super pas­sion­ate about as a kid. I’d occa­sion­al­ly look at the art­work, but nev­er the sto­ries. ​‘Dead­pool’, can you imag­ine, is a very dif­fer­ent kind of sto­ry. So I grew an appre­ci­a­tion for it, and Ed became my men­tor dur­ing the whole thing. He would walk every­one through their back sto­ries, the nature of the rela­tion­ships, try to work out what our moti­va­tions were. Aside from just being a real­ly sol­id, awe­some human being.

Did you have any con­tact with the guys who wrote the orig­i­nal stories?

I didn’t. I’ve known com­ic writer Rob Liefeld for a few years as we want­ed to make a movie of his ​‘Avenge­lyne’ books. I actu­al­ly took Avenge­lyne to direc­tor Tim Miller, and he said, ​‘Yeah, yeah, angels and demons, that’s cool but I’m kind of an athe­ist’. He then took us into his lit­tle per­son­al the­atre , and said, ​‘let me show you a lit­tle thing that me and Ryan Reynolds have been work­ing on for the last five years’. And that was two years ago. And that was the Dead­pool teaser.

This is a major pas­sion project for Tim. Not only that, it’s his first direct­ing project. He’s such a nat­ur­al. He didn’t try to be some­thing that he wasn’t. If he didn’t know some­thing, he had the right peo­ple around him to advise him. But when he got the momen­tum, he was unstop­pable. And he’s just the most abra­sive, hilar­i­ous, sweet-heart­ed per­son you’ve ever met. The most abra­sive things come out of his mouth. If something’s not work­ing, he’ll just crack up and shout, ​‘That was awful!’ But not in an aggres­sive way – he’s try­ing to make it an open, fun environment.

Are you allowed to be hon­est back to him?

Absolute­ly! He wouldn’t want it any oth­er way. I just felt so relaxed around him. I took the crit­i­cism and tried to imple­ment what he wanted.

What were the dif­fer­ences between mak­ing a movie like Hay­wire and a giant pro­duc­tion like Deadpool?

They were 100 per cent dif­fer­ent. Like night and day. I real­ly did get so gen­uine­ly spoiled by Steven Soder­bergh. And also that was my first movie. It’s that first expe­ri­ence that you can nev­er real­ly repli­cate. It holds a spe­cial place in my heart. I was so vul­ner­a­ble, and the peo­ple involved knew that. And peo­ple like Chan­ning Tatum, Ewan McGre­gor and Michael Fass­ben­der gath­ered around to help me. On top of that, it was just a beau­ti­ful experience.

The way Steven shot those fight sequences, and the fact that these actors were also up for mak­ing it feel real too… So it was a real­ly beau­ti­ful entry into this busi­ness. Com­ing to Dead­pool, I’ve gained a lit­tle bit more knowl­edge regard­ing what Hol­ly­wood is real­ly all about. The main sim­i­lar­i­ties were that that the peo­ple involved in mak­ing Dead­pool were also awe­some. Just lots and lots of awe­some people.