Last year's release of Warrior proved it's possible to do a Mixed Martial Arts movie that looks authentic and brutal and still appeals to both sexes. Warrior is easily the best MMA movie released by Hollywood, and it shows just how dangerous the world is inside the ring. Now one of the sport's main female stars, Gina Carano, makes the leap to feature films with a starring role in the action movie, Haywire. And while it's not nearly as dangerous to her health as going one-on-one in the ring with a talented MMA opponent, taking on the lead role in a major Hollywood production presented its own special challenges.
Carano's in fantastic shape, however she admits her Haywire training schedule was really intense. "They had me getting up at five o'clock, and then I did three hours of stunts, and then three hours of Mossad secret service training with guns and boot camp, pretty much getting yelled at, and getting stalked and stalking other people," explained Carano at the LA press conference for the Relativity Media release. "And then after that I did strength and conditioning, and there wasn't any acting training until probably like the week before. I had the script with me and I had so much anxiety about it. I don't even know what to do with this damn thing. And then, finally, the week before, they were like, 'Let's try reading some lines with this acting coach.'"
And Carano, who did her own stunts, had to change things up to fight on film rather than fight for real in the ring, but she says her male co-stars were determined to do as much of their own stunt work as possible. "These guys wanted to do everything, from the smallest things off camera. Which I don't know if its normal or not, off camera to on camera. I showed up with the stunt crew and we coordinated the fights together. 87 Eleven is the stunt crew's name. And then these guys you know have busy schedules, and they would come in whenever they could and learn. [Ewan McGregor and I] learned our fight scene in two days."
"It was a hard fight scene. It was a long fight scene, and then you put it on sand, and the water, and added all those crazy elements to it. But they wanted to do everything, which I think Steven Soderbergh did a good job surrounding me with some of the best people he could in a film."
As for her amazing fight scene with Michael Fassbender, Carano puts it simply: "Fassbender's crazy. He loves that sh-t. He had no problem slamming me into anything. Actually, Steven Soderbergh told him once, 'We need to get this shot better when you slam her head into the wall. I was like, 'Damn, that thing's not soft.' Soderbergh is behind the camera and he's being really mischievous. He wants something bad to happen."
Carano's co-star Channing Tatum says Soderbergh was always trying to piss her off.
"I don't know, better acting that way? I'm supposed to slam a vase. I was supposed to throw the vase right past him just for that take, because we want to get that slam, my head slamming into the wall. So, were going for it and he slammed my head so hard into the wall I kind of lost it for a second. I kind of slammed the vase right into Fassbender's face, but he said he know it was coming because he saw a flash in my eyes," explained Carano. "And right after that happened I thought, 'I'm so fired. I'm going to lose this job,' because this is the first fight scene we did. Fassbender, he loved training for the fight scenes. He did 300 with the 87 Eleven group too."
So, what did it feel like to beat up some of the sexiest men in Hollywood? " I loved it," confessed Carano. "I loved every moment. It was really a beautiful experience, and these guys made it ten times more of a beautiful experience than I could have imagined. Everyone on set was like, 'It doesn't usually go like this.' It's a once in a lifetime thing."
Carano, who says she brought her own flavor and personality to the fights in Haywire, isn't even sure why she ever got into MMA fighting. "I don't know. I think I was always the son my dad never had. I have two beautiful sisters, both very thin and beautiful back in high school. So, I was always like the brute and kind of the middle child. I don't know if you have middle children, but they get blamed a lot of stuff on, but they're actually in control," said Carano. "I was a little bit of a recluse. I got in a lot of street fights, not a lot, but a decent amount. Finally, one day I was dating someone called Kevin Ross, and he realized while we were drinking our 40s of Olde English that this probably wasn't the best lifestyle. He decided to quit the next day and become sober for a year. And he walked into Master Toddy Muay Thai in Las Vegas and always wanted me to come in and watch him. And I saw a huge transformation in a human being I was close to, and so I finally went in and I became completely addicted to something that made me want to get up and live every day a healthy life. I just threw myself into it like I do when I find something like that, whether it be a person or a passion. I'm a bit of an extremist, I think. If you go hit something, hopefully not a person, but go hit something as a female, even as a male, but as a female go exert yourself on something, and realize how good it feels to let that all out."
After working on Haywire, Carano says she's not adverse to doing more acting and even starring in a sequel. "I think a lot of people have been waiting to see how this does and my performance," said Carano. "You know, it's not the easiest world to break into. But we have ideas, and we have scripts, and people who do want to work, but as we all know in this room it's not the easiest thing to get a film made."
"As far as Haywire 2, that's all up to Soderbergh, and I think everyone is just waiting for this film to come out. Regardless, I am really excited to get onto the other side of it and just land somewhere."
Carano added, "I honestly have to say this is one the most [wonderful] experiences I've ever had. I got to travel to places I've never been. I got opened up to a world I haven't seen, and realized how big this world can be and how small it can be. I was surrounded by the most beautiful people. I have seen these people on television, but being around them and knowing I haven't done this before...it was very comfortable to be vulnerable, because I've never been so vulnerable in my life to be honest. I woke up every day and I felt like I was on some strange drug of adrenaline. I almost didn't want to see the movie, because I felt every part of it. It was just my first time."
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Haywire hits theaters on January 20, 2012.
