The Journal Meets... Cowboys and Aliens star Olivia Wilde
One of the big hits of the summer teamed up James Bond with Indiana Jones, as Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford shared the screen in Cowboys and Aliens, which made way onto DVD on Boxing Day. Amid these two megastars is Olivia Wilde, a rising talent in her own right who has already made an impression thanks to roles in Tron Legacy and In Time.
She plays a woman in the Old West who is not all she seems, and for the 27-year-old the role was a dream come true. “It’s something that I never thought I would have the chance to be a part of because I thought that maybe the genre had died for the most part,” Olivia explained. “I certainly didn’t think there would be a female role in a western that was this interesting and this tough, that I would have the chance to do.”
In the film, which centres on a wild west town under siege by aliens, her character is lassoed by an alien craft - a stunt she partially did herself. “I felt safe because Daniel was riding next to me,” she laughed. “I galloped through two 80ft cranes and then at one point, a bungee cord attached to my waist through a harness yanked me back 40ft into the air. The danger was that I would get stuck in the stirrups, so the trick was to not get my feet stuck and get ripped in half. But it was a lot of fun.”
As one of Hollywood’s hottest prospects the offers are flooding in, but self-confessed science fiction geek Wilde would love to go back to the genre she explored with Tron and, to an extent, this film.
“I would love to play more powerful women in science fiction,” she said. “I think what Sigourney (Weaver) did for women in science fiction is just incredible and I think she sort of set the standard. I love the genre and I’d love to do more in it.” Back to the movie, and although she does not consider herself a gun person, there was one aspect of learning to shoot a pistol that will stay with Wilde forever. “Daniel taught me how to shoot my gun, which was cool because now I can always say that James Bond taught me how to shoot,” she revealed.
Cowboys and Aliens is out on DVD now.
