Lena Headey Tagged Articles at Cinematical

The lovely Lena Headey is a favorite with just about everyone here at Cinematical -- click on her tag and you'll see many love letters devoted to her films both past and upcoming. Now she's adding a new credit to her resume, as Headey will be taking the director's chair for her film Kill Drug.

Formerly titled Retribution, it's a project Headey has been attached to for some time ... and when you want to get a movie done, you tackle it yourself. Starring Headey, the formidable Charlotte Rampling, and Jason Flemyng, it centers on an underground group of Longon vigilantes. Headey will star as Sally, a woman recruited into by its founder ... who just happens to be her mother, Sue, who murdered her abusive husband back in the 1970s. However, Sally discovers that all is not as it seems, and that absolute power corrupts absolutely ... and probably that working with your mother is a really bad idea.

"My ambition to direct has been fuelled over the last fifteen years, by working alongside great directors. It has also been my film education," Headey told Empire. "Kill Drug is smart, articulate, compelling, sexy, fun, dark, deeply poignant and not afraid to laugh at itself. Above all it is a gripping and compelling journey, a study of humanity's darkest flaws and purest innocence."

Headey has been slowly making her mark as one kickass chick in films and television -- and it's pretty darn cool that she's going to join the rare, elusive breed of female directors. Hopefully Kill Drug will be the first of many on her resume.

I really, really dig Lena Headey. She's been a breath of fresh air in cinema. She's smart, charming, and tough. She's sexy, but not overly sexualized, and she's got this reality to her that makes her roles pop. But she really, really has to add more diversity to her roles. Or, rather, she has to stop heavily favoring the dark/violent fare. Is this type casting? Personal preference?

I don't know, but there is yet another dark film on the way for Headey. Variety reports that she's just wrapped Anchor Bay's new slasher film Laid to Rest. The film focuses on a young girl who wakes up in a casket with a bad head injury and no memory of who she is. But she hasn't been buried alive. Instead, she's been abducted by a serial killer and has to outsmart him to survive.

I just hope one of her other projects, Six Bullets from Now, is light enough in the action/heist department to give her some mainstream regular cred, and get her out of this trend. But there's still Tell-Tale and Black Death on the way as well, plus more Sarah Connor Chronicles. Don't get me wrong, she's great in the dark fare, but it'd just be nice to see more frequent diversity. Let Luce shine!

ComingSoon.net reports that Lena Headey, of 300 and Fox's The Sarah Connor Chronicles, has just signed on to play opposite Josh Lucas in Tell-Tale. The movie is inspired by the famous Edgar Allen Poe story, but doesn't seem to have much in common with it other than the titular heart. Lucas plays a single father who is the recipient of a heart transplant, only to discover that his donor met a grisly fate.

If Lucas is the single father, I imagine Headey is either the transplant surgeon or a police officer who helps him -- and naturally, the love interest. The movie is being produced by Ridley and Tony Scott, and will be directed by Michael Cuesta.

I'm happy to see Headey land a nice big movie part again. She's a fine actress and one I have an admitted girl crush on after 300. I was really surprised her career didn't skyrocket after playing Queen Gorgo -- her memorable "You will not enjoy this!" received enormous cheers in theatres around the world. As Connor is still up for renewal, I hope Tell-Tale will keep her in the Hollywood consciousness.

To some, she's the florist who stole away Piper Perabo, while to others, she's Queen Gorgo, or one tough Sarah Connor. For the latter group, Lena Headey has got another dark piece of cinema on the way, one that deals with death and necromancy. The Hollywood Reporter has posted that Headey, Sean Bean, and Rupert Friend will start in Geoff Sax's (White Noise) supernatural chiller, Black Death. The film will focus on brothers in "an apocalyptic medieval world" who try to find a necromancer during the first outbreak of the bubonic plague in England.

Continuing with her power roles, THR says that Headey will play the dark village ruler, Bean will take on the role of a mercenary priest in the village, and Friend will be a young monk investigating rumors of people being brought back to life. "Against the backdrop of the peaceful village lies a pact with the forces of darkness, orchestrated by the village ruler." I have this feeling, somehow, that there won't be any jovial "I'm not dead!" sort of scenes.

Sax will direct from Dario Poloni's script and says that it is a "highly original screenplay" that has "edgy characters, thought-provoking material, and kinetic action scenes." Now, this is where the confusion comes in. There is already a Black Death film listed for next year on IMDb, which has the following plot summary: "Amanda, a middle-aged woman with the help of a psychiatrist, is drawn into a web of past and present horror as they try to find the link between her sister's mysterious mental illness and an age-old curse involving the Black Plague." Keep your eye out -- I imagine there will be a name change on the way. Gotta love dueling features.

I'm not what I would call a serious fan of the horror genre overall, but I do like smart horror films, and The Broken, by Cashback director Sean Ellis, was a pretty smart film. I've had some arguments the past couple days about Cashback, and while that film has its weaknesses in the story structure, Ellis's strength as a director lies in imaginative visual sequences, a skill he uses to great effect in The Broken.

Gina (Lena Headey) and her boyfriend Stefan (Melvil Poupaud) go to Gina's father's house for a surprise birthday party. Her dad, who works for the US Embassy in London, is nearing retirement. Gina's brother Daniel and his girlfriend Kate show up for the party as well; the party is nice but uneventful, until a large mirror in the dining room suddenly shatters for no apparent reason.

Unfortunately, lots of posters these days don't amount to much. Either they're too run-of-the-mill, or they use so much damn airbrushing that it looks like Robert Zemeckis took over production and live captured the whole movie, instead of it being a plain-jane live-action film. Everyone once in a while, a simple one surfaces that just seems to get it -- often with Steve Carrell. (The 40-Year-Old Virgin poster was brilliant, and the Get Smart poster, which we premiered yesterday, isn't too shabby either.) And then sometimes, just sometimes, the posters just plain rock.

If the four pics that Entertainment Weekly just released of The Sarah Connor Chronicles are any indication of the show's content, this sucker should be great. Making a show based on Terminator is all sorts of tricky, but man, they knew how to cast. The first poster has Summer Glau, probably one of the coolest fighters ever, in all of her robot glory. Then there's Lena Headey channeling Linda Hamilton with that tough tank and bulging veins. And then, delightfully, more Glau. There's one with her naked torso, boobage covered by her hair (see pic to the right), and another where her skin is burned away to show the machine below.

I think the lesson is simple. For the most part, the simpler, the better. Sometimes studios try so hard to make it look cool, that any appealing potential gets stripped away. There's a reason why posters like these work -- they take the best of what the movie has to offer, or in this case a show, and lets it speak for itself. That being said, I wonder why Thomas Dekker doesn't appear in any of them?

OK, we're skirting dangerously close to TV Squad's turf here, but hey, it's not every day you get a new TV series based on one of the most popular science fiction series of the modern age! Click right here to check out the brand-new promotional trailer for Fox's The Sarah Connor Chronicles, which not only delivers the seriously sexy Lena Headey as the titular character, but also Firefly's Summer Glau as a sexy robotic butt-kicker sent back from the future to keep our young hero safe! Cool! (Oh, and the young man looks like he could be potentially "dreamy." His name's Thomas Dekker and he can presently be seen as Zach on Heroes.)

Created by genre veteran David Nutter (he's worked on geek-shows as cool as The X-Files, Roswell and Smallville) and written by War of the Worlds co-penner Josh Friedman, The Sarah Connor Chronicles will take place between the action of Terminator 2: Judgment Day and the deliciously dark ending of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. Won't that placement kind of spoil some of the surprises since those of us who saw T3 already know what happens to these characters? Well, maybe. But I'm pretty sure that Nutter and Friedman have considered that angle. Plus we can always use another GOOD sci-fi series on television, so color me suitably psyched to see Sarah this fall. (Just in case you forgot: Lena Headey was the woman in 300. The only woman.)

So much for my belief that St. Trinian's is the best cast movie in production right now. The film, which began shooting in March with top-notch British talents like Emily Watson, Colin Firth and Rupert Everett, has just added a young, American actress to sour up the mix. According to Variety, in a report from Cannes, Mischa Barton has joined the cast, which also includes Brits Toby Jones, Lena Headey, Stephen Fry, Celia Imrie, Anna Chancellor, Lucy Punch, Fenella Woolgar and possibly (still rumored, and not actually British) Richard E. Grant. To quote my favorite Sesame Street game: "One of these things is not like the other."

Hopefully Barton will simply be playing the bland girl from the States who happens to be studying at an English girls' school, and will not be expected to pull off an accent. Either way, she'll at least make the elder cast appear even greater. The former O.C. actress joins rising stars Jodie Whittaker (Venus), model Lily Cole, Talulah Riley (Pride & Prejudice), Tamsin Egerton (Driving Lessons), Juno Temple (Notes on a Scandal), Gemma Arterton and possibly (still rumored) singer Amy Winehouse, all of whom presumably play students at St. Trinian's, which they save from going bankrupt. St. Trinian's still seems to be, as Cinematical writer Monika Bartyzel called it, "a British film fan's wet dream," but thanks to the casting of Barton, the dream has gotten a little bit drier.

Just when you think the cast is gathered, three movies grab even more actors:

• You'd think that the likes of Rupert Everett, Emily Watson and Colin Firth would be enough for the walls of St. Trinian's to hold, but now there are even more names swimming around in the school full of infamous girls. First, we've got Toby Jones, who voiced the infamous house elf, Dobby, in the role of the bursar. Then we've got a collection of other school staff to be played by Anna Chancellor and two Imagine Me & You stars -- Celia Imrie and Lena Headey. Finally, the cast list has been topped off by some students -- model Lily Cole and Gemma Arterton (Or is there an Arteton as Variety lists?). Between this film and Jackboots on Whitehall, it seems all the tasty British actors are getting work!
• After pairing Jared Padalecki and Peter O'Toole in the Thomas Kinkade biopic The Christmas Cottage, Lionsgate has gotten Marcia Gay Harden to sign on as the painter's mother, Maryanne. At the rate of a new cast member every few days, we should have a full cast in no time! This role is a pair of comfy acting shoes for Harden, who won an Oscar for her role in Pollock, and has played a stressed out mom in many a movie. Hopefully Maryanne isn't the high-nerves of her Casa de los Babys character. Then again, no one can pull that attitude off like Harden. Well, except maybe Elizabeth Perkins. Could you imagine them snarking it up together!?
• Finally, remember Katherine Heigl's upcoming eternal bridesmaid movie 27 Dresses? It's about a poor woman who suffers the fate of the bridesmaid 27 times, and then finds insult added to injury when she has to do it again when her sister gets engaged to the man she loves? Well, Malin Akerman, who last played Liane in Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, has signed on to play the tow-headed actress' sister. While you probably aren't very familiar with Akerman, you should be soon enough. She's got five movies on the way, two of which have already been completed -- Heavy Petting and The Brothers Solomon.

It was just a little under a month ago that there was news from The Terminator TV spin-off The Sarah Connor Chronicles. At the time, fans were asking what part Serenity's Summer Glau had signed on for. Sci Fi Wire recently spoke with Lena Headey (300), who plays the Terminator "matriarch" Sarah Connor and she confirmed that Glau was hired to play one of the Terminators for the show. That's right, there's not one but two Terminators. Headey told Sci Fi Wire that Glau is playing one and Owain Yeoman will be playing the other. Sci Fi Wire also reported that during their chat with Headey she also told them "One is good and one is bad; she didn't say which is which."

The show picks up where the film Terminator 2: Judgment Day left off. Headey described the pilot, saying, "it's them basically running, hiding, trying to live, trying to carve out a normal life for themselves, but always being watched and trying to locate Skynet, trying to stop [it]. But there are many, many issues in their way." The pilot was scheduled for 2007, so since shooting has wrapped it won't be long before fans get to find out just what kind of Terminator Summer Glau is going to be.