New ‘Tarzan’ displays modern ‘Jane’ – I’ve never wanted to play damsel in distress: Robbie

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LOS ANGELES, June 27, (Agencies): With her cut-glass cheekbones, porcelain skin and cascading flaxen locks, it is hard to imagine a better choice to play Tarzan’s love interest than Australian actress Margot Robbie.

But the 25-year-old, who appears as Jane in “The Legend of Tarzan,” the latest take on one of Hollywood’s most enduring colonial era adventure stories, is anything but a shrinking violet.

“I’ve never wanted to play the damsel in distress, and Jane is anything but,” said the actress, who rose to worldwide fame starring in Martin Scorsese’s “The Wolf of Wall Street.”

Robbie agreed early on with director David Yates that her take on Jane Porter, and later Lady Greystoke, in the 51st live-action Tarzan movie would be a feisty character, capable of fighting back.

In one memorable scene, Belgian ruler Leopold II’s dastardly henchman Leon Rom, played by Christoph Waltz, demands of a captured Jane that she scream to attract Tarzan’s attention, and instead she spits in his face.

It is a gesture of the kind of fiery insouciance common in the roles Robbie has picked, from her portrayal of the feisty Naomi Lapaglia in “The Wolf of Wall Street” to the villainous Harley Quinn in the much anticipated “Suicide Squad” from DC Comics.

The Queensland native, whose first regular acting job was in Aussie soap “Neighbours,” is enjoying an unusual trajectory in an industry where many female actresses complain of the shallow roles they are offered.

Outnumber

Studies consistently show that men outnumber women by up to three to one among speaking parts in feature films, with the few starring female roles often largely just foils for the male star.

“I think it’s definitely improving. And I think people have finally recognized that half the ticket sales are coming from women,” Robbie told AFP at a publicity event in Beverly Hills Sunday for “Tarzan,” which hits theaters on July 1.

“And if they don’t create the kind of roles that women are going to be able to relate to then they’re not going to enjoy watching them as much.

“And if they don’t enjoy watching them as much, they’re not going to be able to make their money. I think they needed to recognize that and I think the industry has really responded in a postive way and people are really making an effort.”

Robbie says she is still offered parts that strike her as problematic, but senses that producers and directors are keen to work with her to give the role more depth.

One notable feature of David Yates’s take on Tarzan is that, for once, it is the male lead, Robbie’s co-star Alexander Skarsgard, who spends much of the duration half-naked while Robbie was able to keep her clothes on.

Yates, who directed the final four “Harry Potter” films and is helming JK Rowling’s forthcoming Potter spin-off “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them,” revealed he had turned down the studio’s suggestion of “Superman” actor Henry Cavill for the role of “Tarzan,” preferring Skarsgard’s lower profile and physicality.

“He was so motivated. I did ask him — and I did this with Eddie Redmayne on ‘Beasts’ because they both had to work out — ‘can you send me photographs of yourself?’ which seemed kind of not right.

Adventures

“The Legend of Tarzan” picks up the King of the Jungle’s story several years after his adventures in Africa with Jane.

Now a parliamentarian in London, Lord Greystoke is persuaded by Samuel L Jackson’s former US civil war soldier George Washington Williams to go back to the Congo Free State to investigate reports that Leopold II is engaged in mass enslavement of the locals.

Jackson told AFP he visited Washington’s grave in Blackpool, northwestern England, last year while shooting Tim Burton’s “Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children,” which is due out in September.

“George is a pretty fascinating guy,” said the 67-year-old Hollywood veteran.

Jackson describes Tarzan as “an origin story more than anything else.”

“You find out exactly why he is Tarzan of the Apes and what his relationship is to that ape community, how he was treated in it, who loved him, who bullied him,” he said.

Also:

LOS ANGELES: “I spent time with bunnies for seven months. I didn’t use my fingers. I hopped everywhere I went — ate nothing but grass,” joked Kevin Hart at “The Secret Life of Pets” premiere Saturday morning at the Lincoln Center in New York City.

The comedian, making his first appearance as an animated character, told Variety that he was excited to voice Snowball, a tyrannical bunny out for revenge against the human race. Hart added, “Probably the funniest thing you can do about putting a small black guy in a small white rabbit’s body is say, ‘Be yourself.’”

Snowball tries to recruit domesticated dogs Max and Duke, voiced by Louis C.K. and Eric Stonestreet, to join his gang of “Flushed Pets” as the pair try to escape Animal Control and find their way back home.

While Illumination CEO Chris Meledandri thought of centering a film around the mysterious lives of our pets, screenwriter Cinco Paul admits the movie initially started as a “Rear Window” concept.

“The pets were home they witness a crime. But the two characters of Duke and Max kept declaring themselves so strongly that they kind of took over the movie and then we decided let’s just follow on that relationship.”

 LOS ANGELES: Julianna Margulies is in talks to star in the independent drama “The Three Christs Of Ypsilanti” opposite Richard Gere, Walton Goggins, Peter Dinklage and Bradley Whitford.

Jon Avnet is directing from a script he wrote with Eric Nazarian, adapted from biographical novel by Milton Rokeach. The story follows a doctor (played by Gere) who is treating three paranoid schizophrenic patients at the Ypsilanti State Hospital in Michigan.

Gere came on to the project last month as Highland Film Group, which is financing, introduced it to international buyers in Cannes. CAA reps domestic rights.

Avnet will produce through his Brooklyn Films with Aaron Stern alongside Molly Hassell of Hassell Free Productions. Arianne Fraser and Delphine Perrier will finance and produce through Highland Film Group. CAA is repping domestic rights.

Shooting is expected to start next month in New York. Margulies will play Gere’s wife, who’s at home with two daughters after serving as his former research assistant and secretary.

Margulies won two Emmys and two SAG Awards for her role as Alicia Florrick in the CBS series “The Good Wife” which aired its last episode last month. She also won an Emmy for her role as Carol Hathaway on “ER” appearing on the show’s first six seasons.

Margulies is repped by WME. The news about her casting was first reported by Deadline Hollywood.

 

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