TRIGGER HAPPY
Rose blooms in xXx
There’s a strong scent of lavender hand cream on greeting Ruby Rose this particular day, an essential remedy for the toils of her trade, apparently.
She has just returned to Australia after filming shark action thriller Meg in New Zealand, where she spent the previous week in water tanks which has been ‘‘not so friendly on my skin’’.
It’s the latest in a string of physically demanding roles for Rose. Hand cream aside, the 30-year-old former model and MTV presenter from Melbourne is carving out a neat resume of kickass roles, with four action films on the way.
First up is xXx: Return of Xander Cage, the third in the stunt-laden series about a group of secret government operatives headed by extreme sports nut Cage, played by Vin Diesel. The ‘‘return’’ bit is about Cage getting back into the game after a selfimposed exile, to fend off the threat of a catastrophic weapon. It’s also a return to the franchise, revived after a 12-year gap.
Rose steps up as Adele Wolff, an elite sniper and Cage’s right-hand woman, and those lavenderscented hands are no stranger to handling weapons, despite the fact, she says, ‘‘I’m not particularly tough, I’m quite a sensitive soul.’’
In the forthcoming John Wick: Chapter 2 she plays an assassin; in Resident Evil: The Final Chapter she wields an Uzi. ‘‘I know, so gnarly,’’ she says, laughing.
Handling a sniper rifle is a different challenge altogether, not
"I would really love to sink my teeth into a serious drama and surprise people." Ruby Rose
least because it has enough kickback to rip off your shoulder. She trained at a range in Los Angeles used by the Secret Service, military, and Olympic competitors.
‘‘The kind of drive, determination, and focus that you need to be able to be a good sniper is very different to other gun training,’’ she says. ‘‘It’s a lot to do with breathing and monitoring your heart rate, and just being so focused, not just on what the target is, but everything around you – are there any other threats? Is somebody going to see you? So you’re hiding, you’re focusing, you’ve got to be very quick.’’
She wowed her trainers by being able to hit a horizontal playing card from 1000 metres. ‘‘I split the card through the side, which was like a hair, and [my trainer] was like ‘OK, if we ever need you for anything, you would be really good at this’,’’ she says.
Other behind-the-scenes work included ramping up her physical fitness levels alongside her co-star.
‘‘We got to train together, that’s how I got so buff for the role, because competing with Vin Diesel to get bigger muscles is just like something as a kid I never would have anticipated,’’ she says.
Diesel and she remain ‘‘best friends’’ and FaceTime daily. The people she meets is what she loves most about acting – she namechecks Jason Statham and Rainn Wilson from Meg, Keanu Reeves in John Wick, Milla Jovovich in Resident Evil, and all her xXx costars.
But for a sensitive soul, acting is surely one of the worst career choices?
‘‘Yes and no,’’ she says. ‘‘Of course you face a lot of rejection, you get passionate about projects that either don’t go ahead or you don’t get cast for, so the rejection side of things can take its toll.
‘‘But you have to know that you’re not getting rejected, somebody else just did an amazing job and they want to make the film the best they can. It’s just somebody else amazing who’s acting, who’s doing the same thing you are that’s getting the opportunity to shine and it’s actually quite a nice feeling, there’s no negativity in that.’’
Although her roles to date have had an action bent, she says comedy – she’s just been confirmed as joining Pitch Perfect 3 – and dramas are on the horizon.
‘‘I would really love to sink my teeth into a serious drama and surprise people and have them go ‘Oh wow, I didn’t know she could do that’ and also push my boundaries a lot further as well.
‘‘Each character I play is getting further and further into different characteristics. I think staying in just one genre could be quite stifling.’’ – Fairfax
xXx: Return of Xander Cage (M) is now screening.