BODY PARTS
‘Zombies’ Lena’s latest killer role
THERE WERE moments filming “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” when Lena Headey, sword raised and an eye patch plastered on her face, felt sick to her stomach — and not because of the bloodied extras at her feet.
“I was obviously pregnant with my daughter Ted and I was thinking, she’s in my belly and I’m doing this, it’s quite bizarre,” Headey told the Daily News just days before Friday’s release of the supernatural mash-up, which is loosely based on the Jane Austen classic and co-stars Lily James.
“It was the early days of my pregnancy and I felt absolutely hideous every day,” she said. “Maybe all this zombie-killing will be in her DNA someday.”
Her now 7-month-old daughter already has some pretty killer genes. Long before Headey (inset) was cast as the icy killer Lady Catherine, the British actress cornered the market on women that can skewer (“300”), gun down (“Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles”) or beguile (“Game of Thrones”) any man dumb enough to think himself her equal.
Off screen, she considers herself lucky as the mother of two young children in a business where actresses “kind of get lost in this desert between 45 and 55,” when they stop getting scripts for the love interest and are not quite ready to get the Helen Mirren/Meryl Streep type roles.
“It’s an interesting trajectory for a woman. I played the young ‘Oh, I love him’ (ingénue),” said the 42-year old British actress, breaking i nto a breathless swoon.
“Now, because I’m a tough old hag, I get to play all the tough old bitches. In terms of Hollywood, anything over 40, it’s, ‘Surely she can only play a grandma.’ But I’m also not afraid of that.”
She credits landing her signature role on “Game of Thrones” as the eternally plotting beauty Cersei for allowing her to stand over the corpses — both i n her latest movie and more metaphorically speaking.
“I’m so f- - - - - - lucky to be able to grow with Cersei,” Headey said. “The fact that they haven’t killed me is a miracle … I guess the moment I’m dead on ‘Thrones,’ you’ll never want to speak to me again.”