Actress Diane Kruger underwent training with agents from Israeli security force Mossad to prepare for her role in The Operative.
The Inglourious Basterds star plays a woman recruited to work undercover with the crack operatives in Iran and explains she fell in love with the project as soon as she read the script.
The German star also thought she would be a good fit for the role because of her command of several languages.
"When I first read (the script), I thought immediately that this is a project that I really want to pursue," she said at a press conference for the film on Sunday (10Feb19). "The character kind of talked to me. I was like, 'Oh yeah, I could be a Mossad agent'."
Kruger also liked the complexity of her character, a credits director Yuval Adler for crafting a strong, but relatable female lead.
"She's not a killer," she said. "This is not Jason Bourne or James Bond... We hadn't seen a spy movie per se that was talking about the realities of what a spy really goes through every day. I thought it was a very modern, refreshing take."
"How do you live in a country for a couple of years and fall in love with somebody...? You develop feelings, whether you have a family at home or not," she added when asked about the film's plot. "How does one go about that? And, at the end of the day, we're all human. Things get messy. And I was interested in finding a truth in that."
The film offer came at a good time for the new mum - after reading a string of scripts surrounding Nazi roles: "I've been offered so many Nazi roles, you couldn't believe," she recently told Vulture. "And I've never really wanted to do it. I'll only do it if it's more obtuse. Like with Marwen. Same with Inglourious Basterds.
"I never had any desire to be in that kind of movie to be honest, for obvious reasons, and I feel like it's been done to death. How many movies do we need to see about that? That's just my opinion. But watch, next year I'll be in more Nazi movies, I'm sure!"
