Michael Fassbender has recalled his co-star hitting him squarely “on the side of the head”.
The 34-year-old actor stars alongside mixed martial arts fighter Gina Carano in upcoming spy action film Haywire. Gina plays Mallory Kane, a freelance operative who is forced to protect her family by hunting down and taking out her betrayers.
Michael performed rigorous fight scenes throughout the film.
While shooting one in particular, he felt the force of Gina’s character’s wrath.
“I remember it clearly,” Michael recalled to Entertainment Weekly. “[Gina’s character Mallory] is supposed to pick up a vase and it breaks away, and the stunt guy said, ‘She’s going to grab it and hit you on the side of the head. But the one thing that’s important as she swings toward your head is you don’t look at her. You turn your head away and take the hit.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, I got it.’”
Michael didn’t understand properly and made a serious error.
“Of course, Gina picked up the vase and I looked right at it,” Michael explained. “There was no serious injury, just a little blinding pain. It was like a camera bulb had gone off.”
Although he sustained mild injuries, Michael enjoyed shooting the action sequences. While he and Gina were throwing punches at each other, he tried his best to ensure that none of them landed.
“It’s an anything goes type thing. These fights are messy,” Michael said. “Yeah, [shooting the fights] was fun. [I got] a few bruises though. I was just focused on keeping it together, and not getting clocked and not hitting Gina, though she would be able to take it a lot better than I would.”
Spy life is interesting to portray, but Michael would not want to go on covert missions in reality. He would rather restrict his secret agent antics to the screen.
“I suppose the life [these spies] are leading seems to be an exciting one, so there are elements of sex and death. I mean, I just put my head where they tell me to… ”
Haywire will be released from January 2012.
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