Kate Bosworth ('The Warrior's Way', 'Superman Returns')

If there's one thing I've learned from people like Kate Bosworth, Natalie Portman, and Katie Holmes, its that actresses are boring.

Bosworth's newest film The Warriors Way is a fantastical action fable set in the legendary era of the Wild West. Kate is 'Lynne', a red-headed knife-thrower in a traveling carnival with a deadly secret and a hankering for revenge against the man who destroyed her family. She's also hot and has nice teeth, though Kate does admit that she did "yellow them up" for the role - meaning she made them look like ordinary-people (you and me) teeth.

Kate Bosworth was the blond girl in Blue Crush, otherwise known as "that surfing movie with chicks", her first breakout role (she previously was "the little girl" in The Horse Whisperer). Since then, she's gone on to star as the most boring version of Lois Lane ever imagined in the wishy-washy Superman Returns (she did dye her hair, though, as a commitment to the role) and has been the subject of massive speculation that she might be anorexic in various tabloid gossip sections because she's terribly, insanely skinny and looks like she might die at any minute.

Anyway, Kate Bosworth gets to do martial arts in The Warrior's Way, and make out with Jang Dong Gun, a really hot Korean guy (who knew there were any?) and massive action star back home in Korea. Kate is bland and boring, like she always is, is this role. And her blandness carries over in interviews.

When asked about the barrage of media scrutiny about her weight, Kate has almost nothing to say. At all. She's either so smart and introverted that she genuinely doesn't care what the media says about her weight, or she's too dumb to care. In her Natalie Portman-like way, she's best at smiling and not getting anythin in her teeth, but terrible at saying anything interesting (or acting in anything interesting).

"I'm pretty used to it," she says.

I'm kind of shockingly disappointed that an actress who is so visible and always criticized about her low weight (and then when she gains, that's circled and highlighted on the cover of Beach Bodies issues as well) has nothing to say on the topics of women, weight, Hollywood expectations, and realty versus myth. Fuck it, I could talk about it. Natalie fucking Portman could talk about it. Not Kate Bosworth. It's not that Kate was embarrassed, or that my question was unexpected. Kate just doesn't care. In fact, I kind of got the impression that she likes being talked about because she might be anorexic. Like one of those women who might be happy when tabloids call her skeletal. Because it is a good thing.

But I was also there to talk to Bosworth about her character in The Warrior's Way, a film with zero character development that was not screened for the press (me). If you thought, "Good luck with that interview, Heidi", you're right. What do you talk about when all you can talk about is a movie you haven't seen and that isn't really an amazing feat of acting?

Horses.

Despite the fact that she was a champion horseback rider at the age of 14 (when she got The Horse Whisperer), she does not ride a horse in The Warrior's Way, unfortunately for her. Which is odd, because its a Western and there are lots of horses in it. She got the role of Young Blond Girl in The Horse Whisperer almost by accident, through the love of horsies.

"Robert Redford was casting out of New York, and he wanted authentic horse riders and I kind of went on a whim. To audition. It's such a deep love, I still do it. Show jump. And I probably will for the rest of my life. There's probably a certain adrenalin I chase as a jumper, every time as I do it."

The Warrior's Way was shot in Auckland, New Zealand (the producer, Barrie M. Osborne, also produced The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King) and Kate does a lot of jumping around and knife-throwing.

"From the moment I landed in New Zealand, that was the first thing I wanted to jump into immediately, the martial arts elements of it. because i had never taken any kind and was completely unfamiliar with it. It sort of reminded me of how I started training in Blue Crush, it was a big question mark... I wish I'd had more background in ballet or in dance to be able to tackle it better, because it really had more of that element. I wish I'd had a little bit more training for it, but such is life when you land and you need to shoot a movie."

Thrilling interracial romance!!!!

Kate describes her character, "Lynne", as "wild, untamed, feral, and distant." The script was "bold, the characters were bold, and Lynne is tough, fierce, and fiery." And that's why Bosworth insisted on Lynne having red hair. That seemed really important to her.

"I was in a costume fitting for Lynne, and I didn't have shoes. We couldn't find the right shoes that fit. So the costumer suggested that I try on a pair of men's shoes. They had this clumpy effect - I thought the lack of refinement clicked with the character. It may sound crazy for some actors, I just go for it. You have to stay true to the world and the character."

Bosworth's southern accent also softens as Lynne softens. "I wanted her to start out as if she's rough," adds Bosworth.

Unfortunately, after all the martial arts training, Bosworth has completely forgotten most of it. "I haven't surfed since Blue Crush, either," she says. "It's much harder than you think it's gonna be."

"The routine that was most terrifying to me," she says, "is the scene where Lynne and Yang dance in the desert against the sky. He's training her, and they're doing it at night against the sky, and we had to shoot it in its entirely. It's a five minute dance sequence with knives. I thought, 'I was like, Oh shit, I better get this right, man'. Thankfully we shot it at the end when I'd had more training than at the beginning of the film shoot."

The Warrior's Way is out on December 3rd, 2010 in US theaters.