We’ve known Mary Elizabeth Winstead for many years, from the hugely underrated Sky High to Live Free or Die Hard, Scott Pilgrim vs The World to Birds of Prey and now Ahsoka, where she portrays Twi’lek General Hera Syndulla and her husband Ewan McGregor, who joined her on a walk through Disneyland without either of them being recognised.
Mary Elizabeth Winstead has, so far, had a wildly diverse career, but there is one genre that continues to crop up again and again — horror/thrillers are definitely in the 40-year-old’s sweetspot. From her early days on witchy soap Passions to Wolf Lake to Final Destination 3 to 10 Cloverfield Lane to Black Christmas, Winstead loves the rush of being creeped out and freaked out.
The North Carolina-born actor joins us on the couch to discuss her filmography, in particular her latest work, a remake of the 1992 classic The Hand The Rocks The Cradle, this time co-starring next gen scream queen Maika Monroe (It Follows, Longlegs), directed by Mexican filmmaker Michelle Garza in her first major studio motion picture. It’s domestic horror at its most intimate — channeling the fears and anxieties of new motherhood, while weaving in privilege guilt, and a haunting moral ambiguity. Which, as you might imagine for a new mother herself — Winstead has a son with husband Ewan McGregor — was not hard to identify with and tap into.
We discuss all this plus action films, the cult of Ramona Flowers and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof, working with Bruce Willis as his daughter in two Die Hard movies, her critically acclaimed turn as an alcoholic groping towards sobriety in indie film Smashed, not to mention meeting Ewan on the set of Fargo the TV series, both of them working in the Star Wars universe, and her early years as an extrovert-turned-introvert finding an outlet in performance.
