British bombshell Lena Headey fights terminators for a living. It's the perfect role for a girl who grew up defending herself with a smart mouth, a sharp wit, and a mean right cross
"It scared me," says Headey, 34, in an accent that glides between British working-class and the Queen's English. "I thought, My God, here's a gun and there's a life, and you shoot the gun and there ends the life." The target in this case was a paper assailant at the shooting range where Fox Television sends its action stars in training, and where for the last many weeks the actress has tried to appease her fear of weaponry. At the very least, the instruction has taught Headey to look like she knows what she's doing: On Fox's midseason entry Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, a prologue to the Terminator movies, she wields pistols, shotguns, and heavy artillery like a modern-day Bonnie Parker. As the embattled mom protecting her son--and the human race--from killer robots, Headey seems completely at home, albeit not at all at peace.
With her fair English skin and shock of dark hair, Headey--most recognizable as the sultry Queen Gorgo from last year's sword-and-shield-fest 300--is delicate and slightly vulnerable looking; she's more Audrey Hepburn gamine than the Linda Hamilton tough she was cast to re-create in The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Yet beneath the foppish locks, the thick, arched eyebrows, and the high, alabaster cheekbones is a stubborn independence born of protecting her soul in a complicated family and defending her pride in bare-knuckle street brawls.
Born in Bermuda, Headey moved with her parents to Somerset, in southwest England, when she was 5. At age 11, the family moved to blue-collar Yorkshire in northern England. At her working-class mother's behest, Headey took elocution lessons to learn "to speak like a lady." But her newly manufactured upper-class diction seemed only to get her into trouble in a town where being unique was unacceptable. "I remember asking this boy where the playing field was, and he was like, 'Where are you from?' Then he literally smashed me on the head with his cricket bat because I was different," she says, and then contemplates, "or maybe he just wanted to kiss me."
It was the first of many rows for Headey, who insists she throws punches only to protect someone she loves--her younger brother, Tim, for instance, now an air steward for British Airways. "He stood out in school because he played the violin and painted his nails and his friends wore Lycra T-shirts," she remembers. "He got picked on, and I was like, 'Don't touch my brother.' I'm small but quite tough. When incensed, I can swing a punch."
Headey confides that she has always carried a quiet rage that can detonate at the slightest injustice, real or imagined. "I have a scary side of me," she admits. "I f--king yell and shout and I'm horrid and then it's gone. My poor husband."
She won't pinpoint the origin of some of her own issues--that wild temper of hers, or a certain conversational self-consciousness that melts away when she lapses into one of the many accents she uses to animate an anecdote. But one can guess that it might have something to do with what she will only call her "tricky" relationship with her mother. "It always comes down to the mum, now doesn't it?" she asks rhetorically. "Since being quite young, I've had a very strong sense of independence and survival. As a child, I was on my own two feet emotionally," she says. "I have an internal protectiveness where it's like, if it comes to just me, as frightened as I am of losing someone I love or things going sour or simply being alone, there is a dark place in my brain where I'm like, It could happen and I'm okay, I'm prepared."
But as independent as she paints herself, Headey has meticulously arranged her life in such a way that emotional support is always on call. For one, she has never not been in a romantic relationship. And she rarely trusts anyone she hasn't known for, say, most of her life. "If all this [TV and movie stuff] f--ks up, I still have these people I love in my life, and that keeps me stable and that's my reality," she says. "I could quite happily run a florist or a bake shop."