While actors like Harrison Ford, Sylvester Stallone and Bruce Willis are still playing the macho action parts it seems that there is an increasing trend of women taking on more masculine roles.A string of high profile actresses, including Uma Thurman, Angelina Jolie and Sigourney Weaver have taken on the roles that we would expect to be filled by male actors.And in Neil Marshall's new movie Doomsday this trend looks set to continue as Rhona Mitra has been cast as Eden Sinclair who leads an elite team of specialists into a city which has seen the reappearance of a deadly virus that swept through Great Britain three decades earlier leading to quarantine and many deaths.Here at FemaleFirst we take a look back at some of cinema's most memorable action women.
Sarah Connor - Terminator
Sarah Connor, played by Linda Hamilton, is the heroine of the first two terminator movies. In Terminator Connor finds herself being pursued by a cyborg who is trying to kill her before she can give birth to her future son John Connor.In the future John will lead a human resistance group to victory against the machines, who control the world, and what to exterminate the human race.
John Connor sent back Kyle Reese to protect his mother from the cyborg but the pair fall in love and John is conceived.
Terminator 2 is set eleven years after Sarah Connor kills the cyborg in the first movie she is in a mental hospital and her son John is in foster care.
Sarah has transformed from a timid woman to a violent warrior who fell off the grid and lived a semi-life of crime in an attempt to be able to teach John the skills he would need to defend himself and fight.
With the help of a Terminator, who is there to protect John, Sarah fights a second Terminator, a T-1000, to protect her son.
Ellen Ripley - Alien
Sigourney Weaver’s role of Ellen Ripley in four movies of the Alien franchise broke many gender stereotypes in the science fiction genre by featuring a strong heroine.
The film launched Weaver’s career and the success of Alien and the character of Ripley led to her becoming the main thread that ran through the series of movies.
She was introduced as a Warrant Officer in 1979’s Alien aboard the Nostromo which was towing raw ore to Earth for the company Weyland-Yutani.
Ripley and the rest of the crew aboard the Nostromo are woken from their hypersleep ten months early when the ship intercepts an unknown signal.
A team leave the ship to investigate and discover an alien space craft on the moon LV-426. An a alien parasite attaches itself to Kane and quarantine regulations are broken in an attempt to save him.
With the creature on board it begins to kill off the crew one by one until Ripley, who has began the vessel's self-destruct sequence, blows the creature out of the escape ship’s airlock.
Aliens picks up where alien left off and Ripley has been in hypersleep for fifty seven years.
She is held responsible for the destruction of the Nostromo by Weyland-Yutani and she leads a team back to LV-426.
In Alien 3 Ripley sacrifices herself to prevent Weyland-Yutani from getting their hands on the Queen Alien that is inside her.
The character of Ripley was originally intended to be a male character.
Trinity - The Matrix
Trinity, played by Carrie-Ann moss, is a computer programmer and hacker who has escaped the matrix, a computer programme which has imprisoned most of the human race.
As part of Morpheus' Nebuchadnezzar crew she serves as the middle man between him and those he wishes to free from the Matrix.
As the film trilogy continues her importance grows as she becomes romantically linked with Neo. The oracle predicted that the man she fell in live with would be the one, a prophesy who would have super powers inside the Matrix.
Lara Croft - Tomb Raider
Angelina Jolie took on the role of archeologist and adventurer Lara Croft in the 2001 big screen adaptation of the popular video game.
In Lara Croft: Tomb Raider Lara battles with Illuminati member Mr Powell in a bid to find the Triangle of Light.
her quest takes her from Cambodia to Siberia before she takes on the ability of rewinding time, after gaining control of the Triangle, to save her friend West's life.
The popular computer character returned in 2003 with Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life. Working on behalf of MI6 she was asked to find Pandora's Box before scientist Jonathan Reiss gets his hands on it.
With the help of former mercenary and Royal marine terry Sheridan their search takes them to Shanghai to Hong Kong before taking them to Africa.
Despite Lara Croft's popularity in the gaming world the film were not a big a box office success as expected.
The Bride - Kill Bill
Uma Thurman's Bride in Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill has been one of the most recent action women roles.
Former assassin the Bride was left for dead by former boss Bill, with whom she was having a child, after she faked her own death and hid in Texas and was on the verge of marrying.
But Bill tracked her down and shot everyone who attended the wedding shooting the Bride in the head and leaving her for dead.
After being in a coma for four and a half years she woke from her coma and vowed revenge on those who had tried to kill her.
Sporting a yellow motorcycle jumpsuit and a Katana sword the Bride goes in search of those she used to work with. In volume 1 she kills O-Ren Ishii, Vernita Green and many members of the Crazy 88.
In volume 2 she dispatches Budd and Elle before finally coming face to face with Bill. With Bill dead she is reunited with her daughter, who she presumed had died when she was shot but had survived.
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw