Noomi Rapace doesn't want to be defined by her body

1 September 2017

Noomi Rapace doesn't want to be defined by her gender or body.

Noomi Rapace

The 37-year-old actress has portrayed a number of strong women on screen such as Dr. Elizabeth Shaw in 'Prometheus' and as Lisbeth Salander in the Swedish adaptation of 'The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo', but Rapace thinks it's "medieval" to be defined by her sex.

Speaking to The Guardian newspaper, she said: "Since I started working, I didn't want to be defined by my sex or body. Why would I? It's very medieval. When I have a costume fitting or makeup session, it's like, 'No, I don't want to have full makeup in the end of the film if I've been trying to survive for 72 hours.' I've been f***ed up, of course I wouldn't look perfect; I'd be a mess! And all these voices around me are saying, 'No, we think you look a little bit too rough.' "

Noomi also admitted from a young age she made a decision not to pick any roles offered to her based on her looks.

She said: "Being an actress is a world of possibilities. If I corner myself by saying I need to look a certain way, I lose that freedom. I saw this film I did when I was 22 and I was like, 'Holy...' I hate what I looked like. And then I said, 'Noomi, if you're going to be an actress, it can't be about what you look like. It needs to be about what's going on inside you.' "

Noomi can currently be seen starring as a set of septuplet sisters in the Netflix sci-fi movie 'What Happened to Monday' and she admits that it was "extremely difficult" to portray to so many different people.

She said: "It was the hardest thing I've ever done: a very long shoot, technically, extremely difficult. It took over my life for five months. But I got to play seven completely different personalities. I didn't want them to fall into cliches or caricatures: the shy one, the tomboy one, the cute one. So I had different perfumes and playlists for each. When I was changing from one to the other I'd wash off, take the wig off, take the smell off, put on the new smell, the new soundtrack. It was like a ritual."