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NANCY MILLS
NYT Syndicate
If you're ever in trouble, who you gonna call? Rebecca Ferguson comes to mind. Her character saved Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible ” Rogue Nation (2015). Now in Life, as a microbiologist working with an International Space Station crew that discovers a new, single-celled organism in space, her responsibility is even larger.
"Her job is to protect Earth," Ferguson said."She has to protect us from what we find in space and what we find inside ourselves."
The science-fiction drama, which also stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Ryan Reynolds, opened on March 23 in the US.
Onscreen Ferguson projects an aura of super-capability. In real life, though, is she good in a crisis?
"I might jinx it by saying yes," the 34-year-old actress said."However, I've been surprised by my own reactions in a couple of crises."
For example, Ferguson recalled being in an airplane when a woman sitting near her fainted.
"I think I'd saved information from 'ER,'" she said."I just said, 'Lay her down and put her feet up. Don't give her water. We need some orange juice, please. Don't panic her.'
"I asked all these questions," Ferguson continued,"and her husband said, 'Are you a nurse?' I said, 'Actually, no, I'm an actress.'"
She laughed.
"It was quite scary afterward," she concluded,"but the woman was all right. It's not that I rushed forward, but she was in my zone.
"As a mother I've seen my child fall," Ferguson added,"and, if you show a face of fear or sadness, they will respond to it. So counter-actions have merit as well."
The actress was speaking by telephone from Norway, where she was skiing with her 10-year-old son, Isac. She had been scheduled to shoot The Lady and the Panda, but that film was put on hold, freeing time for a quick vacation.
Ferguson said that what sold her on Life was the combination of an intriguing script, Swedish director Daniel Espinosa and co-stars Gyllenhaal and Reynolds.
"Jake and Ryan knew each other, and they couldn't have been a better combination," she said."Jake makes quirky and interesting choices for his character, decisions that would throw me off-balance. He helped me do some of my best work.
"Ryan synchronises a heavily stressful situation with humour," she continued."It comes effortlessly, in a very natural way. He also has vulnerability in his humour, and that's magic."
Simulating the space station's zero gravity was one of the shoot's main challenges.
"We had to study astronauts and how they move," Ferguson said."You don't move slowly just because you're in zero gravity. Everything is at a completely different speed.
"One astronaut said in an interview that the top of his feet resembled the bottom of his feet due to linking onto things," she continued."Sometimes they can't walk when they return to Earth. They have to be in a wheelchair for a time."
In addition to the physical demands of the role, Ferguson also responded to the intellectual issues raised by Life.
"In this group of people in this small, confined space, my character's voice of reason creates friction," she said."What do you do when you have to go off book, when you have to make quick choices? What happens to the team? What are the consequences to everyone's immediate, animalistic defence mechanisms?"
In everyday life, Ferguson said, she's a pragmatist.
"I don't fear the unknown," she said."I welcome it. I don't think there's a path I should follow. I take what life throws at me."
Her flexibility may come from having grown up bicultural. Her mother, an Englishwoman, was 25 when she moved to Sweden and married a Swede. Ferguson, who was born and raised in Stockholm, nonetheless speaks fluent English with a cultured English accent.
She never intended to be an actress. Anything but, in fact.
"My mother is an eccentric, phenomenal thespian," Ferguson said."She's the spitting image of Edina in 'Absolutely Fabulous' (1992-2012), and I'm Safi (Edina's sensible daughter). I had a lot of actors and the avant garde of the cultural elite of Sweden around me, but they never lured me into acting.
"Speaking in front of the class caused me to blush and have red blotches on my face," she added."I didn't like it."
Instead Ferguson went to music school, and thought her interests lay in that direction.
"My granny said that, when I was young, I wanted to be a conductor of classical music," she said.
It wasn't to be, however.
"I was thrown into acting through random casting," Ferguson recalled."I said no a couple times ” but, the first day in front of a camera, I was like a fish in water. I loved it."
Ferguson made her professional debut at 16 in the Swedish soap opera 'Nya Tider' (1999-2001). She went on to several other Swedish television shows, including an episode of the British series 'Wallander' (2008), which was set in Sweden.
Her life changed a few years later, when director Richard Hobert spotted her at a market in the fishing village where she lived ” and where she continues to live, Hollywood success notwithstanding. Hobert cast her in a key role in his drama A One-Way Trip to Antibes (2011).
That film brought Ferguson a British agent and an international career. Starring as Elizabeth Woodville in the BBC miniseries 'The White Queen' (2013), she caught the eye of Tom Cruise. He cast her as MI-6 agent Ilsa Faust in Mission: Impossible ” Rogue Nation.
Her performance prompted some critics to compare her to fellow Swede Ingrid Bergman ” a resemblance that was not accidental, Ferguson said, but rather the idea of Rogue Nation director Christopher McQuarrie.
"He asked me to watch a couple Bergman films," she explained."I studied her and tried to bring her kind of mood to Mission. It was not so much about her beauty, but her gracefulness and mystery. Chris has a connection to those old films, mixed up with Hitchcock and hard-core action with Tom.
"We also talked about how important it was for Ilsa to be a woman, let her look like a woman and let her be tired."
Since then Ferguson has played supporting roles in two Hollywood films: the girlfriend of St Clair Bayfield (Hugh Grant) in Florence Foster Jenkins (2016) and the second wife of Tom (Justin Theroux) in The Girl on the Train (2016). She plays a troubled police investigator in the upcoming The Snowman, based on Jo Nesb'f8's 2010 thriller and starring Michael Fassbender.
A particularly challenging role comes in the upcoming The Greatest Showman, a PT Barnum biopic starring Hugh Jackman as Barnum. Ferguson plays the Swedish opera singer Jenny Lind, whom Barnum turned into an international sensation.
"It was absolutely terrifying," Ferguson said."Standing on stage and singing a solo never attracted me, probably because of the ridiculously high expectations I have for myself. On this film I told myself, 'I have to leap and to trust they won't cut together a version of me that's ridiculous.'
Up next? Probably a reprise of her role as Ilsa Faust in M:I 6 ” Mission Impossible. Her skiing vacation, Ferguson reported, has put her in the mood for another action film.
"I love seeing how far I can push myself," the actress said."When I finished Mission I was amazed at the things I had managed to do, including 125 free falls and holding my breath (underwater) for five minutes."
She's also looking forward to another round of training with Cruise.
"He runs so fast," Ferguson recalled."He was usually running behind me, and he'd call out, 'I'm going to slow down' or 'I'm running faster.' He'd adjust his pace to mine. Meanwhile I'm trying to catch up to his shadow."
