There aren’t many actresses who could go toe-to-toe with Tom Hardy. But then Noomi Rapace is no ordinary starlet.
Rising to fame in the original Swedish film version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, in which she played hacker heroine Lisbeth Salander, she's since taken the lead in Ridley Scott's Alien prequel Prometheus.
Still, battling extraterrestrial monsters is one thing. Facing off against British actor Hardy, who menacingly gave Batman a run for his money as the villainous Bane in The Dark Knight Rises, is quite another.
"We connected straight away," says the 35-year-old actress, and it's not hard to see why. On The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, she endured real piercings and toughened herself up with bouts of kick-boxing – just the sorts of intense commitment to a role Hardy regularly employs.
"We always get stained and coloured by our characters," says Rapace. "[On] The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, I couldn't speak to anyone – I was just in my own bubble and I was very annoyed with people. Like 'What? No! Shut up! Don't disturb me!' I was really edgy."
After meeting during the early stages of a film that neither of them ended up appearing in, Rapace and Hardy became “good friends” and began looking for a script to make together.
They found it in last year's Brooklyn crime tale The Drop which, in turn, led to the taut thriller Child 44, directed by Daniel Espinosa, which is released today.
Scripted by the acclaimed writer Richard Price (Clockers), it is based on the first in a trilogy of books by the British writer Tom Rob Smith, which tells the story of disgraced intelligence agent Leo Demidov working to solve a series of gruesome child murders in Soviet-era Russia.
According to Rapace, still sporting the dyed-blonde hair from her role, Hardy's performance was far removed from the insular barman he portrayed in The Drop.
"When I worked with Tom on Child 44, he was very different … the whole situation was very different," she says. "I play Raisa, his wife of eight years, but they are like strangers to each other and then, through the story, they start to get to know each other and they actually fall in love. So it's like an awkward love story."
Well, that's one way to describe Child 44 – though don't expect hearts and flowers in this brutal tale of political and personal upheaval. While there's a killer that needs to be caught, Hardy's Leo must also protect Raisa, who has been accused of being a traitor by the authorities.
“I’ve always been drawn to people with cracks inside,” says Rapace.
Then there was the impressive international cast she was working with – including Gary Oldman, Vincent Cassel and Joel Kinnaman.
“We’re a strange group of people,” she laughs. “We don’t belong to anything, just melting into cultures, countries and languages.”
Growing up, Rapace says she experienced similar emotions.
“I always felt like an outsider,” she says, noting that her mother, the actress Nina Norén, is Swedish while her father, the Flamenco singer Rogelio Durán, is from Spain.
Yet since her career took off, Rapace has been embraced by the global film industry – working alongside the likes of Robert Downey Jr (Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows) and Colin Farrell (Dead Man Down).
“I don’t have this dream about Hollywood,” she says. “It’s not like I want to be a big Hollywood star.”
Nevertheless, Rapace has just finished shooting Unlocked with Michael Douglas, a thriller set in London, where Rapace lives with her young son, Lev.
As for Child 44, given there are two more books in the series, would she return to the character?
“There’s definitely a possibility to continue the story about Leo and Raisa, so I guess it always comes down to whether people like the movie or not,” she says. “We haven’t talked about it but the writing is so brilliant and the characters’ lives are so fascinating and amazing – so who knows?”
As long as Hardy’s attached, you suspect she’ll be back.
• Child 44 opens in cinemas across the UAE on Thursday, April 16
artslife@thenational.ae