“I hadn’t been that aware”: the 2014 role that convinced Alexandra Daddario she had sex appeal
Some actors have been upset, offended, or even horrified at the idea of becoming known as a sex symbol, but Alexandra Daddario took it in her stride when she realised that’s what she was becoming.
Obviously, no actor wants to be known and remembered solely for their looks, but Daddario had been completely oblivious to the fact that sex appeal was even a tool in her locker that she could utilise until a provocative scene gained so much attention that it boosted her profile within the industry.
That does sound a little bit seedy, since performing nude opened several doors that had been previously slammed shut, but she was happy to take it. You can possibly see why, since no less of an authority than science has decreed that the one actor in the business more likely to appear in an awful movie than anybody else is, in fact, Alexandra Daddario.
Nobody is obligated to share that opinion, but we’re not the ones who crunched the numbers. While it’s true that she hasn’t been in too many acclaimed films since making her big-screen debut in Noah Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale in 2005, where she was credited as ‘Pretty Girl’, True Detective provided the opportunity to potentially change that.
In the seminal first season of the HBO detective drama, which captured lightning in a bottle that every subsequent run has tried and failed to match, Daddario appeared in four episodes as Lisa Tragnetti, a court stenographer who embarks on an affair with Woody Harrelson’s Marty Hart in the 1990s timeline.
Everything was on show in her suggestive sequences opposite Harrelson, and while Daddario didn’t instantly start getting her kit off every time she was onscreen after that, and her feelings on the concept of nude scenes remain mixed, she was honest enough to reveal what it meant for her professionally.
“I have a lot of thoughts on this topic, but for example, when True Detective came out, and I was naked on the show, and it was huge for my career, and the phone was ringing, and I got some work off it, I think that I hadn’t been that aware of my sex appeal prior to that,” Daddario explained.
“I tried not to take it too seriously,” the star added. “I really love acting, in my heart I’m just a theatre nerd, and I sort of took that and said, ‘This is good for my career’, and embraced it.” She’s got zero regrets from those True Detective scenes, and by her own admission, she even booked a couple of jobs on the back of it.
Shagging a wig-wearing Woody Harrelson on camera may not seem like something that would provide a significant boost to the person forming the other half of the beast with two backs, but in this case, it was.
