The one movie Kate Mara admits was awful
Some of the greatest actors of contemporary cinema simply don’t get the credit they deserve, with the likes of Riz Ahmed, KiKi Layne and Toni Collette each having had recent performances that have gone under the radar. A similar Hollywood star is Kate Mara, the star of Netflix’s House of Cards, who has worked with such filmmakers as Josh Trank, Ang Lee, Ridley Scott and Danny Boyle.
First showing her face in the industry in the late 1990s, Mara started to genuinely find her feet in the new millennium, taking roles in such TV shows as Nip/Tuck, Jack & Bobby and 24. In time, Hollywood came calling, with Mara being offered roles in 2010’s Happythankyoumoreplease, the Marvel flick Iron Man 2 and Boyle’s Oscar nominee 127 Hours.
But, her tiny role in Iron Man 2 would pave the way for her starring role in another superhero movie in the coming years. Alas, her appearance as Sue Storm in 2015’s Fantastic Four wasn’t exactly the big break that she might have hoped for, with the flick going down as one of the worst movies of the entire 21st century, largely thanks to a disastrous production process.
Reflecting on her experience in the movie, she told The Times: “You don’t always have to learn some incredible life lesson when making a shit movie. Sometimes it’s just what happens…[Fantastic Four] was a tricky shoot, but you know… When you know when you’re shooting it that a film isn’t going to be what you want it to be? That was not the case at all.”
Written and directed by Josh Trank, the movie was known for being plagued with issues behind the scenes, leaving little at all for actors Michael B. Jordan, Jamie Bell, Toby Kebbell, Miles Teller or Mara to salvage. Four years after the release of the movie, Disney and Marvel regained the rights to the Fantastic Four and the X-Men after acquiring 21st Century Fox, leaving the 2015 movie to gain total irrelevance.
Still, the release of the film certainly wasn’t helped by Trank, who wrote on Twitter, “A year ago I had a fantastic version of this. And it would’ve received great reviews…You’ll probably never see it. That’s reality though,” just one night before the release of the movie. Mara called the move “highly disappointing” before adding that the bad reviews made her “a little gun-shy” about seeing the movie.
Take a look at the greatest scenes of Mara’s Storm in 2015’s Fantastic Four below.
