Every time we’ve seen Australian model Megan Gale over the years, she’s looked completely polished and glamorous. She rarely has a hair our of place. Now, for her acting role in Mad Max: Fury Road, Megan is going from pretty to gritty to show how serious she is about her new career path.
“People see me with brands like David Jones and L’Oreal where I wear make-up and it’s all about glamour and a lot of styling is involved, so I really wanted to depart from that,” Megan explained to The Daily Telegraph.
The 39-year-old model plays the role of Valkyrie, the youngest member of the Vuvalini tribe, who is a character that director George Miller wrote especially for the franchise so the model could be involved.
“We first sat down with the script a few years ago … then he came to me and said, ‘I would love you to be a part of this film but I don’t have a role for you. The lead is being played by Charlize [Theron], the tribe of women called the Vuvalini are much older than you and The Wives are very fragile and delicate and I think you are going to be too strong’,” she explained.
“Then he came back a year later and said, ‘I have written a character for you’.” Much to Megan’s delight, the character’s look was miles apart from her usual red-carpet appeal.
“I was thrilled when they told me they were going to age my skin and give me scars and that my hair was going to be knotty, I was like, ‘bring it on’,” she said.
“[It] is not typical of what you would expect someone like me to do,” Megan told The Daily Telegraph. “I wanted to go as rough and raw as possible.”
One of the most “raw” things she did was slide down a rope nude, for her first scene in the film, but apparently that wasn’t as nerve-racking as working with Charlize. “I was nude, I had a stunt and day one was my first scene with Charlize Theron and I was more nervous about that than my nude scene; she is a frigging Oscar winner,” Megan said.
Megan has been slowly moving away from modelling and towards acting since 2007, when she fielded a call from Hollywood.
“When I was in Italy, I was doing so many TV commercials, they were kind of like short films, and a few directors and producers over there said you should give acting a go,” Megan explained. “So in 2007 I thought maybe I should pull away a bit from modelling.”
Mad Max: Fury Road hits Australian cinemas on Wednesday, May 14.
[Via The Daily Telegraph]
