From Woody Allen's muse to having his own series, the British actress accompanies Tom Cruise on his latest adventure
There is a long journey from how the daughter of a motivational speaker and a shaman ends up becoming the new great face of a saga like Mission: Impossible. A journey that begins with Woody Allen, continues with Peggy Carter in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and continues with the adventures of Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible. It is the story of Hayley Atwell, an actress who is widely unknown to the general public but who has a lot to prove.
Atwell was born in London in 1982, although she holds dual English and American nationality due to the origins of her father, who is of Native American descent. Following in her mother's footsteps, Atwell entered the Higher School of Speech in London, but she soon became interested in the world of acting and made the decision to enter the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Her only problem was tuition money, which she paid for by doing an advertisement for none other than the Pringles potato brand.
Pringles can claim to have discovered Atwell, but the one who discovered her to the rest of the world was none other than Woody Allen, who chose her for a role in Cassandra's Dream. Eight months after graduating from the acting academy that she had paid for herself, she was already working with one of the most important film directors and combining it with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Her career had only just begun, but she was already aiming high.
The 'Hulk Hayley' who ended up becoming a Marvel super hero
In more than one interview, Atwell has commented that her biggest handicap to succeeding in the industry had nothing to do with her talent or acting ability, but rather with her physical appearance. The same physique that she had pigeonholed since she was young and the one that she was in charge of using while discovering the world of rugby when she was at the School of Public Speaking. “They used to call me Hulk Hayley back then, and I used to fight with the boys,” admits the actress, who ironically would end up becoming involved in the Marvel saga.
Because just 3 years after Woody Allen, the British woman was chosen to accompany Chris Evans in Captain America: The First Avenger, in which she played Peggy Carter. From the first moment she brought to life the special people who help Captain America on his adventures, Atwell's performance was celebrated as one of the most surprising and impressive in the entire MCU. However, once again the actress had to face a handicap, and it was none other than the fact that her character could not follow Cap in the following films, given the time jump.
Even so, Atwell and Marve found a way to make room for Peggy Carter, whether with small cameos in later films such as The Winter Soldier, Age of Ultron or Ant-Man. Such was the producers' trust in the actress and her character was so in demand by the public that Atwell lived a second life with her character on her television, where she starred in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and she even got to have her own series with Agent Carter. Her last appearance was in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness with an alternative version in which she is the Captain with superpowers, but her original character was in the iconic ending of Avengers: Endgame, beautifully closing what they had She and Evans started with the first film.
Hayley the thief
While we don't know if Atwell's time at Marvel is over, the actress wanted to get away from the character she has been living with for years and take the leap somewhere else. A leap in which she has ended up in another great film franchise and, as happened with Chris Evans, to stand up to an action titan like Tom Cruise. In Mission Impossible: Death Sentence she plays Grace, a white-collar thief who crosses the path of Ethan Hunt and his team.
Grace is the latest character to join a list of few but memorable characters, among which is also Lady Bless Foster in The Duchess or Lady Julia Flyte in Brideshead Revisited, for which the anecdote that says that Miramax (the Weinstein brothers' studio) asked him to lose weight for the film. It was her co-star Emma Thompson who convinced him not to submit to it, which added to her strong personality allowed Atwell to move forward. As she did in college in the Hulk Hayley version of her, Atwell moves forward without changing her way of being one bit, and only then has she been able to find her niche, now in a new challenge in which we are I'm sure she won't be too big for him.
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