Natalie Dormer would’ve shaved whole head for ‘Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1’

TORONTO – Natalie Dormer says she would have shaved her entire head for a role in “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1.”

Luckily, the “Game of Thrones” actress only had to buzz half her long locks to play Cressida in the latest chapter of the hit dystopian fantasy series.

“It’s funny how being an actor forces you to do things or go places that you wouldn’t ordinarily,” the 32-year-old English actress said in a recent telephone interview. “You learn something about yourself and ultimately I found it quite liberating, to be honest.”

Cressida is a director who films Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) in an effort to encourage strength and morale among the rebels. She and her camera crew become constant companions of Katniss as she leads the rebellion against the Capitol.

Dormer admitted she felt nervous about shaving half her head, but once she had done the deed she felt surprisingly free.

“Women have a lot of… attitudes enforced in us about our sense of attractiveness being bound up in long, flowing, Hollywood kind of hair. So it’s kind of liberating to play a woman who is all about her profession,” she said.

“The beauty of ‘The Hunger Games’ and also ‘Game of Thrones,’ in fairness, both projects have really complex, three-dimensional, contradictory, strong women… The writing of female characters is extraordinary and equal to the men.”

Dormer is known to fans of the HBO series as Margaery Tyrell, the politically cunning and ambitious wife of King Joffrey Baratheon. The actress also portrayed Anne Boleyn in Showtime’s “The Tudors.”

But asked why she is often cast as the femme fatale, Dormer said she isn’t sure.

“For me, it’s not necessarily interesting to play a strong, fearless woman. It’s interesting to play a woman who is terrified and then overcomes that fear. It’s about the journey. Courage is not the absence of fear, it’s overcoming it,” she said.

“Women are as complex, contradictory human beings as men are, and I know I’m a bundle of contradictions and have my good days and bad days. That’s what I look for in a script — really interesting, ambiguous, ambivalent three-dimensional characters. Margaery certainly has that.”

As for Cressida, Dormer said her character’s motivations are unclear at the start of “Mockingjay, Part 1.”

“Does she really believe in Katniss? Does it matter if she doesn’t? She wants a revolution, but does she care about Katniss Everdeen? You watch her grow and learn things about herself and believe in Katniss. I think it’s a brilliant journey,” she said.

The final book of Suzanne Collins’ “The Hunger Games” was split into two parts for the screen. “Mockingjay, Part 2” will open in November 2015, but the cast and crew shot both films as “one big story,” Dormer said.

The actress said she enjoys being both mentally and physically challenged by her work. She ran in the London Marathon before beginning shooting on the films, which she said turned out to be great training for the intense action scenes.

She added that Lawrence, the Oscar-winning star of “The Hunger Games,” was a “joy” to work with.

“She wears the mantle of being one of, if not the most, sought-after actresses in Hollywood at the moment. She wears it very well, in a grounded, humble, humorous, human way.

“She is a joker. She makes everyone laugh. She keeps morale up. That’s very important in a lead when you’re shooting for nine months with really long, intensive days, sometimes in incredibly difficult physical situations.”

“The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1” opens Friday across Canada.

— Follow @ellekane on Twitter.