We talk to Kate Bosworth about the role of Lois Lane in Superman Returns and how she views her career so far…

Q. Obviously Superman is incredibly iconic but so is Lois Lane. How did you go about creating that role for yourself, especially since everyone remembers Margot Kidder very fondly?
Kate Bosworth: I think for me that was one of the most challenging things – maintaining an essence of what Margot had created in terms of Lois Lane’s more traditional feistiness and independence. But there was obviously a lot of new elements. She now has a son and has had different life experiences that she hadn’t had before. Her heart’s been broken, she’s gone through a tremendous amount of pain, confusion and anger. I think Margot Kidder’s performance was fantastic because she’s a Lois that had probably never been in love before, or that had never been hurt. She was kind of in a situation where she’s so excited about life that she had the world at her feet and was living that innocence. I wanted her to feel changed in a way because she has been. When you have children, the focus is less on yourself and more on another little person and I think gaining battle wounds in life causes one to be less open with themselves and to be a little bit more guarded. So it was really just finding the balance of that.

Q. Did you do much researching with journalists for your role?
Kate Bosworth: Well, actually the way that I studied journalists was while they were interviewing me rather than following someone around an office like the Daily Planet. That’s because when someone knows that you’re watching them, they’re not acting like they normally would. It surprised me that a lot of people when they depict journalists are quite crazy and over the top, but when you’re doing an interview like this it’s usually very still. Maybe it’s one tick, like the way you’re holding your pen, which I did a lot in the film. But journalists are usually very still because they’re listening.

Q. Did it provide a useful insight into the other side of the coin – that maybe journalists aren’t always looking for the next nasty question?
Kate Bosworth: Well, you can tell that from walking into a room. When I sit down I can usually tell from the first or second question whether I’m going to be more open and have a good time, or if I’m hardly going to answer at all. Sometimes I can see the article already written and they just want me to give the headline.

Q. Is acting everything you thought it would be?
Kate Bosworth: I actually had no expectations. I loved watching people perform when I was little. I was living in Conneticut for a couple of years and my parents would take me on the train to New York to see Broadway plays quite often. I was just so enamoured with the actors and felt so sucked in in every way. When I did fall into acting when I was 14 it was because of my love of horses, really. I was an equestrian showjumper and I loved it; I wanted to go the Olympics. Boys didn’t exist, comic books didn’t exist, nothing existed except for horses at that point. The reason why I auditioned for The Horse Whisperer was because there was an open casting call for riders and, to be honest, I thought I could get out of school and ride every day. The idea of entertaining wasn’t really in focus for me. I literally got on set and had such an incredible experience. Robert Redford was my director, I was 14 but I don’t think I really appreciated it then. To me, he was just an old person. I didn’t see him as this renowned movie star. But he and I shared a real love of horses so I think we connected on a level that was very different. I wasn’t really an actress at point. I was a girl who just loved to be there, who loved to ride, who was excited. So it’s a learning process and it can be really weird at times.

Q. Did you just fall into it after that?
Kate Bosworth: It was so strange. The older I get, the more I kind of realise how amazing the story is because I just didn’t want to do it while I was in High School. I was going to a new school and lot of things were changing for me. First of all, I was coming into my own as a young woman which, as we all know, is insane and I was moving schools going into my first year at High School. I didn’t know anyone and I did not want to become known as “the actress”. I just said that I wanted to finish school and I didn’t want to be missing out on things that to me, as a 15-year-old girl, were important. I’d had one tiny, tiny scene in a film that happens all the time and nobody ever works again. So I literally didn’t work for years. There were the occasional things I’d get sent that I really liked and somehow I’d get them. I shot a TV series called Young Americans over a summer one year. That helped me to learn things here and there. Remember The Titans was a tiny role. I remember there was this one amazing opportunity for this film that I really loved, I’d worked so hard to get it. But then I realised when they were putting the schedule together that I would miss my Prom and my graduation. But I didn’t want to get to a stage perhaps one day when I have a daughter where she asks what my Prom was like and I’d say: “I don’t know, I was shooting a film.” I didn’t want to have that conversation when I didn’t need to. Now it’s exciting, it’s complicated and weird – a lot of things – but I really didn’t have any expectations.

Q. What did you expect from this movie?
Kate Bosworth: I tried so hard not to think about it. I’ve never been involved with something on the scale of Superman or Batman or X-Men. Bryan [Singer] knew that there was a fanbase that gets very upset about the size of the ass and the wave of the hair, certain details that they get really passionate about. For me, it’s more about the character and the performance. But obviously she [Lois] is established and people do have their opinions on it, so that was when I got nervous. I felt the expectation. But Bryan is the type of director that when he casts someone he sees the whole picture, so I had to trust him and myself. If I was sitting there being worried about other people’s opinions, it wasn’t going to work anyway. You know, I’m 23 and I’m still learning. I felt like a learned a lot from this experience. It was a lot of unknowns for me and I did my best. I had a great time doing it – it was one of my favourite experiences, if not the most favourite that I’ve had.

Q. How was your relationship with Bryan Singer?
Kate Bosworth. I trusted him blindly but also felt comfortable enough to talk to him about anything. He became a very good friend to me as well, which makes that relationship more intimate and understanding. I know this is Brandon’s first film but he was already working on his character for so long before we even went to Australia, so I kind of felt like the new kid with Kevin [Spacey] and Parker [Posey]. So I felt completely comfortable to be able to talk to Bryan about anything. There was an immediate connection. Even if he had a car hanging from a crane ready to explode, or whatever and it was costing a lot of money per minute, if I had a question it didn’t matter what it was, he’d answer it in that moment.

Q. Was it difficult playing a mother?
Kate Bosworth: It’s always challenging to play something that you haven’t had the experience of. I played Dawn in Wonderland to be a crack addict, which is obviously something I’ve never had the experience of. But I loved that psychological sampling. Playing a mom was something I felt a little bit more comfortable with in this one because in Beyond The Sea I played from 15 to 30 and was a mother by the end. So that was the one where I went, “what do I do?” In this one, it was so much more involved with my character and Tristan literally became my adoptive child – and I his mum. It was an extraordinary relationship and I was so thankful every day. It could have been a child cast that didn’t really understand that I was just playing their mum. But he was just so open and beautiful. He was so sweet. When we were at the LA premiere, I turned around and he was in this little top hat and he handed me a rose. If I said that I’d bumped my hand in the airplane sequence, he’d ask to see and then kiss it. He was very loving.

Read the review

Read our interview with Brandon Routh

Read our interview with Kevin Spacey

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