“I just have this natural ability to play someone that’s superhuman,” says actress Jaimie Alexander, whose own obvious genetic gifts landed her stints as a chromosomally superior teen on the ABC Family series Kyle XY and as Asgardian goddess Sif in the superhero film Thor, due next spring. “That seems to be my career so far.”
Alexander’s warrior womanhood began when she persuaded her Texas high school board to start a female wrestling team. “My pin move was the half nelson because I was so tall,” she says. The experience built the drive and discipline necessary to pursue acting, and eventually she took Hollywood to the mat.
“I had no problem training with five boys in Thor—I was just one of the guys,” says Alexander on tackling six days a week of “crazy stuff you’d see in Ironman competitions.” But she was thrilled director Kenneth Branagh insisted she retain her womanly curves. “In Hollywood you don’t really hear that there is such a thing as too skinny, but the Marvel guys aren’t into the whole stick-figure thing, and I’m not either.”
In more down-to-earth roles, she’s a pharmaceutical rep vying with Anne Hathaway for Viagra salesman Jake Gyllenhaal in Love and Other Drugs, out this month. “I’m the ‘other’ girl, but it was a fun part,” she says. With all due respect to Ms. Hathaway, if the battle for the boy comes to blows, our money is on Ms. Alexander.
