You could hardly ask for a better movie debut than Chase Infiniti’s in One Battle After Another, even if the 24-year-old actor was very much thrown in at the deep end. As Willa, the teenage daughter of former revolutionaries, she was called on to do shoot-outs, car chases, karate, and to hold her own against heavyweights like Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Benicio del Toro and Regina Hall. “My whole life has literally changed in the last six months,” she says.
Tell us how you got this role? Was there a giant karate tournament where you had to defeat all your rivals?
No, thank God. I did six months of auditioning for the film while I was working on my first project, Presumed Innocent. So I was in California when I sent in my first self-tape. And about a month after that, the casting director called me and was like: “Hey, Paul Thomas Anderson would love to do an in-person callback, and it’s going to be a chemistry read with Leonardo DiCaprio and Regina Hall.” And so after that, I had in-person auditioning, callbacks, chemistry reads and camera tests, and then I had four days of intensive karate training, private lessons and group classes. Paul came to watch the final one, and then after that, he told me I’d got the part.
