On Netflix, Sofia Boutella makes her way to the starring role in Rebel Moon

Sofia Boutella He knows what it means to lose your homeland. Born and raised in Algeria, she was 10 years old when she and her family fled to Paris after Algeria entered civil war.

Now 41, he drew on that formative experience for the sci-fi epic Zack SnyderR Rebel Moon (part one): Catching Fire as Kora, a mysterious woman who has been uprooted from her previous life and must create a new one in a city on a distant moon. Like Kora, Boutella understands what that journey takes away from you and what she gives you in return.

“When you move away from your home country, something very powerful happens,” he says. “I don’t have any feeling of belonging to a territory. But at the same time, I have a very strong feeling of being part of this land and of being connected to it as a whole.”

Before dedicating herself to acting, Sofia danced: as a child she attended ballet lessons in Algeria and found a semblance of stability by continuing with ballet, but also with jazz, contemporary music and hip-hop in France . She also tried rhythmic gymnastics and spent a year on her new country’s national team.

At age 19 she was a dancer in a Nike Women campaign, traveled the world and soon got a job as a stage dancer for Madonnaan experience that changed his life and opened doors for him to work with Rihanna and Usher.

“I was a tomboy when she met me,” Boutella says of Madonna. “She gave me my first pair of high heels.”

During breaks from touring, Sofia pursued her dream of becoming a stage actress by studying with the influential Elizabeth Kemp in Paris and later at Stella Adler’s academy in Los Angeles.

His defining acting moment involved intense action: playing Gazelle, Samuel L. Jackson’s lethal henchman, with swords for feet, in the original 2014 film Kingsman: The Secret Service. That performance led to other action roles, including the title character The Mummy (2017) and Charlize Theron’s spy partner in Atomic (2017).

He got excited

Then it arrived Rebel moon, which recently began streaming on Netflix. When Boutella was called to play Kora, she was excited and anxious at the same time. “I was terrified at first because I wanted to do it well and I was intimidated, but in a challenging way, by being directed by Zack Snyder,” she recalls.

During a recent video interview from a Los Angeles hotel, Sofia spoke about life in Algeria, the connection between dance and acting, and what attracted her to Kora. Edited snippets of that conversation follow here.

-What was it like growing up during a civil war?

-I think, being just a girl, it’s not something you really realize, especially if you haven’t known life any other way. There was a curfew and we heard bomb explosions here and there. It was something that, in a strange way, I was used to. I think for my mother the experience was different. My father already lived in France and traveled a lot. My parents separated when I was 4 years old. But during those 10 years I went to visit him in France. Once I started going to France, I started to see that life was different in other places. But when you’re that young your perception is a little skewed.

-It must have been a huge transition moving to France at 10 years old.

-What I couldn’t predict was the culture shock and how quickly I would have to adapt. I remember going to school the first time and not being able to speak because the amount of information that was constantly being thrown at me was overwhelming.

The only place where I found refuge, where I found commonalities with who I was in Algeria, was art, and when I started dancing again in France, because I felt that there were no differences in this. The whole group spoke the same language and had the same culture, so we were in a more comfortable and similar situation to our country.

But other than that it was a different experience. When we went to school in Algeria everyone wore blouses, so all social classes were the same. But in France we were judged on how we looked and how cool we were, whereas I was definitely not cool.

-What did you like most about dancing?

-It’s basically a whole other form of communication and a different language. What I loved was the ability to let out a lot of what I was feeling. It was a refuge for me. I felt safe. And I felt alive when I danced. It is still so.

-Are you still dancing now?

-I always go dancing. Let’s say it clearly. I dance for the people around me. For my friends, free. I don’t eat work. I’d like to do a dance musical. I don’t know if I will tour as a dancer again. I think those years are a little distant at the moment.

-You have played roles in many action films. Is there anything you like in action movies?

– That’s exactly how it went. When I stopped dancing, I didn’t think, “OK, I’m going to be a person of action.” My love for cinema is genuinely pure, and for theater too. I didn’t think I would do action films at all. When I was hired king I had never practiced martial arts or done fight training in my life. But training in dance gave me the opportunity to learn another physical form, such as martial arts. So I use the same principles of discipline and use of the body and learn the choreography through observation.

-What attracted you to “Rebel Moon”?

-It’s my first leading role. For a long time I told my team that I didn’t want to take leading roles. It was a profound feeling that I was lucky enough to be on set with incredible actors. Starting with Kingsman, Sam Jackson guided me through that experience in an amazing way. And he is still very present in my life.

Then I had the opportunity to work with Zach Quinto and Chris Pine (in Star Trek: Limitless), who elevated me a lot, and then with Tom Cruise, who taught me a lot (in The Mummy), and with Charlize inside Atomic. The only way to continue learning is to have a mentor, and I don’t know if it’s because of my dance experience, but I like being an apprentice.

When I closed the deal for Rebel moon, I remember telling my team that I thought I was ready. As it turns out, Zack Snyder always put such strong women in his films that they had their own voice. I love that for this project he was able to make his protagonist a woman, and not just a really tough woman, but that he gave Kora a real dilemma to overcome, real emotions, very, very deep and complicated.