When Elizabeth Debicki got the call that she landed a role in a new Steve McQueen movie, she said she “plummet(ed) steadily into terror.”
But she managed to come out the other side with aplomb, according to many critics, with the breakout role of her career.
Debicki, 28, plays Alice, a wife-turned-heist-pro in Widows, the season’s stand-out film co-written by McQueen and Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn.
“There were many reasons why she appealed to me but also, honestly, I waited a long time in may career to play somebody who felt as real and authentic and multidimensional as Alice,” Debicki told GQ.
“Something about Alice is: because she’s so abused and so oppressed, her skill, in a way, is empathy,” the Aussie actress continued. “What that does is let her be someone who can read a room and very quickly judge what it is that she needs to give people in order to get what she needs, which is to survive.”
Alice and her fellow widows are tasked with pulling off a heist in order to survive “practically all the social injustices and abuses that plague America right now,” as GQ puts it.
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