Juliette Lewis: It was very hard playing villain without humanity in The Thicket

US actress Juliette Lewis has spoken about the difficulty of playing a character who has “lost their humanity”, following her starring role in western thriller The Thicket opposite Peter Dinklage.

The Oscar-nominated star plays Cut Throat Bill, a ruthless killer who is being tracked down by bounty hunter Reginald Jones (Dinklage) and his band of unlikely heroes in a quest which leads them to deadly “no-mans-land” known as The Thicket.

Cut Throat Bill was originally written as a man in the book by author Joe R Lansdale, however when British director Elliott Lester read the script in 2020, he made the villain a woman.

“It was really great because they gave her such a deep history to pull from,” Lewis told the PA news agency at the red carpet premiere in Los Angeles.

“She had a real tortured past, and you could see how she became so dark, and it was hard to play somebody who lost their humanity.

“And there’s just a pinch of it that you see at the end in that last scene that actually broke my heart when I played it, it was very hard.”

Lewis won an Oscar nomination in 1992 for her role as Danielle Bowden in Martin Scorsese’s psychological thriller Cape Fear.

Filmmaker Lester said that the actress embodied the role of Cut Throat Bill “from the moment she showed up on set to the DVD cover”.

“You’re talking about one of the greatest actresses alive. She’s an icon. She has unbelievable amounts of experience. You kind of let her go,” he told PA.

“You want to build a safe space for the actors to be able to do their work and just give them a little bit of guidance. If you’ve cast right, they’re doing the job for you.”

As well as leading the cast of the film, US star Dinklage also serves as producer.

Lester said the Game Of Thrones star was an “unbelievably supportive” producer, feeling his passion and love for the project during the 22 day shoot in Canada during the winter – which he described as “not easy”.

“All we had was challenges,” Lester said.

“We were shooting in a town, I get a phone call (to say) ‘sorry Elliott half the town’s burnt down you’re going to have to make it work.

“The weather was just shockingly bad. You’d have to be a mountain goat to winter shoot there, but everything that goes wrong, goes wrong and then goes right.

“I don’t really have any PTSD from it.”

The film also stars Metallica frontman James Hetfield as lawman Simon Deasy.

Lester said: “I had a dream and I woke up in the morning and I said, James Hetfield has to be in this movie, just has to be in it.

“I called Peter who said ‘you’re absolutely right, we have to have James Hetfield’.

“…We tracked him down, he was given the script, five days later he said ‘I’m in’. We set up a Zoom call and then he showed up on set.

“He’s an amazing guy to work and he was stepping out of his comfort zone.”

Among those at the Los Angeles premiere was former Victoria’s Secret Angel Adriana Lima, who serves as executive producer on the film alongside her producer boyfriend Andre Lemmers.