The Dames of Sin City

In Theaters Now

What would a crime story be without some dames to drive all the tough guys crazy? Sin City has plenty, from Nancy the stripper to Gail the leader of the Old Town prostitutes to Shellie the waitress. Based on the comic book by Frank Miller, the actresses had some highly stylized images to live up to.

“Robert cast upon what we looked like before we started filming,” said Brittany Murphy, who plays Shellie. Director Robert Rodriguez added, “They were in shape. They were already in shape.”

Rosario Dawson, who plays Gail, cut her hair into a mohawk and wore a slinky outfit that barely contained her bosom. After shooting Alexander, moving onto Rodriguez’s green screen opus was a welcome change of pace.

“Actually, it was a really strange thing because it felt epic in the exact opposite way,” Dawson said. “Because we were actually on location in Morocco and Thailand and we had camels and elephants. Suddenly, I’m in this room with absolutely nothing but my outfit which was actually more than what I wore in Alexander. It was the most opposite thing you could have gone through. And, having two directors, I’m mean it was really amazing. The costume designer just gave me a thing of flowers when I decided I was going to actually wear the outfit.”

Murphy, who either wears an open nightshirt or a saloon girl number, was sure that Rodriguez would make her look good. “It’s just down to the slightest minute detail and this man knows how to shoot women stunningly and beautifully and light them in a way that their bodies look unique and you can't see into the parts that no one wants to see,” she said.

Rodriguez himself complimented the girls’ bravery. “You were all great about coming in and doing it like it was in the book because that was the whole idea,” he said. “I said, ‘Let's start with the book and if doesn't work, then we'll change it and make adjustments,’ but you came in right away and said, ‘This is my costume? Okay, I'll try it on.’ And you loved it and it put you in character and that’s why I really think it worked.”

The girls get slapped around plenty, but dish it back even worse. Dawson challenged anyone who would call the film misogynistic. “When she's standing there and he actually punches her across the face, she actually tries to chop his pecker off,” Dawson said. “All the women working in Old Town, we take care of ourselves. We are very control of what we are. We know what our assets are. We make money off of it. We call the shots, which I think is really powerful. I think it's a very even keel sort of strength between the men and the women. The guys get their balls ripped off and the girls threaten to do it and will. It's a pretty tough town on both sides.”

Murphy added, “I thoroughly agree with everything Rosario just said. If you look at the undertones of Frank Miller's writing, there's a balance to everything. If you’re a true fan of the world of the graphic novel, there’s actually a great balance to his work. There’s also moments with Marv and Carla Gugino's character when she's crying and he says women just need to get it out. I love that part specifically because I find it true and I'm proud to be a woman and femininity is one of my greatest strengths and assets.”

Nancy has a more romantic role in the film. With a crush on the cop (Bruce Willis) who rescued her as a child, Jessica Alba got to play more emotion than violence. “Nancy doesn’t think of him as a father, she thinks of him as her knight in shining armor,” Alba said. “So I just came at it from that point, and she just waited until she was old enough to really be in love with him and have that relationship completely. I think she always looked to him as her soul mate from the beginning. She’s kind of an old soul from when she’s a little child, talking to him and reasoning with him, saying that she’s trying everything and she’s going to write him.”

After 11 years in the business, Alba appreciates that she can finally play meaty roles in films with ethnically diverse casts. “I only used to get breakdowns for Maria, the Janitor’s daughter messing around with the white kid and it was such a classist bizarre thing ‘cause I grew up in the United States. My mother’s white, my father’s Mexican and my father is very dark and my mother is very fair and I came out how did and they always want to pigeonhole you and it’s bizarre and we’re just people living in society. And I never think about it until people make me think about it. And this industry has definitely made me think about me being a Latin girl, up until I was 18 and I did Dark Angel and Jim [Cameron] basically, ‘You are the future of the race.’ And that’s basically what Dark Angel was where you are just a mixture and you’re not going to talk about it. It’s done and you are just a human being going through the struggle of whatever you are going through on your journey. Now it’s very liberating working with people that aren’t going to pigeonhole you as the janitor’s daughter.”

Check out the dames of Sin City in theaters now.