LOS ANGELES, (Reuters Life!) – As a little girl Amanda Seyfried avoided reading old fables such as “Little Red Riding Hood” because they scared her, which seems ironic now.
On Friday, the 25-year-old embodied the little girl with the red hood and cloak in a film version, “Red Riding Hood,” of the famous fairy tale. While she is no longer afraid of old stories with scary creatures, she is nervous about taking on an iconic role that is ingrained in western culture and has been written and rewritten hundreds of times.
“Carrying the cape, playing the iconic title role — you do have a responsibility to wear it well,” she told Reuters. “It’s such an age-old story and so cemented in our childhood that it was scary to try to take that on.”
In the fable, Red Riding Hood and her grandmother are gobbled up by a wolf before a hunter comes to their rescue.
The story had a frightful impact on Seyfried, the actress said, because her own grandma took care of her after school and Seyfried saw her almost every day of the week.
The movie updates that age-old tale with new fantasy and special effects. It is set in a medieval village whose people are haunted by a wolf that takes human form, but is a killer.
The villagers band together in a hunt and soon begin to suspect each other of being the wolf. As the man/wolf’s body count gets higher, so does the villagers’ panic and paranoia.
Red Riding Hood is a young girl named Valerie (Seyfried) who loves a woodcutter named Peter (Shiloh Fernandez) but is expected to marry another man, the wealthy Henry (Max Irons).
Complicating matters is that Valerie discovers she has a special connection to the wolf, and that its identity could be someone very close to her, perhaps even someone she loves.
DICAPRIO IS PERSUASIVE
“Red Riding Hood” was directed by Catherine Hardwicke, whose last film “Twilight” became a phenomenon that launch-ed the billion-dollar movie franchise about teenage romance and vampires that is still going strong today.
Adding to Seyfried’s trepidation about the part were feelings of intimidation about working with Hardwicke, given the success of the “Twilight” movies. But the film’s producer, Leonardo DiCaprio, convinced Seyfried to take the role.
He also assured the actress that she and Hardwicke would be the perfect pair to build and expand upon on the fairy tale, which is now a coming-of-age story with supernatural elements.
