Article taken from New York Post.

She had to be willing to shave her head. That was a deal-breaker.

Natalie Dormer had just received the call every actor wants — she was a contender for the final “Hunger Games” films, “Mockingjay” Parts 1 and 2, for a key role: Cressida, a documentary filmmaker who turns Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) into an icon of the revolution.

In the novel, Cressida’s head is not only shaved, it’s also tattooed with an elaborate vine. Would Dormer, who’s known for playing bewitching characters — Margaery Tyrell on “Game of Thrones,” Moriarty on “Elementary” — sacrifice her lovely mane?

Dormer, 32, did what she always does: She convened her friends. “We went round the dinner table, and the opinion was unanimous,” she says by phone from Los Angeles. “You’d have to be an idiot to say no to ‘Hunger Games.’ And hair grows back.”

Ultimately, director Francis Lawrence decided Cressida would look edgier if she shaved only one side of her head.
For the next nine months, as the two films shot back to back, Dormer buzzed half her skull every day, and rocked some funky red carpet experiments by night. (“The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 1” opens Nov. 21.)

“It was liberating, actually,” Dormer says now. “It’s interesting how much we women perceive that our sense of attractiveness or physical allure is to do with our hair.” She laughs.

“Though it was chilly — there were too many polar vortexes this past winter for my liking. And it does feel peculiar when you lie on one side, then roll over.”

Dormer, who was raised in Reading, England, need not fret about her allure. Hers is a startling beauty, sloe-eyed and curvy-lipped. Her voice is musical, posh without being pretentious.

In profile she can look as serene as a cameo brooch — which explains why she’s often cast in roles such as Anne Boleyn, whom she played in the Showtime series “The Tudors.” But with a twist of Dormer’s lip or a narrowing of her eyes, things turn mischievous. The sexuality she radiates is confident, even challenging, not kittenish.

“I have been blessed to play women who are sexually competent. They know how to use it,” Dormer says. “Margaery Tyrell is a Kate Middleton/Michelle Obama hybrid, a first lady/princess, trying to win over hearts and minds. The Princess Di effect, you may call it. And Anne Boleyn had to use the tools women had back then. So it will be interesting to see what people think of Cressida. She looks cool, but she’s not a woman who’s defined by a romance or a man.”

“Isn’t it a shame,” Dormer continues, “when women feel they have to rely on sexuality as their default mode? Sometimes a woman’s looks or sensuality are too readily wrapped up in their power.

“When I wake up on a Sunday morning with a slight hangover, in the gym with no makeup on, that’s who Natalie Dormer really is. The girl next door who gets a spot on her forehead occasionally. I would embrace the opportunity to play more of those kinds of girls, who don’t have that arsenal” of sexuality.

As amused as she is between takes on “Game of Thrones,” “when we’re all ordering soy lattes, pulling our cigarettes out of our boots and iPhones out of our stockings,” Dormer’s dream job at the moment would be one where she’d wear regular clothes, and need only a half-hour in the makeup trailer.

Her personal style is “classic femininity with an edge,” a London gal in love with scarves, jackets, Rag & Bone jeans (which she buys whenever she’s in Nolita), boots, Paul Andrew heels and hats.
For basics, her go-to designers are Zadig & Voltaire, AllSaints and Topshop; to amp it up she relies on “a loooong list,” including Marios Schwab, Nicholas Oakwell, Roksanda Ilincic, Temperley, J. Mendel, Prabal Gurung, Isabel Marant and Dior.

For today’s photo shoot, however, Dormer arrived in something cheeky: a T-shirt emblazoned with She-Ra, a cartoon princess whose alter ego is a superhero.

“She holds up her sword and cries, ‘I have the power!’” Dormer says merrily.

She can relate.

A self-described “physical girl,” Dormer is happiest when she’s cooking dinner parties for friends; spending time with her boyfriend of seven years, director Anthony Byrne (she’s protective of their privacy); doing yoga; cycling with her brother and sister in the countryside; or jogging by the Thames near her home in southwest London.

She ran the London marathon in April (that training helped her on “Mockingjay,” when she was “carrying a semiautomatic rifle, trying to keep up with the likes of Liam Hemsworth”), and hopes to do New York’s next year.

No lightning-bolt moment led Dormer to become an actress — “it was just there, in my bones,” she says.

As a girl, she spent countless hours playing with the wooden dress-up box her grandfather made her, which the women in her family filled with their old clothes.

“It was the ’80s, so there were bright-colored stilettos in there, rah-rah skirts, a lot of shoulder- padded jackets,” Dormer says. “All the stuff that’s back in fashion right now, actually. I never played with dolls. I’d act out scenes and characters and play all of them to myself.”

Now she’s on a steep curve upward, and she knows it. (Her next project is the pandemic thriller “Patient Zero,” which she’ll shoot in the new year.)

“I’m very much in the middle of where my career was 18 months ago, and where it will be in 18 months’ time. It’s exciting, and I’ve worked hard to be in this privileged position, where I can start making interesting choices.” Dormer says. “But I always want to be a human first and an actress second.”

(She’s full of praise for how her co-star Lawrence handles fame: “She’s everything that people perceive her to be — grounded, down to earth, with a buoyant energy and a fantastic sense of humor.”)

So it’s no surprise that Dormer is loving her early 30s, which she calls an empowering age for a woman.

“You know who you are,” she says. “A lot of the anxieties of your 20s, and the neuroses of trying to prove yourself — ‘What do I want?’ ‘I’m not good enough’ — are gone, and you start to feel comfortable with your foibles and your strengths. You’re working it out, with less judgment on yourself.”

Recently, Dormer became a godmother, and in the not-too-distant future, she hopes to start a family.

“My sister just began a three-year midwifery course, and the idea of her helping me to deliver a baby at the end of it is a really lovely one,” she says.

Someone on Dormer’s end of the line interrupts her, and she bursts out laughing. “That’s my team,” she says, back on the phone. “They’re saying, ‘Just hold off with the womb right this second.’”
It seems Dormer has a bit more warrior-princessing to do first.