“When I met with Bryan, I was really freaked out because I had never been in anything so big,” recalls Bosworth. “I didn’t know if I’d be completely giving up my privacy. I sat down with him and I said, ‘I think you’re going to make an amazing film, and I’m such a huge fan of yours, but I don’t really feel like I’m ready for something of this magnitude, so good luck and thank you very much. I appreciate your time.’”
Singer (X-Men, The Usual Suspects) convinced Bosworth to sign on by emphasizing that the characters were more important to his story than the special effects. “That said,” says the director, “it’s a little strange and overwhelming—the scope of these films, the sets and the rigs and the army of people involved. It’s intimidating. But I call Kate the Machine—the Acting Machine. She turns it on, and suddenly she’s a working mom and a fiancée with a long-lost love who’s Superman. And the moment we’re done, she becomes a 23-year-old girl again.”
On set in Australia, where she lived on her own for a full year during the shoot, Bosworth says her uncertainty continued. “Up until I had two months in the can, I was waiting to be replaced,” she insists. (She had to dangle from the rafters, free-fall and fly in a harness while looking “romantic and idealistic for hours, even when everything starts to go numb.”) “When there’s so much money involved, and so much pressure, you sort of wonder, When is the real actress supposed to come in and take over?”
It’s hard to believe that Bosworth, who has spent nearly a decade in the business, would be so self-doubting, especially opposite newcomer Brandon Routh, who plays Clark Kent and his alter ego. But in contrast to the transparent false modesty that celebrities often use to mask their outsize egos, Bosworth’s insecurities seem real, and she confides that they’re exacerbated by the interview process. “You’re being asked things and you’re wondering if you’re sounding somewhat eloquent or like a complete idiot,” she says. “I almost envy people who say whatever they want. They don’t give a s---. They don’t have any guards.”
Bosworth herself has plenty. At one point she says she loves to be “passionate.” About what? “I knew you’d ask that, and all of a sudden I don’t know.” Later, I ask her where she goes from here, and she begins discussing her flight back to Los Angeles. When I tell her that’s obviously not what I’m asking, she says, “Well, it’s easier to answer it that way.”
