Jennifer Garner (left) and George on “Alias.” (2003 ABC, INC.)
Modesty was not an issue on “Grey’s Anatomy.” (ABC via Getty Images)
On the new Cinemax original series “Hunted,” globe-trotting spy Sam Hunter has a lot on her plate: deceiving bad men, killing some of them, and after she’s left for dead on a mission, sussing out which ones are hiding in the very private security firm she works for.
When Perth, Australia, native Melissa George recorded herself on tape for the audition, however, she made the unusual choice of highlighting Sam’s vulnerable side. “I choked up before I even pressed ‘record,’ ” says George, 36.“I understood what most people probably didn’t understand about her, which is, if she’s gotten to this place in her life, what happened to her? The toughness comes with the dialogue, but the softness was all I had to play. I was touched by her.”
Her approach was enough to wow creator/executive producer Frank Spotnitz, no stranger to steely female characters from his years writing Gillian Anderson’s Agent Scully character on “The X-Files.” When he set about to write a London-based series about a female super-agent, a traumatic past was an integral part of the character’s baggage. But in the global search for the right actress, displays of ice and toughness were dominating the tryouts, until George.
“Everybody just seemed to play that hardness, which was not interesting and wasn’t who I thought Sam was,” says Spotnitz, who joins George for a conversation at Hollywood’s Chateau Marmont about his leading lady. “The second I saw Melissa’s tape, I knew. She has that coldness, but you always see in her eyes a real person behind that. I saw a lot going on, and I was moved. And you needed that. There’s no show without that.”
Spotnitz also says that George’s self-awareness concerning what nuances the camera can pick up is especially noteworthy. George herself brings up the subject of her full lips. “I can’t do much with my face, because my lips will explode on screen,” she jokes. When Sam goes undercover as a vivacious, friendly romantic interest, she realized how easily she could transform back to severe, serious Sam. “We did this thing where Sam just closed her lips, and it transformed my face. I can change my face just by closing my mouth.”
But there’s also no “Hunted” without the requisite action, which involved George learning a fighting technique called keysi, a hard-edged version of martial arts used in the recent Batman and James Bond movies. Training was gladiator-style, says George. “There’d be ropes, and I’d drag carts of metal along the ground, stuff that trains your core to the point where whatever [the show] threw at me, I’d be able to do.”
George, who complements her model-like beauty with a chatty, gregarious demeanor, is no stranger to bruising physicality for a role — she played a spy on ABC’s hit “Alias,” and was just edged out by Angelina Jolie for the role of Lara Croft in the film adaptation of “Tomb Raider.”
“I actually don’t like shooting violence and hurting people,” she says. “But I don’t know, I keep getting cast in them, so I must be OK at it. But my family is so confused. They’re like, ‘You’re so sweet. We don’t get it!’”
Her other qualification for action storytelling, however, is a little more rarefied: George was a roller-skating champion in childhood, taking silver in the Junior World Championship at the age of 14. “I do triples and back flips,” she lets on, casually. “So jumping and doing a kick at the end of a twirl? OK, fine. I’ll do that.”
She’d love to teach underprivileged kids the joys of skating someday, but for now George, who divides her time between New York and Paris, can occasionally be found rolling off steam at the High Line’s rink. Occasionally she gets recognized. Says George, “People will say, ‘How did you learn that?’ and I go, ‘It’s a long story.’”
It’s been a long career, too, and with “Hunted,” what George has come to realize is that television has proven especially good for her. It gave her her first break 20 years ago, when she was cast at 16 in Australia’s popular soap “Home and Away.” TV work also raised her profile in America with “Alias” and a stint on “Grey’s Anatomy,” and led to a Golden Globe nomination for her performance as a sexy, damaged patient on HBO’s “In Treatment.” She also garnered acclaim for her role last year as an insecure, polarizing mother on the Down Under miniseries “The Slap,” which aired in America on DirecTV.
“The roles are in television,” says George, who is excited about possibly being in Berlin in February filming a second season of “Hunted.” “I make a lot of films, but every time I do TV, it changes something for me. Things get better for my career.”
HUNTED
Saturday, 10 p.m., Cinemax