It’s been a good year forTeresa Palmer. Earlier this year, she proved to be one of the most alluring characters to be wandering around inTerence Malick’s visionaryKnight of Cups, playing a stripper who seduces and travels along withChristian Bale’s troubled screenwriter to Las Vegas. It’s the best work the young actress has done yet, though she proved equally endearing inJohn Hillcoat’s enveloping yet problematicTriple 9, where she played the wife of good-copCasey Affleckas he chased after a gang of high-end bank robbers. She also appeared inThe Choice, the latest melodramatic tale of tortured romance to be spurred from the work ofNicholas Sparks. And mind you, she’s got another three or four films coming out by the end of this year, at least one of which has the chance of Oscar attention.
While on the red carpet for this year’s CinemaCon, Palmer stopped to talk with Collider’s own Steve Weintraub about two of those projects, specificallyLights Out, the highly anticipated horror film from producerJames Wan, andHacksaw Ridge, the long awaited and frankly unlikely new directorial effort fromMel Gibson. On the former picture, which was expanded to a feature from writer-directorDavid F. Sandberg’s celebrated short, Palmer discussed why she liked the finished product more than the script that she originally received, and pointed out one scene that she found particularly memorable, if only because the shot - involving a tattoo-parlor neon sign - took so long to get right. After that, she switched gears to talk aboutHacksaw Ridge, which she suggested might be the best film she’s worked on yet, before she went onto praise the performance of her co-star, the surpassingly talentedAndrew Garfield. She was so enamored with his performance that she even inferred that he’s a lock for an Oscar win which, to be fair, he’s been long overdue for.
Lights Outwill hit theaters nationwide on July 22nd, whereasHacksaw Ridgeis currently scheduled to see release sometime this Fall/Winter, in the middle of Oscar season.
