Actor Robin Wright is often asked which politician’s wife she based her character Claire Underwood on.
Now in its third season, House of Cards has made the names Frank and Claire Underwood famous. Frank is the president and his First Lady Claire schemed, plotted, deceived and yup, even murdered to get their way into the White House.
So while Claire Underwood has often been compare to Lady MacBeth, but the actor has said she based her character’s demeanour on the way birds of prey behave.
“I didn’t try to emulate anybody. I don’t know anybody in politics; nobody does. We know what their theatre is and what they try to push if it’s a bill and it’s a show and everybody’s got a script. I don’t know anyone personally and I would never position myself or presume that I know a Hillary Clinton. So I went off an animal actually, an American eagle or a hawk, and I watched the behaviour and stillness and nobility and how regal they were in their silence.
Wright said eagles are smart, cunning and rule the roost of the fowl worlds. And they don’t say much.
So I stole a lot from the eagle, because once you get that stillness and physicality everything can be a derivative of that; the way one thinks.
h/t: Hollywood.com, UK Independent
