Girl With the Dragon Tattoo's Rooney Mara interview

In this week’s issue of Entertainment Weekly we preview 98 of fall’s most anticipated movies, including, of course, David Fincher’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (out Dec. 21). Rooney Mara, who scored the coveted role of Lisbeth Salander after an epic and closely watched audition process, filled us in on her experience working on the film. Here are a few highlights from our story.

On her last meeting with Fincher after two-plus months of auditioning: “At that point I was just super frustrated. I was like, ‘You have to decide. Either you think I’m the girl or you don’t. There’s not much more I can do to prove it to you.’ I went in there sort of ready to fight. I was pissed. But David sat me down and gave me this long speech about the part. Then he handed me his iPad, and it had the press release on it. He said, ‘I’m prepared to send this out. You have half an hour to let me know if you want the part.’”

On the controversial poster, which features Mara topless: “I was supportive of it. I understand why there was a lot of controversy. People have a hard time with strong females and with nudity. But I think had I been doing something incredibly violent on the poster, people wouldn’t have had a problem with it. That sort of says a lot about the world that we live in. It’s just a teaser poster. I think it did just that. It teased people.”

On filming the book’s notoriously harrowing rape scene: “It was incredibly intense. We did it all in a week — the week of Valentine’s Day, oddly enough. We were working 16 hours a day, and it was really, really challenging, not just emotionally but physically. But it’s such an important scene. We wanted to do everything we could to get that right.”

For more on The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and all of fall’s biggest films, pick up this week’s issue, on newsstands now.

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