‘Tomb Raider”s Hayley Atwell on her version of Lara Croft being a sex symbol

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"I didn't feel that there was anything problematic for me at all"

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Hayley Atwell is the new voice of Lara Croft. She’ll be portraying the adventurer in Netflix‘s Tomb Raider: The Legend Of Lara Croft and is well aware of the legacy of the character.

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Croft was voted the most iconic character in gaming after a recent BAFTA poll, so Atwell knows she has big shoes to fill. In an interview with RadioTimes, Atwell discussed the history of Croft – from being written by women to her status as a sex symbol for men, and how she felt about this new iteration of the heroine.

“When the offer first came in, they had shown me some images, references, stills to kind of get a look of the place, and also what Lara looked like,” Atwell said. “I really liked her strength. I didn’t feel that there was anything problematic for me at all.”

Atwell says this version of Croft still has the physicality the character is known for: “Her physicality and her aesthetic feel like a natural byproduct of what she does, rather than how she wants to be perceived in the world under the male gaze.”

Atwell has also played action roles as Peggy Carter in the MCU and Grace in Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning, so Croft should be a natural fit for her. Still, voice acting is different to being able to use your full body and having a whole cast and crew with you to bounce off of.

“Nothing really prepares you other than gaining technical skill or the confidence of going, ‘I’ve done lots of things in the past that I didn’t know how to do at the time, I just threw myself into it, and I can see what happens.'”

Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft was released on Netflix today, October 10.

In other news, a Halo Infinite sequel was reportedly cancelled when the studio switched to Unreal Engine 5.