"I don't look upon Sorsha as a mythical character. To me, she is a real person," explains actress Joanne Whalley. "One of the things I liked about the script was that it was so real and earthy. The characters are not sword-and-sorcery; they are real people with very real emotions."

Sorsha and Madmartigan wait outside Nockmaar castle to see what Bavmorda's next trick will be.

Pivotal in the balance between the forces of good and evil in the magical world of Willow, Sorsha is the daughter of the evil Queen Bavmorda (Jean Marsh). Dispatched to find a baby who has the potential of eventually overthrowing her mother's deadly grip on the land, Sorsha finds the child protected by Willow Ufgood (Warwick Davis), a member of the Nelwyn race, and a seedy-looking warrior named Madmartigan (Val Kilmer). The warrior princess reacts to some spark she sees within Madmartigan and finds herself torn between serving her wicked mother and loving the hero.

"Sorsha, basically, is a warrior," Whalley explains. "She is a young girl who lives with her evil mother in Nockmaar Castle. She often fails to please her mother because, deep down inside, she has a good heart. When she sets off on this mission, she is thrown into confusion. There's something about Madmartigan, Willow and Elora Danan, the baby, that gives her a crisis of identity. She doesn't understand all the good thoughts and feelings of love that she experiences.

"Sorsha has a love-hate relationship with Madmartigan until she finally comes down on the side of love--to the everlasting anger of her mother, Queen Bavmorda."

When Whalley began work on Willow, she was also in a stage production of Three Sisters in London--adventure by day, Chekov by night. Whalley is a star of the English stage and a veteran of both the National and Greenwich Theatres. Her work has also extended to television and films, including the features Dance with a Stranger, A Christmas Carol, No Surrender and The Good Father. Yet despite all her experience, the actress admits, "I have never worked on an adventure story such as this one, but I have enjoyed every minute of it. Willow couldn't be more different from everything I have done since I made my professional debut at age 12."

An uneasy alliance exists between Kael and Sorsha as they attempt to retrieve the baby.

There was some time spent in preparation for her Willow role but Whalley confesses, "I had a number of sword-fighting lessons and I read the script a lot, but that was it. You could do no more. There's nobody I know on whom I could specifically base this part. What's so good about Sorsha is that there are elements of everybody in her. That's what is so real about it, that's why I like it.

"When I arrived at the studio for the first couple of script read-throughs, I formulated my own concept about the story and how my role should be performed. Once we started filming and when all the characters in the story took flesh and became real, that was wonderful. Things never quite happen as you imagine they would when you read the script for the first time. So, it was exciting to see the story actually take shape."

Later, when Whalley went with the cast and crew to shoot large portions of the film in New Zealand, much of her time was spent on horseback. Fortunately, Whalley says, "I have ridden horses since I was about 10, so that side of the story didn't worry me. Admittedly, I ride much better now. That's good because I had to ride so many different horses and had different things to do, like riding in deep snow on a New Zealand mountain or firing a bow-and-arrow from the saddle at full gallop while controlling the horse with my legs. I really had to be very proficient in order to play the scene without worrying about the horse. Riding two on a horse through the canyons in New Zealand became quite uncomfortable after a couple of hours. And the snow and cold atop a New Zealand mountain came as a bit of a shock after leaving England in summertime. But, we were looked after very well and any discomfort was dismissed.

"As for the sword-fighting, I was a complete novice at the film's beginning, but [swordsmaster] Bill Hobbs is a real genius. He could teach anyone.