"I don't remember sitting down and saying, 'This is why I want to be an actress.' I just knew," says Joanne Whalley, who stars as Sorsha in the Ron Howard-George Lucas fantasy film, Willow. "It was never a conscious decision or a revelation."

What could be menacing Sorsha the warrior woman? An awesome army? An eerie Eborsisk? Nope, it's probably a plank, Whalley reveals.

Willow is Whalley's first genre film. In her brief career, she has been very active in television, movies and the stage in her native Great Britain.

"I've been in a few small British films, No Surrender and The Good Father, and I've done British television, including a series currently showing in some parts of the U.S. called The Singing Detective," she explains. "Apart from things like that, I've done quite a bit of stage work in England. When we started rehearsing for Willow--in the midst of working with the swordmaster--in the evenings, I was doing Chekov's The Three Sisters. That was quite an odd combination."

It has been a distinguished career, too, as the reference to Anton Chekov suggests, but a career that apparently came without much planning. "I never studied acting. It was just what I always wanted to do from the time I was very little. I can't remember a time when I wanted to do anything else," Whalley admits. "I was very lucky. I got my union card early. I've worked with some very interesting people, doing most of my stage work at the Royal Court Theatre. I've been nominated for the Olivier Award [Britain's Tony] for some of my stage appearances. The things I have done up to now have been fairly serious.

"Willow is very much a departure for me, in terms of the kind of project it is, and its scale. It's a big film," she explains. "That was all quite a shock. I never felt overpowered, just very excited. I had a great time. Horseback riding is one of my passions, and I got to ride some great horses in the film. I got to learn fencing, which I now love. So rarely do girls get an opportunity to do that sort of thing."

Whalley's character, Sorsha, goes through something of a transformation in Willow. "She begins the film as a representative of her mother, but she goes through various changes," the actress agrees. "By the movie's end, she's quite a different person from the one we met at the beginning."

Val Kilmer only had to worry about losing his bachelorhood. When Joanne Whalley stepped onto a set, stuntmen feared for their feet.

What doesn't change, says Whalley, is the essence of Sorsha--the courageous female warrior heart. "She's quite fearless, tough, adventurous. She's feminine, too. I think she's like most young girls today, actually. What I like about her is that she's a very positive character. I hope she represents a positive image, a good role model for girls. Though she never loses her vulnerability, she can still go out on her own and do things."

Whalley admits to being quite adventurous herself, with a flair for the athletic in life. That stood her in good stead during the rigors of lensing Willow. "I did a little bit of archery. In fact, there's a scene we shot (which has not been used in the film--Ron Howard told me why, but I forget now) of which I'm quite proud. It's a bit where Sorsha, on horseback, takes two enemies out with her bow and arrow. It involved galloping along, without the reins, nocking and aiming the bow and firing, twice. It's a shame it's gone, but there's so much action in the film, you can't keep everything. That was just a tiny bit."

Sometimes, the action can get out of hand, even under the most controlled circumstances. "On my first day of shooting," Whalley notes, "we did a scene in a tavern where Sorsha has her army with her and everyone is pushing each other around. I jam my sword into the floor and leave it there, then whip off my helmet with the same hand, to reveal that I'm not just any knock-about soldier. I'm a girl, I'm Sorsha.

"We did it quite a few times for different angles. So, I had done this movement over and over, and gotten very free with it. Well, they kept moving the actors closer together for tighter shots, and one particular time, I jammed the sword into the floor and heard a strange noise. I had put it through somebody's boot! Fortunately, it missed his toes, because he curled them up inside the boot, but this poor stuntman was nearly skewered. It warned all the stuntmen: 'We've got six months of this coming up.' "

"I hope she represents a good, positive role model for girls," Whalley says, considering how feisty but feminine Sorsha is.

Whalley has nothing but praise for those professionals, however, admiring their skill at a range of abilities. "The stuntmen were wonderful, because sword fights, especially, are like dance--everything is choreographed to the nth degree. Sometimes it's difficult, because you can get slammed a little too hard and lose your breath or your balance, and that throws the timing off."

Learning to stage-fence for the role wasn't made any easier by the blade Whalley had to handle. "My sword is a big saber-like thing with a serrated edge, and it's evil," she chuckles. "I'm not sure what it was made out of. It may have been a lightweight metal but, still, when you've got a sword that size with a big handle and all, it was heavy. Bill Hobbs is a brilliant swordmaster and he says he was very pleased with me. It's a whole new kind of coordination, even though I'm fairly athletic."

She knew swordplay would be important right from the beginning. The subject came up in her second interview with director Ron Howard [STARLOG #132]. "The English casting directors called me in to meet Ron. Then, I was called in a second time to meet him, and did a videotape for him," she remembers. "That was very funny, because he made me sit on a chair sideways, and pretend it was a horse. He handed me a silver plastic sword to use as well. That got me the job," she laughs.

"What I liked about Ron was that he always had time. Among the central core of actors, there was a feeling that we were a constructive team," Whalley notes. "We all felt free to make suggestions. And Ron has a peacefulness about him. He was a center of calm amid all the spectacle, and you could always take him to one side and talk to him. He would ask your opinion of the scene; it wasn't always, 'Right, we've got it! On to the next shot!' Sometimes, it had to be that way, purely because of its scale, or things that couldn't be repeated. But, in general, I felt very comfortable with Ron. I was able to make suggestions and try out new things. That was great because often on a project of this scale, you don't have that space to work in."

Don't let those laid-back looks fool you. Joanne Whalley really was "very excited" about working on Willow. "I had a great time."

She is equally pleased with the work of executive producer George Lucas. "He was around a lot during filming. He oversaw everything, every detail. He was very concerned. I was amazed by his energy, because he was also doing another production [Tucker] at the same time. Somehow, he always seemed to be on our set, and he had quite a bit of say in every area of the film. He was always there, very confident, and at the same time very meticulous, poring over details."

For a stage-trained actress used to dealing with the theater's work-a-day props, a production like Willow can present some challenges in other areas, such as working with special effects. Surprisingly, Whalley says they weren't a big problem for her.

"I never had any problem working with the effects sequences. Most of it's imagination anyway. Sometimes when you're saying things like 'Forward, men!' you have to really believe you have an army at your back that you can lead," she explains. "You have to totally immerse yourself in it, or you'll never make anyone believe anything you say. I didn't have too much to do with the Brownies or any of the talking animals or anything like that. I did have a couple of shots where I'm looking at the Eborsisk monster--and what I'm actually facing is a plank! A really long plank that somebody was waving around. But I had to go in there thinking, 'No, I'm not seeing a plank, I'm seeing the Eborsisk.' It's part of your job."

Whalley certainly had no trouble dealing with her co-stars, especially Val (Top Gun) Kilmer (STARLOG YEARBOOK#3) who plays the heroic (if slightly off-kilter) Madmartigan. Real-life romance arose and the pair were married in March.

Merchandising is a growing part of the promotion of movies like Willow. Is Whalley prepared to walk into a toystore and find a six-inch replica of herself on the shelves? "Not really, no," she laughs. "It won't be so bad, though, because I don't have the long ginger hair that Sorsha has. I never look like myself on screen. It's like a large family of sisters, or something. Sorsha's like a distant cousin.

"Most actors try to do as many different things as possible. I like the encouragement I get from doing new things. I like to feel scared or challenged, in the hope that I can pull it off. That little bit of fear creates an energy that I can channel into the performance. And you have to keep tapping new parts of yourself, keep working, or you never improve. The only way to improve is to set yourself harder goals. I was considered, at the time, very young to play the role I had in The Three Sisters. Normally, it's played by somebody maybe 10 years older than I am, but the director had the faith in me and I had the faith in myself to attempt it.