The Age

Toni Collette: She dismissed her chances of winning a part in the new action film.

Film and Broadway star Toni Collette thought she’d been shafted after auditioning for the first action film of her versatile career.
Originally, producers had cast another actress in the $US40 million ($A67.85 million) remake of the ’70s cult movie, Shaft, which opens in the United States this week.

“I went in and auditioned. … I was really eager to do it,” said Collette, who wanted to win the “meaty” role of a waitress who had witnessed a murder. “But they cast somebody else.” Collette left Hollywood but was soon called back to the Shaft set. “I went home to Australia and got a call a few of weeks later saying, ‘Ahh … it’s not working out, can you get yourself over here?’ “So I was quickly shoved to the other side of the planet and was thrown into it. “I hadn’t been in an action movie.”

The original Shaft won an Oscar for the classic Isaac Hayes theme song and earned a place in film history as the pre-eminent “blaxploitation” film. The new Shaft stars Samuel L Jackson and Vanessa Williams. Playing the nephew of the original private eye, John Shaft, Jackson finds himself a target of corrupt police while investigating the murder of a young black student.

He needs to find Collette, who holds the key to justice. The film is peppered with car chases, gun fights and action sequences.
“I was being dragged around and I didn’t have my own gun,” Collette said, admitted that shooting a gun for the first time on screen was “fun”.
“I was still the emotional core (of the movie). It is quite a serious subject and I play the character who unfortunately witnesses this murder and has to live with the fear and the guilt, with her life falling apart.”

Collette said making Shaft was a refreshing change of pace after The Sixth Sense, and audiences had reacted well to preview screenings of the film.
“You get on and it’s a ride,” she said.