Has there ever been as physically talented actress as Caity Lotz?

I'm an old fan of comics, and when I was younger, my favorite heroes were Batman, Green Arrow, and Black Canary. Why? They were not superheroes at all. They were crimefighters who had honed their physical talents to such a high degree that they were able to oppose crime. That to me was far more impressive than any mutant powers.

I was pleased to see Green Arrow made, and stopped watching after a few episodes, because I wanted to come back to it. Several times in television, it takes time to workout the writing, for actors to hit their rhythm as they explored the character. I happily came across a portrayal by Caity Lotz, and now I'm looking forward to rewatching the first season, and seeing her performances.

Seldom has an actress actually done their stunts in that kind of production (outside of Hong Kong), but in Ms. Lotz case, she actually has the physicality of looking like the Silver Age Black Canary. It's like seeing Dennis O'Neil's work come to life but accurately.
http://www.ign.com/top/comic-book-heroes/81

I don't know if you know this, but she's classically trained as dance, as a martial artist, and a parkour enthusist. She may be the most physicially talented actress currently working in Hollywood, and an ideal candidate for action films, particularly of the superhero comic book genre.

Here are some videos demonstrating her enormous talent. She's also lovely and likeable. Few actresses have all of those qualities.

As Black Canary on the Green Arrow tv series


Dancing


Parkour

She's Supergirl.

She's also the star of the British production, The Machine (2013). It's a fine independent film of decent writing, but a distracting soundtrack. It should have been moodier, darker, and they went for electronica.


Earlier she made a film that several critics liked very well, the horror film The Pact (2012). I'm looking forward to it, for it has a reputation for not being gore driven at all.

You simply have to respect a young person so driven who's spent thousands of hours to hone her athletic ability to that level of perfection and not just see them as a pretty face.

Spoiler for The Machine

Some of the most magnificent artistic special effects every done, on such a minimal budget, but elegantly conveyed, can be seen in this behind the scenes clip. The juxtaposition of Ms. Lotz dancing, then the colors displayed across her cybernetic body, are fantastic. And this film was completed in five weeks not including tech time to paint back in the effects.

EDIT2:
Having just seen the Pact (2012), I'd say it was easily one of the best horror films I've seen in the last five years. The imdb rating is entirely too low. I would have no qualms in giving it an 8.0. The sound editing and soundtrack absolutely make it atmospheric for a horror film, a problem for most horror films. The pacing was excellent. In no sense did the film drag, or not carefully handle each event. The method of filming was immersive, appropriate, and helped convery a ghostly presence and a feeling of being watched.

One of the best aspects of Ms. Lotz performance is allowing her natural beauty to show, allow her character to be uncertain and puzzled, and create an air of mystery about a supernatural event. Far more major Hollywood studio films have failed after spending enormous amounts of money versus this very small production. Many directors could not have made this script believable. There were no problems with suspension of disbelief.

Horror films and comedy are the two most difficult genres surprisingly. Many of either genre are not scary or not funny. They miss their marks. They make us groan and shake our head, dissapointed by the efforts and direction. This is quite a first effort by independent film maker Nicholas McCarthy who wrote and directed it. Just as Billy Bob Thornton created Sling Blade as a short first, then reshot and created a more more complex film, so to did McCarthy create a short named The Pact prior to the bigger budget feature film.

Please see it. He has a new film coming out soon called Home (2014) in limited release, I believe in the UK. Here is that trailer. The critics have said it is too busy though, with too many topics as if he threw everything but the kitchen sink into that production. Second films are notoriously difficult for independent filmmakers, as most put their best efforts in their initial offering due to thinking about that film for such a long time. It will be very interesting to watch Home.

breakdancing?

I saw her in arrow, I don't like her too much but that has more to do with the character.

Judging by the title I thought she was a porn star.

Originally Posted by Lord Oda Nobunaga

Judging by the title I thought she was a porn star.

She should be named Caity Lolz.

She's pretty strong and physically able for her fairly petite frame, but I'm not a huge fan. Something about the way she speaks puts me off. I know it's silly, but subjectivity and stuff.

I'm not talking about her acting. She's not a dramatic actor. She's a dancer (of many different genres) with great physical presence, a martial artist, a Parkour enthusist, and also has started acting a few years back. Beginning actors are experimenting with the roles they are offered. That's a slow process for some, while others are wunderkind from their youngest attempts at acting like Scarlet Johanssen.

In terms of physicality, Hong Kong martial arts film studios groom and select folks from diverse martial arts disciplines, but rarely can they do more than their art. Jachie Chan was certainly diverse as both a comic actor as well as with stage presence and incredible acrobatics as well as classical Chinese martial arts. Jet Li comes to mind as an especially impressive martial artist who also could act. A person studying Wushu might become an action star. A person studying Wing-Chun (Bruce Lee)might as well. In other places, a child might be groomed from age 7 in Muay Thai. In Japan, there are special schools for the very young to study Budo and acting for years like Hiroyuki Sanada.

But how many Western women do you know that can do that? Very few. While some martial artists become stuntmen, and some dancers enter cinema productions, I think we should watch Ms. Lotz. She has potential.

Side note: In terms of physicality, one of lesser known tales of the strongest man to have ever lived, is Louis Cyr. I think many of you would enjoy it. It is not action packed, but a true story about a man who could lift more, was willing to endure enormous pain, than anyone who has ever been a strongman.

Note, he didn't look impressive, but was a Titan in terms of physicality. Many of his feats have never been duplicated and perhaps they never will be. There is hope though since there have been several myostatin mutations discovered like the German Superbaby that might result in someone as strong as Louis Cyr.


Liam Hoekstra

Special care must be taken to not alter his bone development, and literally bend his skeleton because of his enormous strength

Physically shes certainly very talented, great for action roles but I don't think her acting skills are good enough for lead roles or such.. she just does her part I gues.. can't say its anything memorable though.

Seems she's like a female version of Ray Park, the guy who played Darth Maul and Snake Eyes. And various other roles that require a martial artist.

Watch the Pact. I though she was pretty good. I think she's fairly new so we'll see.

In the Golden Age of Hollywood, actors were expected to have talent in multiple disciplines. There are old screen tests and Christmas gatherings where lots of dramatic actors would clown around and do tap or a routine, because back then they under contract, and so they churned out films based upon that versus today per film.

Elizabeth Olsen did an extraordinary job in Martha Marcy May Marlene. It's quite a film. Subsequently she was used in several films like Silent House. While that thriller wasn't received well, she did okay in it. In some respect, Lotz portrayal echoes Silent House, but a successful scary version. One wonders how she would have done in Silent House?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1767382/

True, and I really can only applaud women who are more than just a pretty face.

I wouldn't call Felicia Day an amazing actress either, she does her part and is charming in her own way, but acting isnt all she does. She also wrote a succesfull webseries in which she did play great as the lead, she plays the violin and has inspired many by showing that anyone can create content and share it. Also launched geek and sundry which provides a lot of online shows that really caters to a smaller but dedicated fanbase.
Large skillset for sure.

Thanks for bringing Caity Lotz to our attention, its the sum of her parts that make her a talented woman as well. Like with Felicia, its a matter of proper casting to bring it out though.

How much can she bench

I doubt that Sasha DiGuilian can bench much, but she's extremely strong. A champion free climber specifically bouldering.


While very pretty, I think most of us would think, not anyone special if we saw her in class, but then could any of us climb like her? She's a sweetheart, seems innocent, with an extraordinary athletic ability.

Athletic girls be da one.

I was always impressed by Heini Koivuniemi, who consistently competed in the World's Strongest Woman competition. It shouldn't be a factor, but most were not attractive. She was beautiful, charming and immensely strong.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heini_Koivuniemi


These kinds of feats of strength are more impressive than just standard lifts.

Go Finland! I've heard it claimed that per capita there are more beautiful ladies from Finland than anywhere else in the world.

Nicharee Vismistananda

This girl is absolutely AMAZING, if you haven't seen this movie yet, do it. I wouldn't wanna be the stunt guys on that shoot, those guys repeatedly get smashed by that girl and it IS definitely real. I read that she lived autistic children for a year preparing for her role, and she did excellent job portraying one, if you ask me. I really have to recomend checking this movie out it was really good.

Ziyi Zhang - Michelle Yeoh. Both excellent actresses, both kick ass.

In Asia, there has a been a emphasis on the martial artists on a lifelong journey, who achieves their goals as a result on collaboration with a teacher and in a community of other artists. In America, there were problems from the beginning with people quitting in less than a year for not seeing an achievement of mastery. And so the initial belt ranking system was created, something which didn't exist prior, but only demonstrating who was a beginner, a person who had some mastery, and someone who had much mastery in an art. Even more so, much of that discussion on acquiring more learning resulted in more humility if the person was truly on that path. That didn't work in America, at the beginning, for individual achievement or merit was the emphasis.

In addition, in the early days of Hollywood, there was an emphasis on physicality as part of entertainment, most often in dancing. So many films had that element within the film. There were few depictions of athletes who were female, for an athlete was considered to be a male who had focused upon physical discipline to hone his body, mind, and spirit into one. This is why early in America, gymnasiums were created as that integration of all of those things was considered admirable and part of cultural uplift. You see YMCAs spread throughout America.

Over time that changed with a deemphasis on women and dancing in film, but an increasing change in women in athletics, and many films included that aspect, and later allowed a change in women as heroic figures with a display of physicality. This most likely changed as a result of the men off to war in WW2 with women depicted in things like sports and comics due to their absence. The need for Rosie the Riveter resulted in noticing her contribution more.

In Asia, I agree, more females were in the martial arts and earlier. Though there were attempts to do this in America, it was mostly discounted. There was a small cadre of female martial artists like Cynthia Rothrock in the seventies. It wasn't very popular.

With women being a major part of viewership, plus changes in the demographics of women by age, results in a change in the depiction of women in film and in serialized tv shows. This is why you see more of an emphasis on aging women and an appreciation of older women as beautiful, an almost unheard of idea in the pre1940s era. In those days, few women would be depicted as beautiful who were more that age 35. They had peaked and were discarded.

With any athleticism, that window of time is very narrow. While some Olympians have managed to perform for a long period over many Olympic trials and events, few can withstand the rigors of doing so. The intensity of exercise and physical fitness is even more difficult and demanding when it's not only a sport, but doing practical displays of agility and strength in a film. The older we get, the less we can do, for we have often damaged the vertebrae, joints, and worn ourselves out by such demands.

With an aging population with a drop in new births, and an increasingly less physical fit society, then what could more precious than an athlete who displays that brief window of supreme physicality? They are like the stuff of myth and legend, not from the page, but for our own eyes to witness.

I'd say hollywood of today is far more obsessed with beauty than classical hollywood.

Tallulah Bankhead was in her fourties when she appeared in lifeboat, and was still clearly a beautifull and sensual woman, practicly drawing all attention away from the much younger woman in the same movie.
Greta Garbo kept getting offers all her life after retiring from movies.
Margaret Dumond remained the leading lady in practicly all marx brothers movies. Thelma Todd appeared in two of them, but it was in roles that would not have worked with Margaret Dumond.

Back then it also seems more often they looked for actresses that could do more than just be pretty. Thelma Todd for example was a comedienne herself, which worked very well combined with Groucho Marx.
Greta Garbo could show so much emotion without even saying a word, its still unbelievable.
The silent movie "a woman of paris" by charlie chaplin an old lady actually has quite a role.. after her son commits suicide because he cant be with the girl he loves, the mother sets out to kill that girl. Her intend is quite clear by the way she looks in her eyes.. a good actress for certain, a shame I don't remember the name. Not too familiar yet with silent era movies.

Though if you want to read up on an actress who truly was nothing like the typical hollywood damnsel, read up on Tallulah Bankhead. She could be quite blunt, was a hedonist, used drugs and later in life also drinked quite a bit, and had affairs with both men and women. And all the while still being a lady. Also was very accepting of people of all colors despite being raised in the south. She caused controversy when she kissed a black girl on the cheek in a tv show after the girl won a contest. Had quite some great quips as well.. after seeing a former lover years later she said to him: "I told you to wait in the car."
Her final role was that of the black widow in the 60's batman tv series, she died not long after that. Lots of drinking and drug use took its toll, she was in her sixties at the time.

That is certainly true.^ Thanks for illustrating several examples. There was real controversy by some of the earlier female stars, some of whom were bisexual or lesbians, and hushed up in Hollywood. Surprisingly some of this made it to the screen but was certainly criticized. In the early days of Hollywood there were no film code standards of censorship, and many things slipped through.

Hollywood changed more and more though with female action stars when Angelina Jolie became much more than a simple Hacker http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113243/ and instead a Tomb Raider http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0146316 . She did her own stunts and trained with weapons, a fairly new phenomena like Carrie Ann Moss in the Matrix http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0133093 .


Those films were made because they generated lots of profits while also costing a fortune to produce. They also fit into adolescent fantasies of both males and females of idealized heroic figures. The comic book then became a successful formulaic means of profit in film with lots of female comic characters.

While earlier films and tv productions occurred, many of those actresses had no real talent, but mostly relied upon stunt doubles to do them.

Before all kinds of regulations where put on film making, there actually where female action heroes as well who did their own stunts.

I found an article about it here, and am planning to look up their work on youtube.
http://www.tor.com/blogs/2013/12/the...-action-heroes

Only looked up a bit with Helen Holmes so far where she does some climbing, jumps on a train and fights the bad guy. Another guy comes to her aid to end the fight, but for 1915 I'd say she was a fine hero for women.