It is is clear by now that Natalie Dormer isn’t afraid of exploring dark and strange corners of places and states of mind. The 33-years-old English actress, who reached global fame with hits like Game of Thrones and The Hunger Games Series, stars in the horror thriller THE FOREST (in theaters Jan. 8) as Sara, a young American woman that goes to the Aokigahara Forest -aka the Suicide Forest- at the base of Mt. Fuji in Japan in search of her twin sister, Jess (also Dormer).

We recently talked via telephone about her walk in the woods, battling ghosts, mosquitoes, and labels.

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How was your relationship with the natural world before shooting the film? Did it change after?

I come from a very hiking, outdoorsy family. I love being outside, but I don’t enjoying being bitten to death by mosquitoes. There were a couple of times that we were shooting at 2AM, freezing cold, and these mosquitoes started to attack. The only thing that kept me happy was the camera department and a bag of M&M’s. I had a lot of fun with the crew. That’s the beautiful thing when you are the lead: You are in every single scene, every day, so you bond with your crew and become like a family.

I guess that many scripts that you read offer one-dimensional characters that are “just there.” But here, Sara’s history is rich and her past informs a lot who she is today.

That is so true. It’s a psychological, “thinking person,” horror movie. I really believe in the power of a story centered on the relationship between two siblings. We can all relate to receiving a phone call saying that a loved one in the other side of the world is in trouble, in pain. I think that most of us will get on a plane and do something like this. I also liked the idea of Sara’s demons reflected back at her by the forest. The unfinished business that she has never dealt with. We all have regrets, things that we could change in our past if we could. That’s what it is to be human.

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You have played many characters in period pieces and fictional eras. Is there any difference, for you as an actor, to portray one of those versus a contemporary “normal girl” like Sara?

No. It may sound like a very indulgent “actor-like” thing to say, but for me is about emotional truth. That’s what good writing is. Often society discusses important themes at the safe distance of fantasy, sci-fi, or horror. When I was at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in Washington DC, people came to me saying how much they love Games of Thrones because it deals with politics in a very recognizable way. Good horror movies use ghosts and monsters as metaphors for things in our human condition that we deal with every day.

Producer David Goyer said that you are becoming a huge movie star. What does the term “movie star” mean to you?

Bless you for asking such an interesting question at the end of my day! To me it is almost irrelevant. I am just an actor, an English stage actor, that’s what I was trained to do. If someone refers to me using that term it means that I have an audience that knows who I am and maybe wants to explore other stories with me. Like a passion project that I will shoot in London this March, a psychological thriller that I co-wrote with my partner, Anthony Byrne, called In Darkness.

For now, you get to see Natalie in THE FOREST, starting Friday Jan. 8.

Despite everyone’s warnings to “stay on the path,” Sara enters the forest determined to discover the truth about her sister’s fate – only to be confronted by the angry and tormented souls of the dead that prey on anyone who wanders into the forest

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