Since starring opposite Kristen Stewart in Love Lies Bleeding, actor and former competitive bodybuilder Katy O’Brian has been in high demand, putting her unique résumé to use in blockbuster action flicks like Twisters and Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning. And despite being a self-described “homebody” who hates to be on location because she has to leave her wife and dog, she doesn’t seem to be showing any signs of slowing down.
Her latest project, David Michôd’s Christy, which stars Sydney Sweeney as the boxer Christy Martin and also showcases O’Brian’s physical prowess, was filmed simultaneously with the upcoming feature Running Man, which also opens on November 7 — and right on the tails of two other fall releases. “It was literally this small little window that I was somehow able to get into to do the project,” O’Brian tells Out of juggling set schedules for Christy, Maintenance Required, Queens of the Dead, and Edgar Wright’s latest.
With her packed calendar, O’Brian didn’t have a ton of time to prepare for her turn as the boxer Lisa Holewyne in Michôd’s biopic, which charts Martin’s ascent as a fighter during the 1990s and 2000s — climaxing with the moment her life was almost cut short by her husband and trainer, who’s played by Ben Foster. But the actor did have access to the real Holewyne, whose professional rivalry with the welterweight champion gave way over the years to a friendship and eventual romance that resulted in the two hall-of-fame boxers marrying in 2017.
“She told me a lot about herself, gave me a lot of pictures from that time, which was so helpful,” O’Brian says, explaining that, in addition to timing, there were other challenging factors, including a lack of footage of the Hawaiian-born Holewyne from her fighting days. “And then, I wound up telling her, like, ‘Look, Lisa, I don’t have enough time to study how you move. I don’t have a lot of time to learn how you speak. And I don't know that you’ll look at me and be, like, That's me. But I’m hoping that I can at least just get your essence on screen.’”
Sydney Sweeney as Christy Martin Black Bear Pictures
Holewyne, who has often played a supporting role in Martin’s dramatic story over the years, had already tempered her expectations: “She said, ‘Oh, I don’t care. This movie’s about Christy, and that’s what I want to support,’” O’Brian says. “So at the end of the day, I think that was the whole mission of the character. And I did my best to at least honor any little Easter eggs that she could give me.”
Some of those Easter eggs informed minor plot points — like a flashy necklace changing hands between Lisa and Christy by the end of the film — while others shaped the tone of the biopic as a whole. Particularly valuable was Holewyne’s insight into what it was like to grow closer to Martin, whom she first met ahead of a title fight in 2001, at perhaps the most difficult time in the boxer’s life.
After fighting her way out of rural West Virginia, the so-called “Coal Miner’s Daughter” spent nearly two decades winning knockout after knockout, often in fights organized by the legendary promoter Don King. But as the film portrays, Martin’s professional success was marred by a physically and psychologically abusive marriage and pressure to keep her sexuality a secret. Eventually, even her almost superhuman performance in the ring began to be affected, like in a devastating 2003 matchup against Laila Ali that’s portrayed in the film. Then, the terrors of her private life suddenly became public in 2011, when she was brutally attacked by her husband, Jim Martin, barely escaping with her life after sustaining multiple stab wounds and being shot in the chest.
O’Brian drew on Holewyne’s stark and disturbing memories from that time, including the moment she saw news of the attack broadcast on TV and felt compelled to reach out — a moment fictionalized in the film as Lisa visiting Christy in the hospital. “She called, and the police answered, because it was all under investigation, they were still looking for Jim. It all happened that quickly,” O’Brian says, repeating Holewyne’s account. “She said she just felt so stupid, but she was just so worried too.”
Knowing how much Holewyne “wanted to be there, would be there” for Martin, even though their relationship had only reached the level of sparring partners, gave O’Brian a starting point for her character. And as filming progressed and she shot scenes where Lisa and Christy train together ahead of the Ali fight, another of Holewyne’s insights stayed with her and others on set.
“It was very clear to her that Christy should have been the happiest woman alive,” O’Brian says, relating Holewyne’s impression of Martin from years before the attack. “She was very successful in her field, an icon, doing what she seemed to want to do for a living…. And it was so weird to go train with her and see that she was just miserable. She just seemed so very miserable.’”
Katy O'Brian in 'Love Lies Bleeding.' A24
O’Brian may not have had much time to prepare for Christy, but it’s clear that she used what she did have to listen to and absorb Holewyne’s experience — and maybe even her essence.
In her albeit brief time on screen, Lisa grounds the film in a sense of reality, much in the way that Matt Bomer’s David Oppenheimer adds weight to Maestro or Julianne Nicholson’s Diane Rawlinson adds a dose of sanity to I, Tonya. The character underscores just how brutally alone Christy is, despite having captured the world’s attention. And she shows off O’Brian’s skill for subtlety, which in the past has often been overlooked because of her athleticism and extensive background in martial arts — particularly before her breakout role in Rose Glass’s Love Lies Bleeding, which exposed the actor’s acting skills along with her rippling muscles.
“You know, it’s easy to be typecast, and in a way, especially starting out, it’s very lucrative to be typecast, because you can build a résumé. But at a certain point you got to be like, ‘OK, I want to play a human,’ or ‘I want to play something else and expand my range,’” O’Brian says, likely joking about her frequent appearances in sci-fi projects, including The Walking Dead, Westworld, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, and The Mandalorian.
“I’m still figuring out my voice and everything, but also I’m just hungry to keep performing, and I don’t necessarily always want to play a fighter,” she says, qualifying that those roles “are fun to do” and she appreciates being able to show that someone with Crohn’s, which she was diagnosed with in 2020, can take them on.
Katy O'Brian and Jack Haven in Tina Romero’s Queens of the Dead.Courtesy of Shannon Madden
While her ability to go toe-to-toe with stunt professionals and enthusiastic actors like Sweeney — who apparently insisted on throwing real punches and eagerly offered to let O’Brian break her nose — may not be the only thing the actor wants to be known for, as she says, it’s gotten her this far. And it seems that Hollywood is slowly getting the message that she’s ready for more varied parts, even if they’re sometimes in action-adjacent films, like Tina Romero’s campy Queens of the Dead. In the meantime, the uniquely physical actor seems ready to make the best of work-related injuries, which have recently included two shoulder tears and a blown-out back, and being away from home by finding something meaningful to take away from each new set.
“I mean, with Queens of the Dead, it was, like, an all-queer set, all-queer crew, and I think there's just an unspoken community kind of feeling through that. There's just some level of heart that pounds in a different way,” O’Brian says, comparing the experience to filming Glass's bodybuilding thriller with almost all women behind the camera.
“And then, with any of the big blockbuster sets, I always try to have fun no matter where [we are] or what’s going on,” she says, recalling bonding with her Twisters costars when they got stuck in Oklahoma because of actual tornadoes. “So there's just such interesting things that I pick up from each little set, and it’s all been a learning experience.”
See Christy in theaters November 7. (And Queens of the Dead is still screening in select cities.)
