Blake Lively is known for her role in the teen drama Gossip Girl but she had to deal with much more than mean rich teens in the survival thriller The Shallows. Lively plays the role of a grieving daughter who goes to the seas to deal with her grief when she has to battle for her survival with a great white shark on the hunt for food.
The film was directed by Jaume Collett-Serra, who recently helmed Dwayne Johnson’s Black Adam. Lively mentioned that she had a great time filming for the thriller as she did many of her own stunts until two weeks before filming. She also mentioned that she had a great fear of sharks, so much so that she did not even watch Steven Spielberg’s legendary film Jaws.
Blake Lively Fought A Shark In The Shallows
Blake Lively had her breakthrough in the Disney film The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants and then went on to gain worldwide recognition for her role as Serene van der Woodsen in CW’s Gossip Girl. The teen drama ran for six seasons and Lively won multiple Teen Choice Awards for her performance in the show. She also became a fashion icon for her choice of outfits in the show and off-screen.
Lively went on to appear in multiple romantic comedies before starring in the disastrous superhero film Green Lantern. The film also starred her future husband Ryan Reynolds in the titular role. Lively starred in the Oliver Stone thriller Savages and gained acclaim for her role in the romantic fantasy Age of Adeline. She starred along with Harrison Ford.
Also read: Armie Hammer Was Kicked Out of a Show after Reportedly Calling Blake Lively “an insufferable b**ch”
Blake Lively starred in the survival drama The Shallows where she played a character who battles a great white shark as she goes on a vacation to a secluded beach in Mexico. Lively mentioned that she was motivated to do a film that was out of her comfort zone after her husband Ryan Reynolds made a survival drama called Buried. She told EW,
“My husband did a movie called Buried and that was one of the reasons why I wanted to take on this movie so much because I know how tough that was for him and how rewarding it was. It was terrifying and one of the most vulnerable things you can do but you got to do it, right?”
Lively’s performance was acclaimed by critics and audiences alike after the film was released. The Shallows was also a commercial success, earning over $119 million against a $17 million budget.
Blake Lively Had To Fight Her Fear Of Sharks
Blake Lively reportedly went through a tough time while filming for the survival thriller The Shallows. She regarded it as one of the most challenging roles that she had ever portrayed and mentioned that she performed many of the stunts in the film on her own as there was no stunt double until two weeks before filming ended in the movie. She told EW,
“I was doing all my own stunts, not my own surfing. I did my best with surfing. We had the best junior surfer in the world surfing for me. My mom was like, ‘You should tell people you did that!’…I did my own stunts until the last two weeks. It’s such a physical movie. There’s a scene where I’m swimming up to the buoy and I crack my face underwater and my nose is pouring blood and that was real.”
Apart from surfing in the water and hanging onto dear life on a buoy, Blake Lively also had to battle the main antagonist in the film, a great white shark. Lively mentioned that she had a great fear of sharks earlier and that she had to overcome her fear of the great whites to film the movie.
“I never even watched Jaws because I was so scared of sharks. I went diving with great whites maybe five years ago and that was one of the greatest experiences I’ve ever had…It was really neat to see them in a humane way rather than see them as monsters. That’s what I connected with this film: Here she came to their territory.”
Blake Lively mentioned that The Shallows told a story that was more than just “bikini vs. monster” but spoke about every being trying to survive on this planet.
