Zuleikha Robinson

She’s an international beauty, a horsewoman and a veteran of that wacky “X-Files” spin off “The Lone Gunmen”. Young Zuleikha Robinson has the enviable position of being cast as red-hot Viggo Mortensen’s semi-love interest (hey, they’re more like good pals) in the action adventure Hidalgo.

The London-born actress looked exotic in black velvet jacket, Moroccan pants and fancy flip flops for our chat in L.A.’s Century City recently. Her long, dark hair just falls in natural curls (doncha just hate girls like that?...Just kidden). Zuleikha (pronounced zoo-like-ha) admitted that she had a crush on Viggo and couldn’t believe she got to work with him. She raced horses over the sand, almost got thrown and was the only girl in a huge, almost totally male cast and to think, the actress told us that she almost gave up acting at one point.

AGW: You don’t really have an English accent.

Z: I do have it when I’m with family or if you were British I’d be speaking that way. I guess moving around so much, you adapt to every place. My accent is a bit weird now because it’s a bit more trans- Atlantic than anything else. You adapt and I think that’s why as soon as I moved to America I just kind of changed.

AGW: Where did you grow up?

Z: I was born in England and then I moved to San Francisco, then we moved to Malaysia, and Thailand, and Singapore. By this time I was thirteen and I left to go to boarding school in England.

AGW: What is your ethnic background?

Z: My father is English and my mother is mostly Indian and a little bit of Burmese and a little bit of Arabic.

AGW: For a good part of the film, it’s just you and the guys. What was that like?

Z: Yeah I was one of the boys. I was hanging out with them and listening to all their stuff instead of all the girly stuff.

AGW: How did you get the part? Did you have to audition?

Z: It was an audition and the first time I went they said they really like what I did and that they would probably bring me back after they found some other people. It was about two months and I got the call to meet with Joe Johnson the director and I really loved him at once. Really sweet man. About three weeks later that they called me back to do a screen test with Viggo Mortensen and they told me two week after that.

AGW: Which scene was it?

Z: It was a scene that was cut out when I first meet Viggo. He lasso’s me. I’m looking at his horse and I’m dressed as a man and he hears something and lasso’s me and we have our first little conversation.

AGW: What did you like about the story?

Z: I was really attracted to the story and Viggo’s character- he’s a mess and he’s in denial of who he is. Then he goes on this great race and battles all these (personal) demons and learns and accepts who he is. And I liked the fact that my character wanted to be who she was but couldn’t and she had to find her own balance within that. Even the horse, the horse isn’t happy with Viggo in the beginning because he’s messing up and they build their friendship again in Arabia.

AGW: How did you like working with Viggo? Have you seen Lord of the Rings?

Z: Yeah, I’d just seen Lord of the Rings and I was sitting next to my friend and I was like ‘who’s that guy? He’s so cute!’ and I had a little crush on him so when I heard that he was going to be working on this film I was like ‘oh my!’ and he was going to read with us in the screen test. It was all girls, so that was probably the most nerve wracking thing about it.

AGW: What is Viggo like on a personal level?

Z: I think he’s so down to earth. You enjoy working with him because he is so down to earth. It’s taken him a long time to be noticed by a lot of people and I’m sure he’s had his definite fan base but he knows who he is and you don’t feel like he’s an actor at all.

AGW: Was the Hidalgo shoot physically brutal?

Z: Oh yeah. But I like that sort of thing. All these horses and getting to do all these stunts I love every minute of it.

TeenHollywood; What was the biggest stunt they let you do?

Z: They didn’t let me do the jumps because of insurance problems and they didn’t want me to get hurt. But one of the last few days of shooting, we were galloping through this tunnel and Viggo is supposed to jump on the back of my horse. The horse was really jumpy that day and trying to hold him back was a task in itself. So they shout ‘action’ and Viggo jumps on the back and this makes the horse go even faster! There’s this huge wall in front of us and the horse is just tearing for it. I’ve been galloping a lot but never this fast, and Viggo is like ‘I can’t help you here’ so he jumps off! [laughs] I didn’t know what to do. This horse wasn’t a jumping horse but he jumped the wall and we made it. He cleared it. Everyone was yelling “ the actress is down” but I wasn’t! I had one reign and I was hanging off but I was still on there.

AGW: Did the cast have a lot of time to travel around and see anything?

Z: We had a lot of time off but the scheduling was all over the place because of the sand storms so it was difficult. It really slowed down production a lot so we were kind of stuck there most of the time. We got to drive around locally for about and hour to see another town and stuff like that but when I finished shooting I decided to go a different route than everybody else and my driver and I drove all the way out to Fez and it was really beautiful slowly watching the desert turn into greenery.

AGW: Was it your experience that it can be tough for women in that area of the world?

Z: I made sure to find out as much as I could but I couldn’t find any literature about women in the 1890’s in that part of the world because nothing was written about them. I looked at a lot of biographies about current women and what they are dealing with now today and I tried to understand as much as I could about it but living in that part of the world you can’t understand until you actually do it.

AGW: What was your favourite part about filming Hidalgo?

Z: Getting back to riding horses because when I was younger I fell off and the horse ran over my head. It took me a while to get back on again because I was absolutely petrified. I did before I started filming but it was basic stuff and nothing too strenuous. When I did the two months of training it was really nice to feel comfortable and enjoy that experience again.

AGW: How old were you when it happened? And when did you finally get back on a horse?

Z: I was about nine or ten. The horse was galloping and it just clipped my head. It was more of a shock than anything. I got back on when I was fourteen. I did a day of just walking around. But I didn’t get back on regularly till this film. But I love horses. I was obsessed. I would draw them all the time and there were horse pictures all over the house.

AGW: What kind of horses did you like to ride then?

Z: Various, whatever the school at the time put me on. I never had a favourite but I love the Paints. They are really intelligent horses and after I finished filming I went to Sundance and there was this school there and this woman had some Pasafinos which are very smooth horses. They just glide. My boyfriend had never ridden before and he ended up galloping thorough the snow because they are so easy to ride. I really enjoy them.

AGW: Do you keep in touch with your “X-Files” spin off pals from “The Lone Gunmen” t.v. show?

Z: It had been a really long time but I was on the way back from shooting my last film and was in England for a week and I happened to e-mail Dean Haglund’s wife and she said that Dean was over in the UK for a sci-fi convention. I gave him a ring and he was doing this “X-Files” stand up show and he told me to come down and see it. I get there and all these people are looking at me funny and they come up to me and say “were you in the show?” and that they were there to see Dean and now it’s even better and I had to take all these pictures with them. It was a surreal experience.

AGW: What kind of music are you into?

Z: All sorts. My favourite is Jeff Buckley.

AGW: What would be your ideal date activity?

Z: I’d love someone to be adventurous and take me river rafting or something. I went in Africa so it was the most beautiful place to do it. 24 rapids up to level 5 – I had the best time of my life.

AGW: What is your latest film?

Z: The Merchant of Venice which we filmed Luxembourg and Italy with Al Pacino and Jeremy Irons.

AGW: That was probably completely different.

Z: Oh yeah. You walk into rehearsal and seeing them all there looking at their Shakespeare. It’s very intense and that was more intimidating than working on this film.

AGW: Is there somebody, ideally, that you haven’t worked with that you would like to work with?

Z: Joan Allen. I would love to work with her. I kinda want to work with Johnny Depp and I kind of don’t because that would be very difficult because I have a huge crush on him.

AGW: Do you have any advice for young girls who have a little experience in acting?

Z: You’ve gotta really love this. It’s really difficult and you have to be really strong. I gave up a million times because I couldn’t handle it. The pressure and the rejection, you have to be strong because you can’t take it personally. It’s a painful business before you start working and even when you work. I decided to give it up but an actor on Timecode, (Steven Webber) was like ‘I don’t know why you would give it up. I enjoy watching you’ and he was the one who made me think to try a little more and it paid off.

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