Young actress likens dominatrix fetish to any other
rick mcginnis/metro toronto
Native New Yorker Leelee Sobieski, 24, plays a naïve girl who escapes to the big city and works as a dominatrix in Walk All Over Me.
“I’m sure a lot more people have fantasies like that, but they don’t act them out, they don’t have the balls.”
Sometimes it’s awkward talking to celebrities about fetishes.
That is until you sit down with Leelee Sobieski to discuss sadism and masochism, and her latest role as an unwitting dominatrix in the new movie Walk All Over Me.
The 24-year-old actress (The Wicker Man) plays Alberta in the film, a naïve girl who escapes her small town lot for a life in the big city where she steals her dominatrix roommate’s identity and breaks out the whips and chains herself to earn extra cash.
But a severe turn of events puts Alberta at greater risk than she’d ever imagined.
“In terms of playing her I just jumped into it,” Sobieski explains. “My favourite club in L.A. is a kind of goth club with an S&M room upstairs and I went there originally for research for another movie a long time ago and I’ve been going back. The owner is one of my friends.”
In other words, Sobieski knew a bit more about the world of the leather-clad than the average person.
In fact, she likens the obsession of some with being dominated to any other hobby or past time.
“You realize that it’s just something people do like anything,” she reasons.
“It’s a fetish, I guess, but it’s a pleasure. If somebody’s a real foodie, a food expert, and they love going around and tasting alfredo sauce all over the world then that’s what they like to do. This is a similar thing except they like to be whipped, poked, or kiss a shoe, and that’s it.”
Sobieski’s character finds her all-too innocent approach to life diminish somewhat throughout the film as she becomes accustomed to her new job.
But the actress, whose father Jean was a painter and character actor in France, surmises that fetishism is probably more commonplace behind closed doors — or at least dreamt about — than mainstream audiences might assume.
“I’m sure a lot more people have fantasies like that, but they don’t act them out, they don’t have the balls,” the native New Yorker says.
“So when you think of a submissive you think of somebody that’s weak, but that’s not necessarily the case. It could be somebody very strong. In fact, most of the time a man that wants to be beaten is super powerful in his job.”
- Walk All Over Me made its TIFF debut this week.
