Shooting star
Leading lady Lively takes aim as ‘Rhythm Section’ assassin
As a bankable leading lady, Blake Lively, the star of Friday’s “The Rhythm Section” opposite Jude Law, has sustained her career with carefully chosen, often uniquely original pictures.
Perhaps it’s a lesson she learned early. She was born Blake Brown in Tarzana, an L.A. suburb, to an actor-director father (who uses Lively as his stage name) and a talent scout mother.
Now 32, Lively was just 10 when she debuted with a bit part in “Sandman,” a movie her dad directed.
Her breakthrough, as Serena van der Woodsen for the five-season run of TV’s “Gossip Girl” from 2007 to 2012, showed how even in an ensemble show, she stood out.
Once films beckoned, she chose a supporting role that flipped her image. Ben Affleck cast her impressively against type as a barfly in his Boston-filmed hit “The Town” (2010).
If 2011’s “Green Lantern” did little for her career, it counts as where she met future husband Ryan Reynolds.
Her solo starring career is marked by lengthy breaks between film releases.
“The Rhythm Section,” from Mark Burnell’s Stephanie Patrick series of novels, is produced by the duo behind the James Bond series, Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson.
An action-packed terrorist-themed thriller directed by Reed Morano (“Handmaid’s Tale”), “The Rhythm Section” had an unfortunate lengthy break once filming began late in 2017.
As Lively’s Stephanie Patrick transforms from a selfdestructive, heroin-addicted hooker with PTSD into a revenge-driven trained assassin, one of her many life-or-death battles is with a blind wheelchair-bound opponent. On camera her hand is horribly injured — and in real life as well.
Filming had to be suspended for months; the release date was postponed not once but twice.
“The Rhythm Section” marks a leap from Lively’s first leading role in “The Age of Adaline” (2015). Here she was memorable as a woman who somehow stops aging after surviving a near-fatal accident. This risky, offbeat romantic fantasy cast her opposite Harrison Ford and was a modest success.
The following year saw Lively score her biggest hit yet with “The Shallows,” in which she’s stalked by a killer shark while stranded on a rock in the middle of a scenic bay. With a $17 million budget, this beauty and the beast thriller grossed $119 million worldwide.
In 2018, Lively co-starred alongside Anna Kendrick and Henry Golding in Paul Feig’s comedic mysterythriller “A Simple Favor.” This too found favor with moviegoers with its $97.6 million global gross.
Now the question, inevitably, is: What does she do next?