VIDEO EXCLUSIVE: Alexis Ren On Working With Antonio Banderas, Intimate Scene With Kate Bosworth In ‘The Enforcer’

The new film The Enforcer presents a thrilling 90 minutes as mob enforcer Cuda betrays the criminal organization he’s spent his life trying to build to help a young girl out of his boss’s sex trafficking ring.

Alexis Ren recently sat down with uInterview founder Erik Meers to discuss working on the movie and co-starring alongside Antonio Banderas and Kate Bosworth.

“I was just like, ‘Pinch me!’ all day,” Ren said. “Antonio is wonderful and watching him and my other cast mate, Mojean [Aria], who’s my love interest in the film … watching them rehearse was like watching a master class. They would just get into it with each other and I was a sponge. I made it my priority to be a sponge because I am and I was the newbie on that set. I was just kind of like, ‘No ego here! I don’t know what I’m doing!’ I’ve, of course, trained, but acting advice and life advice are kind of the same thing. When I realized that, in every single role that I have, I throw my hands up and think about what this character needs from me and how I can absorb the people around me’s wisdom. I work with Kate closely. We have that very intimate scene together. I was nervous and it was scary, but we had a moment where we connected before. You can’t fake chemistry. You truly do have to build that, even before, off-camera. Since we had that foundation of trust, we were able to go for it and I was very honored.”

Ren also revealed the best piece of advice she got from one of her co-stars and how that impacted her approach to acting.

“Mojean said something to me that was very profound,” the actress revealed. “He said, ‘If you’re feeling it in your body, you’re doing it right.’ Your mind knows that you’re pretending, but your body doesn’t. When I would start to shake or my body would start to have that visceral reaction, that’s when Mojean was like, ‘There. That’s it. That’s right.’ Right there, that moment and feeling where your whole body feels super vulnerable, that’s when you’re truly present. I now listen more so to my body than my mind, because my mind is, ‘The camera’s rolling. Action!’ But I’m telling my body what’s going on, what’s the story, what’s happening … That’s where I pull my authenticity from. That was a huge learning curve for me. When you think of acting, you think so much in your brain. It’s going off what are the lines, what is my overall objective … It’s very analytical. I’m a very emotional person, so I had to learn from my cells and let my head be the last thing to create an opinion about it.”

The Enforcer will be out in select theaters on September 23.