IRIS COVET BOOK – Positioned to take the main stage with two summer flicks set to be box office smashes, playing opposite Tom Cruise in The Mummy and alongside Charlize Theron in Atomic Blonde, Sofia Boutella is ready for her close-up.

Photography by Ellen Von Unwerth | Styling by Deborah Afshani | Art Direction by Louis Liu | Editor Marc Sifuentes | Interview by Dustin Mansyur | Dress by J GERARD

Sofia Boutella is about to blow out the candle on a chocolate lava cake served up graciously by the pastry team at Chateau Marmont. Glasses of champagne are lined up across a low wooden table, ready to serve. Swarthy and saturnine, Boutella sweeps her dark locks to one side and leans over the cake, pausing momentarily as she closes her eyes to make a wish, before extinguishing the flame with a flash of her infectious smile. “Bravo!” everyone cheers while Sofia flits a bashful round of thanks. The celebration is actually impromptu during a lunch break, and Sofia is on-set for a photoshoot with Ellen Von Unwerth at the famed West Hollywood hotel. Birthday or no birthday, embodying a femme fatale for a crème-de-la-femme celebrity photographer is all in a day’s work for Boutella, who’s poised to unleash her prowess with two movies in this summer’s highly-anticipated release of Alex Kurtzman’s latest installment of The Mummy and David Leitch’s spy thriller, Atomic Blonde. Maintaining her coquettish sensuality while kicking ass is a razor wire that Boutella jetes upon with ease, even if it involves otherworldly makeup or taking a punch on set.

Hailing from Algiers, the ingénue actress is actually a multi-faceted artist who began her career as an internationally-acclaimed dancer, enrolling in classical dance education at the age of 5. Later, when her family moved to France, Sofia continued dancing, adding rhythmic gymnastics to her education, and joining the French national team by the age of 18. In 2006, with her dance troupe The Vagabond Crew, Boutella went on to win the World Championship Hip Hop Battle, making her an undeniable force in the world of dance. With several smaller film and commercial appearances already under her belt, she made a breakout appearance in a series of iconic Nike campaigns choreographed by legendary choreographer and creative director, Jamie King. Quickly garnering the interest of several high-profile musicians, Boutella found herself dancing for Madonna, Michael Jackson, Rihanna, Usher and many others. Breaking out on the big screen, her most recent film appearances include Justin Lin’s Star Trek Beyond co-starring Zoe Saldana, Chris Pine, and Zachary Quinto and Matthew Vaughn’s Kingsman: The Secret Service, alongside Colin Firth and Samuel L. Jackson.

Here IRIS Covet Book shares a conversation with the blockbuster beauty about lesbian love scenes and mystic monsters with heart.

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“That’s so dark!”

Sofia Boutella is riding shotgun in my car, perhaps the filthiest vehicle currently on the road in West Hollywood, when she spots a stroller sitting on the sidewalk, abandoned in the dazzling Los Angeles sun. We’re on our way to her dentist, running 20 minutes late for an appointment to get her teeth cleaned. “That’s so dark,” she repeats. “What a weird vision. What a weird sight. There are some things it feels like you’re not supposed to see.”

This is not how the afternoon was meant to go.

The plan was pretty standard: I would meet Boutella on the rooftop of a hip Hollywood hotel. We would sip cocktails and take in the view. I would ask her questions about working opposite Tom Cruise in The Mummy, in which she plays the title role, as well as her part alongside Charlize Theron in Atomic Blonde, both of which release this summer. She would tell me some mild Hollywood gossip, repeat a bunch of platitudes about hard work and keeping her head on straight, and send me on my way to write A Celebrity Profile: a greased-lens look at her and her life, constructed in order to give the public a relatable Sofia Boutella character to imagine floating from rooftop to red carpet and set to set.

And in fact, though our time together was replete with lifestyle details—our French fries were sprinkled with truffle oil and Parmesan—it was also dotted with pedestrian inconveniences, the kind of humdrum low-key annoyances that are hallmarks of recognizably civilian life. For instance, the rooftop bar didn’t serve French fries, or any food for that matter, and we were both starving, so we ended up in the dark, loud downstairs restaurant instead. A series of scheduling snafus had accidentally sent Boutella to a different hotel before she met me, so we only had a brief window to eat and talk, which is how I ended up steering her through pre-rush hour traffic while I fired off questions and she finished the last of her fries in the passenger seat. It was an intense afternoon—not dreamy, not “relatable,” but mostly very ordinary: two slightly harried early-30s women trying to do their jobs. Which makes sense: Boutella has never been that into the glamorizing softness of a neatly turned narrative anyway.

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