Julia Garner: Marvel movies reach a different kind of audience

Julia Garner hopes to reach a "different kind of audience" with 'The Fantastic Four: First Steps'.

The 31-year-old actress has been cast as Shalla-Bal / Silver Surfer in the upcoming superhero movie, and Julia is thrilled to be part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Julia told Entertainment Weekly: "She's so different than anyone I've ever played, and that was also another reason why I wanted to do it.

"I don't expect everybody to watch 'Ozark' or 'Inventing Anna' or 'The Assistant'. Some people are only going to watch certain things, so that's why I want to branch out to every genre, and that's one of the reasons why I wanted to do Marvel - it's reaching a different kind of audience."

Julia read "a lot of the Fantastic Four and Silver Surfer comics" before she began filming the new movie.

And the actress has relished working on a Marvel project.

Julia - who stars in the movie alongside the likes of Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby and Joseph Quinn - said: "When I got presented with this opportunity, I was like, 'Wait, what? Me?' Yeah, I was in disbelief, almost because it was so cool.

"I knew who the Silver Surfer was, and I got to know the Silver Surfer more when I signed on to the project. I really dived in. I read a lot of the Fantastic Four and Silver Surfer comics before starting the project, and I knew that this 'Fantastic Four' was going to be told in a very different way than even the other movies."

Julia's performance was actually inspired by the comic books that she read. But the actress revealed that, unlike her on-screen character, she can't actually surf.

Asked if she knew how to surf before being cast in the new Marvel movie, Julia said: "I am actually afraid of the ocean. So no, but I can act.

"I have some friends that know how to surf, and they showed me some moves before I went out to London to just kind of get the body position of it all. And then I realized shortly after I was in London that I used some surf moves, but then I also used a lot of what I saw in the comic books.

"There were different poses that, the way that they would draw them, they weren't surf poses - they almost looked like something you would see in sculptures. So I incorporated surfing with the poses of a sculpture, like moving elegantly, like a dance. So it was kind of a mixture of things, but a lot of it was from the comics that inspired me."