Scenestealer Mackenzie Foy Stars in The Isolate Thief

MacKenzie Foy established herself as a towering screen presence at a young age, bursting forth onto the screen as Renesmee Cullen in 2012 in The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2. It was her performance in Christopher Nolan‘s 2014 classic, Interstellar, stealing scenes from Oscar winners Matthew McConaughey and Michael Caine, that really made an impression on audiences and critics alike. In The Isolate Thief, she steps into entirely new territory with her first Western.

“I think what initially attracted me to it is that it’s a genre that I’ve never done before,” Foy says. Set in 1865, The Isolate Thief follows Ada (Foy) who is living alone at a remote Army outpost in the Oregon High Cascades after her father’s death, dreaming of a new life in San Francisco. When she discovers a cache of stolen gold, the mysterious Fiddler John Good (Sean Bean) and his gang arrive, claiming to be Union Army officers and seeking a quarter at the outpost. Forced into an uneasy alliance with Emily (Odeya Rush), a woman being held captive by the men, Ada must rely on her resilience and instincts to survive. While Foy was excited to be doing a Western, even better was the opportunity to tackle challenges she’d never faced on set. “This is the most stunts, blood, gore, prosthetics that I’ve ever done,” Foy says. “I’ve never even worn prosthetics before.”

The film gave her “a lot of technical firsts,” including extensive stunt work and learning to handle period firearms. “There were quite a bit of stunts in this,” Foy says. “I had never worked with firearms before.” Because the production used vintage weapons, she had to learn techniques that differed from modern firearms. She worked closely with the stunt coordinator, stunt doubles and the armorer to understand “how my body would react to the things that were happening.” Since no real guns were really fired on set, much of the performance came from “learning what to do physically” and “adding layers to the physicality,” so every action felt convincing. The physical demands complemented Ada’s daily existence. Living alone in the High Cascades, she feeds livestock, protects the outpost from wolves, treats her own injuries and dreams of escaping to San Francisco. That isolation also shapes the way she responds when strangers suddenly enter her world.

“What was really interesting about her is that you never quite know what her motivation is,” Foy says. As Ada finds herself at a crossroads in life, she is suddenly confronted with possibilities she never imagined. “The world is open,” Foy says, “and this is really the first of society that she’s seeing in a very long time.” That uncertainty extends to Ada’s relationship with Sean Bean‘s mysterious Fiddler John. While John presents himself as a friendly Army officer, Ada quickly suspects there’s far more beneath the surface. “I think there is a bond of connection between Ada and Sean Bean’s character,” Foy says. “They’re very similar.” That ambiguity became one of the film’s most interesting elements for her. “You never know,” Foy says. “Are they gonna team up? Are they just playing with each other?” Sharing the screen with Bean proved to be another memorable experience. “I’m a huge Sean Bean fan,” Foy says. “I’m a massive Lord of the Rings person.” She had only about a month between accepting the role and beginning production, with roughly a week of prep before filming started. Meeting Bean lived up to every expectation. “He’s a lovely human being,” Foy says. “Getting to see him in action and play a proper villain was really fun.”

Although The Isolate Thief contains gunfights, violence and growing suspense, Foy hopes audiences leave thinking about something deeper. “It’s such a story of the lengths that people will go to survive, whether their intentions are good or bad,” Foy says. The central question, she believes, is “when you’re faced with evil, do you become it to end it? Or do you stay pure and valiant through it all?” After discovering how much she enjoys action-heavy filmmaking, Foy already knows where she’d like her career to go next. “I love doing stunts,” Foy says. “I really, really enjoy it.” While she’s appeared in films with action elements, she’d love to do “a proper action film.” She’s also eager to play against type. “I’ve always wanted to play a villain,” Foy says. “Villains have really interesting thought processes.” She also remains drawn to fantasy after The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (2018). “Any kind of period piece, fantasy, action,” Foy says, “I’m all over.”

With The Isolate Thief, Foy demonstrates another side of her range, carrying a tense frontier thriller that depends as much on quiet resilience as physical endurance. It is both a Western survival story and a character study, giving the actress room to explore moral ambiguity, emotional isolation and hard-earned strength while hinting that even bigger action-driven roles may be waiting just over the horizon.

Read more interviews by Patrick Gibbs:
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