Gwendoline Christie is anything but your typical Hollywood prototype. The 6'3" English actress has risen to fame over the past three years as fan favorite Brienne of Tarth on HBO's Game of Thrones. With the third season recently arriving on Blu-ray and the premiere of season four coming this Sunday, we talked to her about the series, the importance of Brienne for women everywhere, and the strong females she looks up to.

ESQUIRE.COM: You spent most of season three walking around tethered to Jaime Lannister. Are you and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau best friends now?

GWENDOLINE CHRISTIE: [Laughs] I would say that we are friends, definitely. Best friends? I wouldn't go that far.

ESQ: He's not coming over for tea.

GC: No, he's not coming all the way from his Danish roots over to London for high tea in the reception room with my staff. But you do build up quite a bond when you work so closely with someone. The relationship on the screen is pretty volatile and that, as I think I've said several times before, can move off screen, but it's always fun, even if you're really needling each other.

ESQ: Was it tough to transition back to working with a larger ensemble toward the end of the season, after it had been just you two for quite a while?

GC: Yes. It's not hard, but you do notice the difference. Nikolaj became like a really comfortable pair of old slippers. You know what you're getting. You get used to what the other person is like and you trust them and the ways in which they might deal with you when you interact with each other on set. Certainly, I think we're both very committed to honoring the integrity of the relationship. You have all your in-jokes and you know how to wind each other up and you know how to rely on each other and how to be laissez-faire with each other. And then suddenly there's this whole new group of people and you've got to behave yourself. It's like, suddenly you're having dinner with the grown-ups. [Laughs]

ESQ: We know that Brienne is a good person. Do you think Jaime is a good person at heart or does he just have a soft spot for Brienne?

GC: I can't give a yes or no answer to that question because of the reason that I like the characters in Game of Thrones so much, and the reason that I think they resonate so strongly with an audience, is because so frequently we're called into questioning whether they are good or bad. The strength of the writing is that man is a very complex beast and these characters tend to show the wide range of human emotions contained within a character. I don't think that Jaime Lannister has a soft spot for Brienne of Tarth. I think that a grudging mutual respect has been born and I think it's tough for those two characters to readily respect other people, other than in a chivalrous manner. This respect has been born out of very real, quite difficult circumstances that they have gone through together. I feel that, somehow, he's honoring that respect and honoring that experience that he's had with her. Another reason I love the relationship so much is because it is close, but it doesn't have its basis in sexual activity. That's what I think makes it so fascinating. And I do hope and think it will spawn myriad similar relationships in television. I hope so because I think it's a praiseworthy model to have in our lives.

ESQ: You're a beautiful woman, but Game of Thrones takes a lot of that away. She's covered in armor, dirty, and rolling around in the muck all the time. What is it like to go through that transformation?

GC: That's a very, very kind compliment and I'm very grateful. But it's also a very interesting question. I think it's important to have women in our mainstream entertainment whose beauty doesn't lie in the way in which they were born. It's about the choices that they make. As an actress, I find that interesting and exciting. The characters that I want to play are interesting women. I don't care if they're good women or bad women or vulnerable women or women with a lot of faults or women that we dislike intensely who are malicious. I am interested in looking at the female and I'm as interested in stripping all of that away and exploring it for, hopefully, years as I am interested in playing a woman that conforms to more traditional female norms and conventions of beauty. I think that, certainly in Britain, we're feeling a real movement. I would chance saying globally there is a feeling that female empowerment has, at last, become a topic that is fashionable, and more power to that. You know, a million actresses have said, "There are so few female parts" and "We need to be stronger women!" I agree with all of that, but ultimately, I am just an actor in a show and if that entertains people then I'm thrilled. If it makes them think then I'm even more excited.

ESQ: Who are some of the women that you look up to in your life and career?

GC: I've always really loved a whole wealth of women — not just actresses. Vita Sackville-West is one of my favorite female icons. She was a writer and a prolific gardener, but she also had a relationship with Virginia Woolf, and she was married to Sir Harold Nicolson. She was a woman who lived outside of norms. She dressed the way she wanted to and she did what she wanted, and she had her own relationship where they loved each other and they had children but it wasn't a love that was based on sex. She wrote some brilliant books and was highly educated. Virginia Woolf, again, fought for her literature, although she was very tormented by mental illness. I absolutely love Oprah Winfrey. What a great woman and a great businesswoman. She seems to really campaign for an expansion of global consciousness. I think she's phenomenal. Obviously Germaine Greer and artists like Rebecca Horn, Leonora Carrington, who was one of the first female surrealist painters. It's a true story, I believe, that she kind of went mad and was placed in a sanatorium, and her nanny came to rescue her in a submarine [eds. note: it is, somewhat unbelievably, true. I really admire the writer Donna Tartt. I really like the artist Louise Bourgeois. I think a woman like Tracey Emin has truly done things her own way, and I respect that. I think Tilda Swinton decided to do things her own way, and I greatly admire that.

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