Ruth Wilson had to learn to shear a sheep for ‘Dark River’.
The 36-year-old actress is starring as Alice in the upcoming British drama film by Clio Barnard, which also features Sean Bean and Mark Stanley, and for the role, Wilson had to learn how to master the special technique.
Speaking on ‘This Morning’, Wilson said: "The first thing on the script when I read it … she’s been shearing sheep for 15 years and there’s a scene of me shearing sheep.
"I haven’t touched a sheep ever in my life."
Asked how she found the experience to be, Wilson admitted that it was "really hard" but also that it was "amazing".
She shared: "It’s really hard, you have to be really brutal and violent with them, to keep them in place. They don’t want to have their hair cut. You have to sort of keep them in place.
"But it’s an amazing technique. You have these weird shoes, like Hobbit shoes, you roll the sheep around your legs. You have to keep their skin taut son you don’t cut them.
"I loved it. I love being out with nature and I think that what’s so interesting now is we are so urbanised, certainly me I live in towns and cities, and you don’t have so much connection with the land and I loved being our there."
Meanwhile, Wilson – who has starred in ‘The Affair’, as well as Disney’s ‘The Lone Ranger’ – has revealed she wants to play "more complex" female characters as her career progresses.
She told the Times newspaper: "I just thought ‘oh no, I’m playing women at home, crying over their men’. So I made a decision not to take that kind of role again.
"It was important for me to put women on the screen who are much more complex than that."
Ruth Wilson had to shear sheep for Dark River role
