She's playing the small but pivotal role of a stylist-turned-shopkeeper who helps Katniss Everdeen.
by David WarnerTampa Bay has seen Eugenie Bondurant in many guises.
She’s the imperially tall chanteuse who sings the Great American Songbook with husband Paul Wilborn in gigs at American Stage and The Palladium. She co-founded the Radio Theatre Project, and teaches acting at Patel. Bondurant completists might have caught her in small roles on TV series like Star Trek: The Next Generation and Frazier or movies like Fight Club.
But as of this morning, Bondurant finds herself in the sights of a much bigger and more fanatical audience: Lionsgate announced today that she is playing Tigris in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2.
A small but pivotal role, Tigris is a stylist-turned-shopkeeper whose face has been altered to resemble a tiger's (complete with surgically implanted whiskers) and who helps heroine Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) in Mockingjay 2. The film doesn’t open till Nov. 2015 (Mockingjay Part 1 opens this fall), but as with every other character in the mega-popular adaptations of Suzanne Collins’s book series, the subject of who will play Tigris in the film has been a subject of much speculation.
Bondurant’s striking appearance (she’s a former runway model) and smoky voice would seem to be an ideal match for such an exotic figure. But some fans have been rooting for an actor whose physicality couldn’t be more different from Bondurant’s: Australian comic powerhouse Rebel Wilson of Bridesmaids and Pitch Perfect fame. Other new cast members already announced for Mockingjay include Julianne Moore, Natalie Dormer and Michelle Forbes.
Let the Games begin.