The appearance of Haley Atwell in Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One (Paramount 7.12) threw me off slightly. For a few minutes it put me into a kind of Twilight Zone.
Chris McQuarrie and Tom Cruise‘s film has 10 or 11 significant characters played by actors with facial and name-brand recognition, you see, and as I sat down at the AMC Empire two nights ago I hadn’t committed each and every name to memory, Atwell’s in particular.
So when I first laid eyes I thought “wait, who’s this again?” Then a thought flashed — “wow, Kate Mara must be around 40 but she’s looking good, except she looks chiselled…has she had work done?” Plus she was speaking with a hint of a British accent but I figured this was part of the performance.
In fact Atwell and Mara, who look like sisters, were born only 14 months apart — Mara on 2.27.83 and Atwell on 4.5.82.
Then Atwell’s name came to mind, but I haven’t paid much attention to her career. I don’t even recall her performance in Ant Man, nor do I remember her from Woody Allen‘s Cassandra’s Dream, and the only Haley that was coming to mind was Haley Bennett, except she’s a ginger and roughly five years younger than Atwell and Mara.
I put it all together when the film ended, of course, and I started researching.
I’m sure that HE’s wretched slimy bedbug commenters will call me a moron for mistaking Atwell and Mara, but they’re determined to be dicks no matter what. The photos speak for themselves. Maras’s nose is a bit smaller and narrower.
