How Actor Luisa Guerreiro Brought ‘The Toxic Avenger’ to Life as the Bod Behind Toxie

In the 1984 Troma cult classic, The Toxic Avenger, Toxie is played by multiple actors. Mark Torgl portrays the human Melvin Ferd Junko III, while Mitch Cohen plays the toxic-transformed version, with Kenneth Kessler voicing the character.

Writer/Director Macon Blair similarly follows suit with his vibrant reimagining. Peter Dinklage stars as Winston Gooze, a struggling parent and janitor who suffers a freak accident that transforms him into a mop-wielding, mutant crime fighter. While the transformed Toxie is voiced by Dinklage, it’s actor Luisa Guerreiro (Wicked, Baldur’s Gate III) who rocks the mop as Toxie’s physical half.

She’s even credited in the film as “Toxie (The Bod).”

As Macon Blair previously explained the process, “Peter performed the whole movie on videotape as Toxie. Just himself. But making the choices, delivering the lines, physical choices, how fast he’s running, all of it. There’s a video version of him just in a white room playing the whole movie. Luisa takes those tapes home, memorizes them, and studies them. She plays Teletubbies and Oompa Loompas. She’s like a physical performer. So, she’s studying his gait and his timing, his pauses, his line delivery, all of that. She replicates that on set, and then Peter, six months later, comes back and reinterprets the voice based on what she did.”

It’s an impressive feat to see play out on screen, but it becomes even more so with Guerreiro’s background as a physical and comedic performer. A lifelong love of comedy and combat makes the role seem almost fated.

“I was always very ungraceful,“ Guerreiro tells BD. “Then, when I knew I loved drama, I knew I loved acting. It was always seen as a side job, something you can do with your full-time job. But when everyone else was training in acting, they were also doing dance and singing. I was not a huge fan of dance as it was portrayed or presented to me then. It was a lot of ballet. It was a lot of classical, very graceful styles. Beautiful. Not me. I found stage fighting at the age of 16, and found that if you give me footwork with a weapon, I enjoy it so much more than if I don’t have the weapon.”

“So at 16, I wanted stage fighting,” Guerreiro continues. “I was always very sporty, but never really found where my niche was. I loved anything that was impact or contact or had a bit of, I want to say cardio to it. So golf is not my thing. Darts is not my thing. But anything that had a bit of risk. Like my mum always said, ‘I should have had boys,‘ which is really strange because it’s that stereotype that really hard play is for the boys. And I loved it. Physical comedy has always been something I’ve loved. I’ve grown up watching Robin Williams and Steve Martin. I grew up watching Ace Ventura, Jim Carrey, and all of those beautiful comedic moments. Plus, I have a very funny family. They’re all crazy.

“So, in terms of mannerisms, impersonating them as a child was just a gift because my mum’s Portuguese, we had a Scottish aunt, a friend of the family who was also very eccentric. We had Argentinian family who would come over as well. So it was a smorgasbord of things for me to pick up on. Plus, when you’re at school, the biggest and most fun thing you can do as a child is impersonate your teachers. So that was also a gift.”

Picking up the Toxie mantle required extensively studying Dinklage’s performance, but it also required a lot of collaboration.

Guerreiro breaks it down for us. “[Peter] did everything first, but the collaboration came at the beginning as well, when we were auditioning. I had a chat with Peter. I had a chat with Macon to find out how I was going to approach the role, because I think that was very important. I knew that when I was being seen for this, my job was to be invisible. I was just going to have my arsenal of acting skills to bring with me as part of, let’s say, the recipe that is going to be how we construct this character.

“My job was to be Peter, so it’s almost like you had stars in your eyes where you literally have to come out being a person and knowing them so well that you can improvise as them, not as yourself, not making your own choices. Because an actor, that’s great. You can be creative, you can see what you are pulled by and what you’re influenced by in your own history, and what ideas you have. But I had to take the essence of what Peter is, but then not do that. Do the essence of what Peter is and what he’s chosen for Winston Gooze.“

That’s a tricky role to play, trying to not only match another actor’s performance but also anticipate it when shooting scenes. But it was a challenge Guerreiro was excited to tackle.

“I knew that I had to osmosisly take on Winston Gooze, and then be Luisa being Peter, being Winston, being Toxie,” the actress explains. “So I mean, that was a challenge. That was enough for me to go, ‘Please give me this role.’ I get to fight with a mop. I get to do prosthetics, which I absolutely love. I get to be the actor that I really love doing because a lot of the time I’m a puppeteer and you’re infusing life into something for the benefit of the show, which is still beautiful. But this was just four or five elements, putting me in my element. I was like, ‘Please, please, please, if I get anything in the world, could it be this film?‘”

Adding another challenging layer was the prosthetics that Guerreiro would have to perform under and through, including an animatronic eye that impaired her in more ways than one.

“It’s the animatronic that obscures your sight, but it’s also all you hear,” Guerreiro recalls. “I had to have an earpiece because we tried it without the earpiece, and I had Macon directing me, and I was just staring at him with my good eye, which was the one that was covered with a big sclera lens. He was gesturing, and I was like, ‘I think he’s talking to me. I don’t know.‘ So, it was very loud, but then once you had the earpiece in, it was actually really, really easy to work with. That becomes part of your body. It’s almost like if you had tinnitus. I mean, it’s a bad example, but you get used to it. Then you just focus on the job at hand.”

Millennium FX was quick to praise Guerreiro’s performance, and it’s clear the love is mutual. She tells us, “Millennium was amazing. They took great care of my skin, because of course, it’s about four weeks, maybe more than that, applying day in, day out with a break every now and again. I think it was four hours of makeup, and they kept me cool, which was very appreciated.”

The Toxic Avenger releases in theaters this weekend. Get your tickets now!

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