Most people will know her as Matilda Wormwood in Matilda The Musical but now Dublin actress Alisha Weir has transformed into a ferocious teen ballerina vampire in her new movie, Abigail.
The horror-comedy sees the 14-year-old play the titular young girl who is kidnapped by a bungling gang and taken to a spooky mansion until her crime boss dad coughs up the $50 million ransom.
However, they get far more than they bargained for when the novice in a pretty tutu bares her teeth and some killer dance moves.
Speaking to RTÉ Entertainment on the red carpet at the preview screening of the movie in Dublin's Lighthouse cinema on Wednesday evening, Alisha said, "One day you’re playing a character like Matilda and the next day you’re covered in blood playing a ballerina vampire.
"It isn’t every day you get to do that but I love getting to put myself into different characters and storylines and really get to experiment and explore."
The new film was co-written by Clondalkin man Stephen Shields, who won RTÉ’s STORYLAND series in 2010 and went on to write for comedy shows The Republic Of Telly and Callan’s Kicks.
Abigail, which was shot in the historic Glenmaroon House in Castleknock on the outskirts of Dublin, also stars a motley crew of actors as the kidnap gang, including Dan Stevens of Downton Abbey and Giancarlo Esposito, who played drug kingpin Gus Fring in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul.
Before her acclaimed breakthrough role in Matilda The Musical in 2022, Alisha’s stage credits included the musical Once in 2017. She made her feature film debut in the 2018 thriller Don't Leave Home and her television debut as Laura in the 2019 crime drama Darklands.
However, she was really able to get her teeth into her new role, especially as it sees her playing dual parts - first as the terrified innocent who is kidnaped in the dead of night and then as a ferocious blood-supping vampire, who quips, "what can I say, I like to play with my food".
This is very much Abigail's party.
"Definitely! I got to play two different people and that’s what I really love about acting," says Alisha, who attended Wednesday's screening with her parents, Mark and Jenny.
"You get to put yourself into different characters. I can be a vampire or Matilda and then go home and be Alisha. You get to dive in and become someone you really aren’t."
She certainly enjoyed the physical transformation from ballerina to vampire in Abigail.
"That was so fun. It definitely took me a while to transform myself into someone I didn’t look like - I had contacts in, I had fangs in, I had this big white ballerina tutu and there was so much going on. I looked in the mirror and I almost got a fright!"
And that’s not to mention the floods of blood and gore in the new movie.
"If you don’t like blood, you may not like it" Alisha laughs. "But it is such a funny film so if you don’t like horror, you might like it because there’s lots of comedy in it as well. Really crazy and lots of fun."
Abigail is in Irish cinemas on 19 April.
