“Hitman: Agent 47” Actress Hannah Ware on Comic-Con, Bianca Jagger & Dressing Like a Milkmaid

Photography by Alisha Goldstein
Styling by Annina Mislin
Hair by Patricia Morales
Makeup by Ashleigh Louer
Production by Rosco Productions

Hannah Ware arrives at Superba Food and Bread in L.A.’s Venice Beach neighborhood wearing a dark brown slip dress with a small corset tie, a black kimono robe with embroidered flower detail, and Swedish-style clogs — an ensemble that rings few alarm bells in the disheveled vintage girl capital of the United States, but that she feels warrants explanation. “I look like a 1970’s prostitute because I’m going to an audition after this,” she says, “It’s actually a dress I’ve owned since I was about fourteen and it’s remotely seventies and a bit buxom,” she pauses, “But maybe I look more like a milkmaid.”

For the record, Ware, who is petite and striking, with olive skin, searing green eyes, long, sun-flecked hair, and a very direct manner of speaking, does not, at first glance, appear to be milkmaid material, which is not to say that with the discipline she applies to acting, she couldn’t convince you otherwise. A lead in Hitman: Agent 47, opening Friday, Ware’s route to performing is unusual for both its stopoffs and speed. She grew up in South London and modeled to pay her way through university, where she studied art history. She saw it as the equivalent of her friends who worked retail on the weekends, not a path to a career. “I’m five foot four,” she deadpans. I think they always hoped I’d grow.” At 25, about to do a second degree in architecture, she had a pivotal moment. “I sort of came to terms with the fact that I probably wouldn’t be a brilliant architect,” she says. “It’s hard when you’re twenty-five because a lot of your friends are honing what they’re doing. There’s this horrible pressure of our generation that you have to decide, and I think social media makes it far more stressful,” she adds, taking a sip of black coffee. “You’re surrounded by false realities of how successful and happy people are and I think it misguides you a bit. Happens to the best of us.”

While on a modeling job in NYC, a friend convinced Ware to go to an acting class with him; she was compelled to return. “Not because I thought ‘Oh I’ve uncovered this wonderful thing about myself’ – I mean I was beyond terrible – but I think there was something about it that had my undivided concentration.” She enrolled at Lee Strasberg Institute full time and was rehearsing a play with her then-boyfriend in a bar when a manager overheard and wound up signing her and sending her to auditions. In another spate of abnormal velocity, she booked her second gig—a role playing Kelsey Grammer’s daughter on the two-season run of the Starz show Boss. Then followed a small part in Spike Lee’s Oldboy and a lead role in ABC’s Betrayal. “I’m learning on the job in a public way,” Ware says, reflecting on her resume so far. “I haven’t done drama school like everyone else so I see every job as a way to do something new.” Ware’s sister, Jessie, is a wildly successful singer and songwriter, and the actress says both are stumped about how they landed where they are. “We were not stage kids,” she says. “We’re both kind of shocked by it.”

In Hitman: Agent 47, a thriller in which a genetically engineered assassin (Rupert Friend) comes after a corporation trying to use his technology for ill, Ware plays Katia van Dees, the daughter of the founder of the Agent program and a role that stuck with her when she read the script many years ago. Also featuring Zachary Quinto, the film shot in Berlin and Singapore and required high levels of stunts and athleticism. “I was inhabiting a person who was physically very different from me,” she notes. “You don’t march down the street like Annie Hall swinging a handbag. There’s a sleekness and an economic way that people move when they’re natural born killers.”

To promote the film, which is based on a video game, Ware made the hallowed pilgrimage to Comic Con in San Diego for the past two years. “Last year I went with Zach Quinto and it was like being with Michael Jackson because he’s Spock,” she says of the Star Trek actor. “I really want to understand Comic Con a bit more – but I think it’s really great that if anyone’s really passionate about stuff, f***ing go for it, and I just love that. It’s like people being obsessed with Wimbeldon or football fans in England – that’s a real culture. What do you think it is about why people do that?” The daughter of a sociologist and journalist, Ware has an anthropological impulse to dig in and understand, whether it’s zealous football fans, movie roles, or comic book nerds. “I’ve always been curious about the way that people operate and work, psychologically,” she says. “I suppose acting is the artistic route of that.”

Ware has lived in a bungalow in Venice for almost three years. “I quite like my own company,” she admits, though she does have a pack of good friends in LA. She loves interiors, from her art school days, old movies, and fashion. “I shop anywhere. In Berlin, there was a second hand designer store where I bought the most wonderful white fur coat, and I’m obsessed with Hidden Treasures in Topanga Canyon.” To promote Hitman, she worked with stylist Cher Coulter. “I’ve got the most amazing outfit for the premiere,” she says, of the upcoming New York opening (a forest green crushed velvet trouser suit from Cushnie and Ochs. “My style icon is Bianca Jagger, I think Bianca Jagger can do no wrong. If I’m like ‘Should I do that?’ My best friend always says ‘Han, what would Bianca do?’ and I’m like ‘She’d go to the party in a f***ing white horse wouldn’t she? Yep, she would.’”

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