SheWired Shot of The Day: ‘Captain America’s Hayley Atwell is All That

There is a moment in just about every workday when we come across something sexy, gratuitous and completely pointless that we wish we could post but don't under the auspices of there being nothing lesbian about it and often there being no redeeming value. Well, we at SheWired have made an executive decision to just throw any of our pseudo-feminist caution to the wind and to just post our favorite shot of the day, whether it be sexy, salacious, or just because…

Thinking this weekend at the box office looks a little bare for the ladies? Think again. Hayley Atwell brings wit, charm, and hotness to the big screen opposite Chris Evans in Captain America. But lesbian audiences may remember her from a steamy scene in The Duchess, in which Atwell's corseted character instructs Keira Knightley's in the ways of romance.

The Brit bombshell posed for these scorching Esquire photos and charmed the Q&A with her awesome, authentic view of film-making and stories of her unique upbringing.

Here are just a select few examples from the interview of why we heart Hayley:

I just randomlytackle people in the streets when it suits me.

When I met withthe director of Captain America[out July 22], I hadn't seen the script, and I had to go meet him, and we spoke for like an hour. With a lot of those big films, they'll do that instead of an audition — and I prefer them, because I love a chat. I've found the messier the meeting gets, the more successful. You vomit on someone's shirt, it's probably going to work in your favor. Because you shared something: an intimate moment of drunken behavior.

I was wearing Spanx. A big old pair of Spanx. Really hot.

I'd been wanting to do an "action" film and of course I get cast in an action film set in the forties. [Note: Her oeuvre is mostly period films: Brideshead Revisited(2008), The Duchess(2008), and last year's Starz miniseries The Pillars of the Earth,which earned her her first Golden Globe nomination. In Captain America,she plays a British military agent.]

I'll say to Team Atwell,"What is this project about?" And they'll say, "Okay, look, it's not a great script, but it'll give you exposure," or "It's three months in the Caribbean." In which case I would probably say, "I'll do it." That's a legitimate reason to take a job. I once spent four months in Africa shooting The Prisoner[a 2009 AMC miniseries also starring Ian McKellen and Jim Caviezel]. What else could I do on the planet that allows me to go there for all that time?

Yes, my dad's a shaman. But he's not like, "Hi, I'm the shaman, thank you." He doesn't walk around in a loincloth or live in a tent or anything like that. But he does vision quests and sweat lodges — I almost died in one of those things. It was so hot. And you sit like this [she spreads her legs]. Most people were naked. I was in a bikini. It was gross. Really gross.

I'm not a name.They can get me really cheap. So I'm gonna make it up in the minibar bill. Or just pads of paper from the hotels that I'd been in. My grandfather was a war baby in England. And because of food rationing, he overcompensates now by hoarding food — he's like, "I came back from the supermarket, and all of thiswas on special offer. So I bought it." I think that's where I get it from. With the hotel minibar, I'm like, "I think I need that. Yeah, that's brilliant. I think I need that."

Next up ispossibly a Jimi Hendrix biopic — an independent film with Andre 3000 from OutKast playing Jimi Hendrix. But I don't know, really. The Atwell team is like, Let's just wait and see... I love how I call them Team Atwell because each of them works with fifty other people as well. Sometimes they forget who I am. I was on the phone with a member of Team Atwell once, and we chatted for like half an hour and he said, "I really loved you in that film." And I said, "I wasn't in that film." Team Atwell doesn't even know who Hayley Atwell is.

Enjoy more about Atwell’s work in Captain America and childhood split between London and Kansas, Missouri, read her complete Q&A on Esquire.com now.

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