Meet the Oscar Nominee Playing the Newest Female Badass on Game of Thrones

No longer the little girl from Whale Rider, Keisha Castle-Hughes is back, and bringing her weapon with her.

Every April, Keisha Castle-Hughes gathers with her friends for a Game of Thrones viewing party. For last year's season premiere, she wanted to dress up as Daenerys Targaryen and dragged her friend around Hollywood Boulevard looking for the famous Khaleesi costume to wear to the party. “My friend had never watched the show and didn't understand why I was running around looking for a crazy blond wig,” she recalls. "I spoke to her a couple of weeks ago, and now she's all caught up so she can watch me while I'm on it. She's like, ‘People will soon be dressing up as you for their parties.’ It's mind-blowing.” The New Zealand actress, who was once the youngest best-actress Oscar nominee in Hollywood history, is the newest cast member to join HBO's juggernaut series for Season 5. Introduced in this Sunday’s episode, she plays Obara Sand, a deadly, spear-wielding warrior seeking vengeance against the Lannister family for the death of her father, Prince Oberyn Martell. Since her breakout role in Whale Rider at the age of 12, Castle-Hughes has worked steadily and appeared mostly in New Zealand television shows and indie films. She also became a teen mother when she gave birth to her daughter at 16. But her role on Game of Thrones has relaunched her career and cemented her passion for acting. “When I was nominated for an Oscar, I didn't know whether or not to be an actor. It was something that I just did,” Castle-Hughes, 25, tells VF.com from her cozy Los Angeles apartment on a March morning. “I didn't understand the concept of what acting really was. To receive recognition at that level and not understand it is like working backwards. Now I know that I want to be an actor. I have realized that I am intrinsically designed to do this, and nothing else satisfies the hunger that I have.”

As a fan of the Game of Thrones books as well as the show, she knew there would be a need for ethnic-looking actresses after Prince Oberyn Martell from Dorne (played by Chilean actor Pedro Pascal) turned up last season. “I started to do some investigating and asked my manager to keep an eye out for any Game of Thrones casting calls, and sure enough, there was one for Oberyn's daughters, known as the Sand Snakes.” Since landing the role last May, Castle-Hughes admits, “I was immediately drawn to Obara. She's the oldest of all the Sand Snakes, and I am the oldest of five siblings, so I understood that dynamic very well.” Castle-Hughes describes her character as “ruthless, badass, dangerous, and thirsty for Lannister blood,” but she also has compassion. “She's a daughter who adores her father and misses him. She isn't one to cry, but what she wants in life is to be exactly like him and to make him proud,” the actress says. “She also has love for her sisters. Obara looks after them; but they fight, they are annoying, and they drive her crazy. She has love in her heart, deep down under all the armor.” One part of what makes her character so intimidating is her wardrobe. Obara and her sisters wear armadillo-skin-like chest plates with nipples that give them seductive and alluring looks, which keep their enemies off guard. “Obara wears her armor 24/7," Castle-Hughes notes. "She always wants to be ready for battle.” As for the nipples: “It’s Game of Thrones! You still have to keep it sexy,” she laughs. Though, she’s relieved that she won't have to be nude on screen. “Oh my gosh, to think how many people watch the show, like my fifth grade teacher or the parents of my daughter’s friends, that would be embarrassing,” she admits. “I’m so happy that Obara doesn't have an ounce of sexuality!”

Castle-Hughes’s career began at the age of 11 when a casting agent discovered her at school in Mount Wellington, New Zealand. With no previous acting experience, she beat 10,000 other young girls to star in Whale Rider as a fiery and courageous Maori girl who is the heir of her tribe, even though her grandfather believes that the chief role is only for males. Her performance earned rave reviews which led to an Oscar nomination—making her the youngest nominee ever in that category, until Quvenzhané Wallis, at age nine, was nominated for her work in Beasts of the Southern Wild in 2013. “It’s surreal and crazy to look back on that time. I didn’t know what the Oscar really meant,” she admits. “No one anticipated the success the movie would have. My mum and I were thrown into the craziness. Because I was so young, it was almost kind of traumatic, and you shut it away. The attention was so much at one time, but at the same time it was super exciting.” She remembers riding in a limo for the very first time, receiving her first manicure, getting red-carpet ready with the help of famous hairstylist Frederic Fekkai, and staying at luxurious five-star hotels. “I can understand how fame can negatively affect someone. You can easily get caught up with the perks and forget what reality is.” Once awards season wrapped, Castle-Hughes returned home to Auckland and went back to school. “That was my saving grace. I had somewhere to go after the Oscars where people were normal. I was out of the spotlight.” That didn't last long. After appearing in Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith as Queen of Naboo, in 2005, she portrayed the Virgin Mary in 2006’s The Nativity Story. Once the film wrapped, Castle-Hughes, at 16, made a surprise announcement: she was expecting a baby with her then boyfriend of three years, Bradley Hull, who was 19 at the time. Her pregnancy set off a media firestorm as critics condemned her for being too young to raise a child and also for being pregnant out of wedlock. “I kind of felt like a dirty girl who had done something wrong,” she remembers of the negative reactions to her pregnancy. “No one was happy for me. I didn’t want to become the poster girl for teenage pregnancy, but I wasn’t focused on that or what other people were thinking. I just did the best I could. I was really young to have a baby, and I don’t really advocate that, but I made the best of it and tried to turn it around.”

She gave birth to daughter, Felicity-Amore Hull, on April 25, 2007, and, although her pregnancy was a “complete surprise,” there was no question of whether or not to have the baby with Hull. “Once I found out I was pregnant there was no decision. I was shocked, but it was like, ‘O.K., we are having a baby.’ Then we had to get into action mode quickly,” she says. “Having Felicity was the best thing that ever happened to me. Yes, I was very young, but I knew I had a good support system from my family. It really does take a village to raise a child. I couldn’t have done it without them.” Castle-Hughes ended her engagement to Felicity’s father in 2010 and was dogged by rumors that she was, in her own words, “New Zealand’s own Lindsay Lohan.” As she describes it, “I was very much a normal teenager. I got drunk when I was in high school at parties a couple of times and smoked a few cigarettes, but that's it.” Now an adult with an eight-year-old, married to writer Jonathan Morrison for two years, Castle-Hughes is using her experience as a teen mom to help other young parents. She volunteers with the nonprofit organization called Thrive in New Zealand, which provides support and resources for teen parents to succeed while caring for an infant. “One of the most important things I've learned and tell people is that having a baby is a little road bump, but not a roadblock,” she says. “Your life doesn’t have to stop. You can still get yourself educated and follow your dreams.”

Today that dream includes both conquering TV’s hottest shows—she also made a recent cameo on AMC’s The Walking Dead—and dipping a toe into the world of comedy. She recently started training at the Upright Citizens Brigade in Los Angeles for four days a week to brush up on her comedic skills. “The idea of doing improv terrifies me, but I want to do it because I like putting myself out there and trying new things and exploring new ideas,” she says. “I’m grateful I have the time right now, and it gives me a little distraction from choosing what to wear to the Game of Thrones premiere. I can’t dress up as Khaleesi like I did for the viewing party!”

by: Paul Chi for Vanity Fair