Welcome to Rachel Nichols Web

The ultimate boys’ toy is coming to the big screen in the shape of GI Joe – the US version of the doll the British know as Action Man.

Actress Rachel Nichols, a former model who was seen earlier this summer as a green-skinned alien in Star Trek, is a member of the GI Joe team out to defeat the evil Cobra organisation, headed by Sienna Miller.

The 29-year-old plays Scarlett, whose ninja skills and talent with a crossbow come in useful when dealing with deadly assassins.

We caught up with Nichols last month on a day that began with her and her co-stars being sped down the River Thames for a photo opportunity at HMS Belfast.

That was quite an entrance you made this morning…

Oh my gosh, they did not adequately prepare us for this morning! It was so much fun: I’m from New England, from a world of boats and oceans, so I had a real laugh. It was hysterical: there were these little dinghies, we’re bopping through the water and all of us got drenched. It was a riot to start a day of press that way.

GI Joe is called Action Man in the UK. We don’t recall there being an Action Woman…

Scarlett is the one female GI Joe, the one girl in the group of boys, and I was very much the one girl in a group of boys when we made the film. She grew up with the boys, she’s a tomboy, she’s really smart and she beats a lot of them at most of their games.

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Busier than a hooker on Valentine’s Day last week, I assigned Drew Turney the (not-so-difficult) task of talking to the lovely Rachel Nichols for me. Nichols, who you’ll know from TV-ville (“Alias”, “The Inside”) was in Sydney to promote the comic-book inspired “G.I Joe” – and in this one-on-one chat with Moviehole’s Drew, you’ll get the full low-down on it. Enjoy the chat…

Drew here, Is she just another hot babe clad in black leather in a tentpole toy movie or something more? After some ‘I know her, she’s that girl’ roles in everything from teen chick flicks (Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants 2) to sci-fi (Alias, Star Trek), I ask just who Rachel Nichols just who she thinks she is…

Drew: How hands on were you in the production?

Rachel: Very much so. Stephen [Sommers, director] loves to put the actors in the stunts and scenes as much as possible and I did everything they’d allow me to. It was really hard work but all of us got along so well that it didn’t feel as hard as it was and we had a really good time.

Drew: There were obviously a lot of digital effects in the film, so how many stunts could there possibly have been for you to take part in?

Rachel: You’re right there was a fair amount that had to be CGI but people don’t realize how much was actually real. The sequence where there are cars and hummers flying through the air? We actually did that. I think we set some sort of record for launching the most cars into the air for any movie. There were a lot of real explosions and there was a lot of real water, believe or not.

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A trash-talking DJ set off Sienna Miller on Tuesday with a flurry of insults.

Adam Richard interviewed the G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra villainess and co-star Rachel Nichols on the Australian “Matt & Jo” radio show, and it didn’t take long for the conversation to head south.

After the DJ referred to Nichols as “the green b**** from Star Trek” and referred to one of their scenes as a “scrag fight,” he asked Miller if she’d been cast because she was a real-life bad girl.

“Don’t you dare even go there,” Sienna responded. “And no, I’m an actress. I don’t think I am a bad girl, but thanks for calling me that … d*****bag.”

Richard then asked Nichols about her stint on Alias, where she worked alongside Balthazar Getty, who had an infamous fling with Miller last year. Getty was married at the time of the relationship.

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Augusta’s Rachel Nichols brings a dash of color to Star Trek and lights up the screen in G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra.

This summer, local audiences enjoying the critically acclaimed Star Trek movie have the right to point at the screen and say, “She’s from Maine,” when they see Rachel Nichols, painted green in some wonderfully steamy scenes with Captain Kirk.

Not that it’s easy being green: “It took four hours to paint that on her,” Rachel’s mom, Alison Nichols, tells us from the same house in Augusta where Rachel grew up and pointedly did not dream of becoming an actress.

Of course, Nichols is only the second Maine-connected star to look green and fabulous. In the original Wizard of Oz (1938), Margaret Hamilton, who retired to Southport Island off Boothbay, was painted a lurid copper-based green while playing her unforgettable Wicked Witch of the West. When she scares the scarecrow, the pyrotechnic special effects set poor Margaret’s paint on fire, too. She was in the hospital for days.

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