Six year old Tori scowled. There was no point in telling Kevin she didn't want to be the stupid useless princess. She was always the princess. I'm the oldest so you need to listen to me, Kevin said the last time. You're the only girl in the family so you're the princess. She let Kevin believe what he wanted and the moment he turned his head, she tackled him to steal the stick they were using as a sword, stabbed Noah and ran off. This princess needed no saviour.
She'd been like this since she could always remember. The only daughter to James and Gabriela Matthews, Tori was raised believing she could earn her right to anything if she wanted it. She was more than a damsel in distress. She did not have to take people's shit if she didn't want to. Her older brothers were there to coach her through standing up to bullies -- how to be wittier, how to be faster, how to be stronger.
By the time she was 11, Tori was enrolled in taekwondo classes with her brothers and finding a solution to her problems with classmates. The lessons she learned in her classes would serve as a foundation for her self-worth and self-confidence. Years later when staying with her paternal grandparents for the summer in London, she would be discovered at an amateur taekwondo tournament by Matthew Vaughn, the director to her first feature film. He would later say in interviews that the first time she appeared on the mat, he'd been bemused by her small stature only become amazed at her sheer willpower.
Matthew Vaughn approached the then 16 year old and invited her to audition for a film he was starting to pull together. This would lead to Layer Cake, the formal introduction of Tori Casillas to the world. While he did not cast her as a major role in his movie, he would prove to be Tori's biggest supporter, introducing her to various people in the British film industry.
Tori formally dropped out of school and began to concentrate her attention on making her new career work. She found acting to be loads of fun, pretending to be someone else and living a lifestyle she'd never come across in the past. The roles she was interested in were limiting and her agent at the time encouraged her to try other options.
Tori's breakthrough came in the form of Strawberry Fields, Bond girl in the latest 007 film. Though she'd initially felt overjoyed at her luck, she quickly realised her disgust for most female roles in action films. The attention she received as a Bond girl unnerved her. She was criticised in newspapers, tabloids, online forums for her looks, her weight and her personality. After her experience with a high profile project like Quantum of Solace, Tori vowed to never again play a woman whose main purpose was to support the leading man and serve as eye candy for audiences.
She struggled at times, sometimes backed out of projects because she disagreed with the decisions the director attempted to make with her characters. Nothing seemed compelling to her. Every time she would land a big role, she would lose another over her temper and her reluctance to compromise.
While she has never been interested in becoming a serious actress, Tori finds herself at war with Hollywood to find great female action roles. In addition to auditioning for male roles, Tori speaks out against the old boys' club that so much of the action genre is built upon, much to the chagrin of her agent and publicist. The gratuitous sexualisation of women is an issue Tori champions against.
