Katy O'Brian hopes Love Lies Bleeding shows audiences that women's bodies can look any way

Rose Glass’ intense and sexy new thriller Love Lies Bleeding is breaking the lesbian internet with its dark and dirty tale of a gym owner (Kristen Stewart) and a bodybuilder (Katy O’Brian) falling in love.

Love Lies Bleeding isn’t like your typical queer movie. It’s unabashedly horny, gratuitously violent, and the two main characters don’t look like lesbians, or any women, usually look in movies.

Lou (Stewart) is a grubby dyke who cleans out toilets and masturbates on her dingy couch while her cat eats her left-overs at her feet. Jackie (O’Brian) is a giant of a woman with muscles for days and a temper that always gets the best of her.

For O’Brian, who has been a bodybuilder for years, it was a chance to finally celebrate her body in a movie.

“I am/was bodybuilder, and so often, I feel like that might hinder my castability, because people aren't so used to seeing bodies like that on screen,” she tells Out. “I remember how big of a deal it was when the new-ish Wonder Woman came out, and they had all the Amazons and they’re in the background. And I'm like, ‘Let's bring those forward though.’”

“So I was really excited that Rose wanted to unapologetically just show this more, what people would consider, masculinized body in the forefront of her movie and really just put it in your face, and I was there for it,” she continues.

She mentions that when she began bodybuilding, CrossFit was becoming more popular and showing more women that building muscle can be for them.

"Okay, yeah, you don't have a lot of testosterone pumping through your veins or whatever, but if you want to be strong and you want to be muscular, you can. It's not easy necessarily. Genetics play a huge part in just how big you can get it in general for everybody, but it's something that could be done,” she says. “And I see a lot of people that didn't know that a woman could have muscle.”

O’Brian says she’s even been getting commenters who doubt and question her gender, but she doesn’t pay much attention to them other than to point out, “it’s important that people don’t judge bodies just based off how they look.”

In Love Lies Bleeding, O’Brian’s character doesn’t just have a bodybuilder’s body, she shows it off in great ’80s workout gear, which she says was specifically heightened to show off her body.

“I was talking to Olga, the costume designer, I was like, ‘No one actually works out in outfits like this. You know that, right? Even in the ’80s. It's just for magazine covers,’” O’Brian says. “And she goes, ‘Yeah, but you are.’”

“And you put on these tiny little outfits that show everything. And in a way, it's empowering because that to me informed Jackie – and the hair too – but it informed Jackie so much because it's like she's loud and proud, she knows who she is and she is unabashed by it,” O’Brian adds. “It was such a cool, empowering feeling because I did get to walk around and feeling like I was hot shit because of the hair, the wardrobe, and the world that they set up for us.”