Bombshell Mixed Martial Arts fighter Gina Carano is staring in Steven Soderbergh’s Haywire, which opened this weekend with more than 9 million dollars in ticket sales.

Carano stars as Mallory Kane a Black Ops private contractor sold out by the clandestine group she works for. Soderbergh, who has a knack for making movies where the star is a strong female, first saw Carano in 2008 when the MMA star was at the height of her game in the ring.  He was enchanted by her ferocious fighting style aand yet she was beautiful at the same time.

Soderbergh had the following to say about Carano,

“This was a type of fighting that I’d never watched before and I thought Gina was extraordinary. She had incredible presence and she seemed like a really unique combination of elements. When I saw her, I started thinking how I could build something around her and that’s when I started thinking about putting her in a very male-dominated world to navigate through physically and philosophically.”

She was at the top of her game in 2008 and in 2009 had signed on to the remake of American Gladiators to star as gladiator Crush.  At this time Soderberg tracked her down for the role.

Carano had just lost a huge brawl for the featherweight championship in American Strikeforce and decided to retreat to her San Diego home.  She only agreed to meet with Soderbergh because her agent told her that he had directed Traffic which had been one of her favorite movies.

Carano said of their meeting,

“I had to pick him up at the San Diego train station and he’s wearing a cap, glasses, jeans. I didn’t know anything about Hollywood or directors or anybody else in this world. Needless to say, I had no idea who he was. We sat and had a really great discussion, just two normal people, and at the end of it he asked me if I wanted to be in a movie.”

It’s a dream scenario every actor prays for, but Carano, in her unassuming way, said she was just grateful that someone was willing to hire her for anything after the beating she’d taken on cable television a week earlier.

Haywire shows Carano at her best, kicking ass as she is supposed too.

Check out the gorgeous Gina Carano talking shop with Conan O’Brian

Gina Carano Stars in Haywire [Video] is a post from: The Inquisitr

Steven Soderbergh’s Haywire debuted last year at the AFI Fest and has been gathering rave reviews ever since. The film opens nationwide next week, but Gina Carano, Channing Tatum, Ewan McGreggor, and Antonio Banderas fans can get a sneak peak of the first five minutes of the film right now.

Haywire has only been shown to a handful of people so far but those people unanimously agree that the film is excellent. Haywire currently has a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes (only 6 reviews have been posted so far.) Kevin Harley at Total Film writes:

“Hard, fast, brutal: Soderbergh’s sucker-punch return to action knows what it’s about. Not subtle or substantial, but it gets to work with flab-free focus.”

The movie hits theaters on January 20th but to keep the good buzz flowing Hulu has just posted the first five minutes of Haywire online.

Here’s the first five minutes of Haywire, featuring Gina Carano, who plays black-ops super soldier, kicking the crap out of Channing Tatum.

This is one of Carano’s first big acting roles, but it definitely isn’t her first fight as Carano is a former MMA fighter. Tatum said that he was reluctant to hit Carano during their fight scene, you know, because she’s a girl. But the action star quickly learned his lesson.

Tatum said:

“She called me the female P word, and then I had to, for my manity. I hit her and she hit me back twice as hard. Then I didn’t want to hit her anymore.”

Are you excited to see Haywire? Do you think Gina Carano will turn into a female version of Jason Bourne?

Gina Carano Pummels Channing Tatum in Opening Scene of “Haywire” [Video] is a post from: The Inquisitr

In Steven Soderbergh’s upcoming action thriller Haywire, mixed martial arts superstar Gina Carano is destined to cause jaws to drop and heads to roll as she takes on the role of a secret service op seeking revenge on her betrayers.

In the movie Carano joins a star-studded cast of Hollywood veterans including Ewan McGregor, Michael Douglas and Antonio Banderas, but according to co-star Channing Tatum the young female fighter is ultimately what makes the film.

“You are going to get some really satisfying girl on dude whoop-ass, just straight up whoop-ass,” Tatum told FOX411’s Pop Tarts column at the Comic-Con International Convention over the weekend.

In another interview, Channing also revealed that he had a hard time hitting Carano during some of the film’s action sequences, and for good reason:

“She called me the female P word, and then I had to, for my manity. I hit her and she hit me back twice as hard. Then I didn’t want to hit her anymore.”

For those of you scratching your head wondering where you’ve seen Carano (besides the MMA ring); the 29-year-old “tough girl” also appeared on NBC’s American Gladiators under the pseudonym “Crush.”

Haywire hits theaters on January 20, 2012.

Until then you can catch Gina Carano in the official HD trailer for the flick below:

Gina Carano: Female MMA Fighter Turned Hollywood Action Star is a post from: The Inquisitr

Will Gina Carano ever be on the cover of Playboy?

That’s the big question today and it appears to have gotten enough people salivating that it’s turned into a full-blown internet meme, with hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people searching online for the term “gina carano playboy pics.”

We saw this bubble up to the top of the trend tracking services so naturally, we did some investigating, but what we found out might disappoint – as of the time of writing, we found out that Gina Carano has no immediate plans to appear in Playboy. However, if Gina and her people are savvy, they’ll definitely be considering doing so since there’s obviously a massive demand.

So dear readers, would you be out waiting at your local newsstand waiting for that Gina Carano Playboy pics goodness to appear on the shelf if she were to ever to do the Playboy thing?

Gina Carano Playboy Pics – Will It Ever Happen? is a post from: The Inquisitr

New photos have surfaced of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) fighters Gina Carano and Tonya Evinger partying together in what some are calling a “lesbian party.” The pics show Carano, also known as American Gladiator “Crush,” having some beverages and getting close with her former opponent.

All the ruckus may be over a comment supposedly made by Tonya Evinger before one of their fights last year: “I’d like to make out with Gina, but I am here to knock her out. Either way she wants it, though, is fine. with me.”

The photos don’t strike us as particularly scandalous or homoerotic — we’ve seen innocent party pics that look far worse than these — but check ‘em out and decide for yourself. Of course, it probably doesn’t help that Tonya Evinger once defeated Gina Carano “via rear naked choke for her first career win by submission,” as Wikipedia puts it. You can see video of that maneuver below, too.

Gina Carano Pics: The So-Called “Lesbian Party” With Tonya Evinger is a post from: The Inquisitr