It's Hard Out There for a Bald, Genetic Mutant with Daddy Issues

French actress Delphine Chaneac is worth the price of admission as the genetic creation Dren in "Splice," but it wasn't an easy shoot.

She gamely shaved her head for the part, used so much prosthetic glue that she's now severely allergic to it and endured a rigorous, brisk shoot for the low budget independent film -- all in freezing Toronto. But Chaneac doesn't complain much at all.

Except for the tail.

"That wasn't my favorite part," she tells PopcornBiz of Dren's lethal and long appendage. "But no problem. I knew from the beginning it was all part of being this creature. I knew the deal."

But she admits she would find it funny to see a member of the crew following her and moving her tail with fishing string as she walked on stage. "I used to think, that's so strange."

There were a lot of those moments shooting "Splice" which opens Friday. "When you have blue socks on for special effects, a long, blue tail and high heels and you're on the set, well, sometimes you feel ridiculous," says Chaneac.

With all of this, the actress says she didn't even think about the oddness of her love scene with Adrien Brody, who plays the scientist/father figure who helped create her. Kinda gross, but very distracting.  "I didn't want to think about it too much because I would lose confidence."

Further director Vincenzo Natali laid the scene out very dryly.

"He came to us and said, 'Okay you have to be like this, fall on your back, make two turns,'"  says Chaneac. "It was so precise and very technical."

It was only afterward that it struck her as odd.

"After that, I thought it's weird," says Chaneac. "It's a relationship with a girl and father, so that's strange. But at the same time, she doesn't have his DNA."

Gotta love the French.

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