“I am someone who likes a physical challenge,” says Saura Lightfoot-Leon. “I will always throw myself in.”

That is certainly what the 26-year-old actress did during her most recent shoot, for Peter Berg’s brutal proto-western Netflix series American Primeval. “It was tough on the body,” she confirms with regard to filming in Santa Fe, New Mexico for seven months last year. “Really exhausting. Long days, night shoots, a lot of fight scenes. We went from two metres of snow to blazing hot sunshine… it was madness!”

Lightfoot-Leon plays young Mormon woman Abish, who in 1857 is abducted by Native Americans. This required her to attend “cowboy camp”, where she learned, like her character, “how to ride bareback, how to hunt, how to gut a deer, how to skin, how to fight”. American Primeval was her first US production and she admits to feeling a little culture-shocked and dislocated from her family (her parents, Paul Lightfoot and Sol León, are dancers). Even so, she thrived in that tough environment.

Lightfoot-Leon puts this down to her background in dance, which she pursued for a few years in her teens before deciding she craved the “mystery and adventure” of a less-familiar creative realm. She spent years as a child watching her parents rehearse again and again — blood, sweat, tears and all. “To me, it wasn’t ever about [performing] the show. There’s no greater place for me than [creating the] work. I become alive.”

Lightfoot-Leon has been working hard since graduating from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 2020. Her first role was as a Hitler Youth member in BBC series Life After Life, followed by another Second World War part, as a Resistance fighter in Apple TV+ epic Masters Of The Air. Then came UK indie Hoard, in which she got gritty as troubled foster teenager Maria in 1990s Lewisham, south London.

But she is being selective with her roles even at this early stage in her career. “I can’t say there’s too many scripts you get sent as a young woman that make me want to dive in,” says Lightfoot-Leon. “It’s a shame. Hopefully that will change. But luckily enough, the jobs I have done are quite strong women who stand out and are brave, who take risks, don’t adhere to norms and are a bit wild.”

While harbouring long-term ambitions to run her own theatre company, Lightfoot-Leon — who is currently shooting a major series for a US streamer — sees her immediate future as being “wide open”. She is looking forward to playing “a lot of roles that throw me into different characters”.

“If anything scares me or I think, ‘I don’t know how I’m going to do this,’ I want to do it,” she insists. “I won’t shy away from it.”

Contact: Rosie Whitcombe and Grant Parsons, Curtis Brown

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