Jessica Biel took on high-speed driving scenes for Matchbox the Movie after years of raising her sons, saying she finally felt ready to trust her body with that kind of action again. Her previous movie was the 2017 drama Shock and Awe.
The 44-year-old actress shares Silas, 11, and Phineas, 6, with husband Justin Timberlake. Discussing the film’s physical demands, she said: “I really felt like I could trust myself to have the physical capabilities to do something like this again. And it was, it just was perfect timing and felt like an opportunity that also my kids would be proud of.”
The 9-year gap surprised Biel because she’d continued working in television: “I feel like I’ve been constantly creative, but technically it’s been on television. I’m not actually in film.”
For Matchbox, learning to control a car at speed became a physical challenge of its own. “I did a ton of performance driving which actually required a lot more strength than I thought,” she said. She described coordinating the clutch and pedals while turning a car 180 degrees and stopping at a precise mark.
Biel said the script, director Sam Hargrave and co-star John Cena helped draw her to the project. She also wanted “to be a part of something that encompasses all these different genres: action, comedy, friendship, a little romance.”
