Atwell: "I was called Hulk Hayley at primary school"

Hayley Atwell, who starred in the first 'Captain America' film, the 2011 blockbuster 'The First Avenger', confirms she will be returning from the dead and reprising her role as Peggy Carter, the wartime British agent girlfriend of Captain America.

For a time, there was anxiety among Peggy fans that the transfer of the narrative to the present would rule out her return. “She’s definitely there and she’s an important part of it,” Atwell tells 'The Telegraph' newspaper, “even though it’s not set in the Forties. The fans won’t be disappointed.”

[Emily VanCamp to star in Captain America sequel.]

Marvel  recently released an action-packed short dedicated to Peggy called 'Agent Carter'. Might they do something longer especially for Atwell?

“Well, all that I can say is that if they did ask me, I would absolutely do it. The choreographed fight scenes were great to do. I just kept on wanting to nail it and make sure that the punches looked like they would follow through.”

[Andre 3000 spotted as Jimi Hendrix for first time]

"I love that stuff," she continues. "My dad was like, 'Hayley, you’ve always had that in you.’ I played rugby at school, and I was tough. I look very different to how I feel that I am inside. I’ll always really be just a slouchy tomboy. I used to beat up my guy friends when I was young. I was called Hulk Hayley at primary school.”

She's just returned from American sci-fi convention, Comic-Con. “What is weird is walking down the streets seeing people dressed as superheroes but then picking their nose or running for the bus,” she says. “That’s really surreal. You’re like, 'I’m sure Wonder Woman doesn’t eat burgers slouched over a bench like that.’ It was very funny, but the level of commitment is quite humbling. There’s an innocence about them as a fan base, it’s not aggressive, but they really do love that world. I approach Peggy Carter as I would any character, then take all the make-up off and go home and be myself. But for the fans, those worlds live for longer within them.”

Later in the year, she's playing Jimi Hendrix’s girlfriend Kathy Etchingham (the inspiration for Foxy Lady) opposite OutKast’s André 3000 in the film 'All Is By My Side', about the guitarist, who died in a Notting Hill flat at the age of 27. “It’s a very interesting script,” she says. It’s written by American John Ridley, who also wrote the screenplay for Steve McQueen’s forthcoming film, '12 Years a Slave'. “It’s not linear, it’s very bizarrely constructed,” says Atwell, “and it’s kind of grabbing the essence of that time, the Jimi Hendrix we know and love and how London may have shaped him in the three years before he became famous.”

Later this year, she will join her friend the British actor Tom Hiddleston in a film about the war photographer Robert Capa and his lover and fellow photojournalist Gerda Taro, who was killed during the Spanish Civil War.

Atwell was with Hiddleston at Comic-Con, where he appeared in character as Loki, the villain from 'The Avengers'. “I saw him hiding in his hotel room when no one was meant to know he was there. And we were cracking up. I’ve got a picture of him dressed as Loki brushing his teeth with an electric toothbrush.”