Guest Post

Female action heroes are often overshadowed by their male counterparts, and aren’t always given the recognition they deserve. It’s definitely time this changed, so here are five of the toughest female characters the world has ever seen.

Katniss Everdeen

Katniss Everdeen is the main protagonist of The Hunger Games, a trilogy of books written by Suzanne Collins. And in the recent film adaptation of the first book Jennifer Lawrence stars as Katniss and steals the show!

Katniss is good at everything really. She’s a strong independent woman with a knack for surviving in the most difficult of situations. She’s also exceptionally smart and always comes up with an idea to save herself and those around her. She really is a great heroine.

Sarah Connor

The great thing about Sarah Connor is that she’s not naturally tough. She was just an ordinary college student, working part time as a waitress to pay off her fees. But things change when you’re being hunted down by a cyborg killer from the future that looks suspiciously like Arnold Schwarzenegger.

For a lot of people the Terminator films are all about Arny, but for me nothing beats watching Sarah Connor’s journey from college girl to all round action hero. Sure she’s a little bit mental, but boy is she tough!

Buffy Summers

Buffy Summers, played first by Kristy Swanson in the 1992 film Buffy the Vampire Slayer and then more famously by Sarah Michelle Gellar in the hit TV series of the same name, was dreamt up to challenge traditional Hollywood stereotypes. The idea was to show that the cute little blonde girl didn’t have to be weak and pathetic, something Buffy definitely isn’t.

As you’d expect slaying vampires isn’t for the feint hearted and Buffy shows herself to be both fearless and strong. Yes she’s super-hot, but that doesn’t mean she can’t kick some ass!

Lara Croft

While we’re on the subject of combining strength with beauty we should definitely mention Lara Croft. She’s everything you want in an action-adventure hero and so much more!

When it was announced that the popular video game series was to be turned into a film I’m sure many fans were worried about how Lara Croft was going to be portrayed, but Angelina Jolie played the role perfectly. As Lara she was funny, intelligent and of course brutally tough.

Ripley

Ripley is tough right from the outset. As soon as she appeared on our screens in 1979 we could tell she was gonna be hard. And it’s a good job she’s so tough, as she’s had to deal with more than her fair share of menacing aliens over the years.

Perhaps Ripley’s greatest asset is her reliability. She’ll keep her head no matter how frightening the situation is, and you always get the feeling that she’s going to come out on top. A true warrior.

John Henderson loves action-adventure movies. He keeps himself in DVDs by writing about the vast array of presents on offer at Find Me A Gift, the gift ideas people.

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