Editor-in-Chief, Culture and Events

Juliette Lewis has a very good reason why her horse-riding skills are so impressive in her new thriller, “The Thicket.”

"I'm a third-place ribbon barrel racer," Lewis says on this week's episode of "Just for Variety." "I was a horseman. I grew up riding horses before I was 12. So the first thing we did in Calgary [where the film was shot in the winter] was get on a horse. They wanted to watch us, how you rode. I got a very good grade for my riding."

In the Elliott Lester-directed film (in theaters September 6), based on the Joe R. Lansdale novel of the same name, Lewis plays Cut Throat Bill, a violent, hardened bandit in the early 20th century who kidnaps a young girl (Esmé Creed-Miles). The girl's brother (Levon Hawke) hires a bounty hunter (Peter Dinklage) to rescue his sister.