British teenager Lilly Aspell has credited a childhood spent showjumping with her leap to superhero status. She claims horse riding and showjumping helped her to do most of her own stunts in the new “Wonder Woman” movie. The 13-year-old plays a young Diana Prince in “Wonder Woman 1984,” filmed when she was 9, training for up to six months to do archery, as well as horse racing. “I’ve done the majority of my stunts and then the ones I wasn’t allowed to do my amazing stunt double has done them, and done an amazing job, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t up for it,” she said. Zero to hero The Scottish-born star was scouted, at the age of 6, while out shopping with her mum on Oxford Street, London. Picked out for her resemblance to Gal Gadot, the actress playing the adult Wonder Woman, she was asked to attend an audition. She said, “I got spotted in London and it was fate. We went shopping and ‘Wonder Woman’ was my first movie.” In the last “Wonder Woman” movie, she featured in flashback scenes. But this time around she has a more prominent role playing a young Diana in the Amazonian Games on the island of Themyscira. The equestrian side of things came easy to her after a childhood spent around horses, both her parents were jockeys. “I was 4 or 5 when I started showjumping and I was riding since I could talk,” she said. But she admitted she was a novice to acting and was only tempted by the prospect of paying for her hobby. She added: “I was mainly doing the acting to fund the showjumping. “Showjumping is a very, very expensive sport, and I wasn’t as privileged as other people are in showjumping so I had to work for it, and my whole family is really horsey so it helped.” Wonder what’s next? The teenager has set her sights on both acting and showjumping for the future and like any superhero worth their salt she is aiming high. “I’d love to win Oscars, win BAFTAs and go to the Olympics. I would love to do them both … anything is possible. Just hard work and dreams I guess,” she told BBC Breakfast. She would then go on to appear in “Extinction” — Netflix’s 2018 science fiction action film — as Megan. Following on from “Wonder Woman 1984,” Aspell is set to appear in the BBC’s adaptation of Nancy Mitford’s “The Pursuit of Love,” directed by Emily Mortimer and starring Lily James and Emily Beecham. That series is currently filming at the time of writing. (SD-Agencies) | 