2000s Carano starred in the 2005 film
Ring Girls. Based on true events, it is about five American women from Las Vegas who attempt to fight the best Muay Thai fighters in the world. Along with Lisa King, Carano served as a mentor to aspiring fighters in the 2007
Oxygen reality series
Fight Girls. She appeared as "Crush" on the
NBC show
American Gladiators, in which she starred in the workout video of the show along with Monica Carlson (Jet), Jennifer Widerstrom (Phoenix), Michael O'Hearn (Titan), Tanoai Reed (Toa) and Don "Hollywood" Yates (Wolf). The DVD was released on December 16, 2008. She appeared in
Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 as Natasha, portraying the Soviet sniper/commando in various cut scenes. She is featured in the 2009 martial arts film
Blood and Bone.
2010s In September 2009, Carano landed the leading role in the spy thriller
Haywire (2011), directed by
Steven Soderbergh.
Christy Lemire of the
Associated Press stated: "[Carano's] dialogue delivery may seem a bit stiff—and she has acknowledged that Soderbergh made some tweaks to her voice in post-production—but she has tremendous presence: an intriguing mix of muscular power and eye-catching femininity."
Newsweek said Carano's martial-arts experience gives her "an unparalleled physicality" in the role. She described her knockout fight with co-star
Michael Fassbender: In February 2012, Carano was cast in
In the Blood (2014), an action thriller directed by
John Stockwell. In 2012, Carano was cast as the lead in an all-female ensemble action film, tentatively titled
The ExpendaBelles, that would have been part of
The Expendables film franchise. Producer
Adi Shankar said, "I don't know how I'm supposed to make a movie that is supposed to be the female version of
The Expendables without Gina Carano in it. It would be like making
Twix without caramel or
Jamba Juice without Jamba." The project has yet to materialize. Carano appeared in
Fast & Furious 6 (2013) as a member of Special Agent Luke Hobbs' (
Dwayne Johnson)
Diplomatic Security Service team. Several critics praised Carano's performance;
Richard Roeper of the
Chicago Sun-Times wrote, "Gina Carano is BIG fun to watch. [She] is still a bit stilted with her line readings, but her two fight scenes with Michelle Rodriguez are just epic." while Matt Goldberg of Collider.com wrote that the scene would "create a lot of new Gina Carano fans." In July 2013, she and comic book creator
Rob Liefeld announced they were working on a big-screen adaptation of Liefeld's
Avengelyne in which Carano would star as the titular character. Carano appeared in the 2013–2014
Fox series
Almost Human episode "Unbound", where she played the part of an XRN combat android named Danica. She co-starred in the 2015 film
Extraction, and she played
Angel Dust in the 2016 film
Deadpool. In 2018, she was cast in
The Mandalorian,
Lucasfilm's first live-action
Star Wars television series. She portrayed the character
Cara Dune with a first appearance in the fourth episode of the first season titled "
Chapter 4: Sanctuary". Carano initially believed she would be playing the role of a female
Wookiee, and was surprised to "find that [she] was one of the few people that you were actually going to see her face." She played the role in seasons 1 and 2.
2020s In February 2021, Carano shared an
Instagram post that compared "hating someone for their political views" to the early stages of persecution of Jews by their fellow citizens before
the Holocaust and included an image taken during the
Lviv pogroms. Many critics interpreted the post as comparing
American conservatives to
Jews in Nazi Germany. Shortly afterward, Lucasfilm stated that Carano was no longer employed by the company, saying that "her social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable". A series of
posts in which she mocked the use of
face masks during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States was also cited by Lucasfilm, as well as her repeated accusations of
voter fraud during the 2020 presidential election. She was also dropped by the
United Talent Agency. The film,
White Knuckle, was to be about revenge by a survivor of an attempted murder by a serial killer. The film was scheduled to begin production in October 2021 in Tennessee, Utah, and Montana. In the U.S., it was to be released exclusively to subscribers of
The Daily Wire, and was to be released internationally by
Voltage Pictures. In May 2021, Carano appeared as a guest on an episode of the show
Running Wild with Bear Grylls. By fall 2021, the
White Knuckle project had been cancelled at Carano's behest, due to her unwillingness to comply with Hollywood's COVID-19 mask and vaccine requirements. The group began production on the replacement film, a
Western entitled
Terror on the Prairie, that was released exclusively to
Daily Wire subscribers in June 2022. In November 2021, Carano was tapped to play a secret service agent in
My Son Hunter, a biopic on
Hunter Biden directed by
Robert Davi. In February 2022, Carano explained her social media posts, saying that she "shared a meme, I translated into: Don't let the government pit you against each other or history tells us that could go wrong." Some fans and commentators contrasted Carano's firing with fellow
The Mandalorian cast member Pedro Pascal suffering no consequence for making comparisons between the treatment of Jews in concentration camps and the treatment of undocumented migrant children at
ICE detention facilities in the US. Carano was defended by
The Mandalorian co-star
Bill Burr, who described her as "an absolute sweetheart" and criticized her firing. In February 2024, Carano filed a lawsuit against Lucasfilm over her firing, alleging wrongful dismissal and
sex discrimination. The suit was funded by
Elon Musk, who had previously promised to support anyone who suffered
employment discrimination because of what they posted on
X. Disney moved to have the case dismissed, which was denied by U.S. district judge
Sherilyn Peace Garnett. but in August, Carano and Disney settled their dispute. ==Accolades==