Actor Sam Worthington is the Aussie go-to guy for Hollywood. Source: Getty Images
James Wigney, The Herald Sun, reports
Sam Worthington says no to Bourne and Bond and would rather forge his own path, as JAMES WIGNEY discovers
WHEN Pierce Brosnan stepped down as James Bond in 2005, Sam Worthington made the final list of three to replace him as the suave super-spy.
At the time, despite an already solid resume in his homeland of movies such as Somersault, Getting Square and Macbeth, he was a relative unknown internationally.
But these days, having become one of the world's most in-demand actors thanks to his starring role in the highest grossing film of all time, Avatar, Worthington wouldn't have a bar of the part, just as he wasn't interested when he was approached to replace Matt Damon in the Bourne spy franchise.
He's more interested in creating his own legacy.
"I'm going to lay down a hundred bucks," he says with a laugh when reminded he is still 3-1 favourite with online bookies to replace Daniel Craig should he decide to hang up the tux and holster the Walther PPK. "In fact I'm going to phone up the Broccolis just to win the money."
"It's like with the Jason Bourne series recently.
We talked about it and part of me goes 'that's a franchise that has been created and helped along by other people'.
"What intrigues me more is the chance to start my own franchise and put my own stamp on a character that is iconic rather than just jumping on something that is already established. I like the risk of getting my own one going."
In this latest film, The Debt, Worthington finally has the chance to play a secret agent but it's about as far from Bourne or Bond as you can get.
In the taut thriller he plays one of a trio of young Israeli Mossad agents on the hunt for a Nazi war criminal, known as the "Surgeon of Birkenau", in 1960s East Berlin.
The emphasis is not on gadgets or seemingly superhuman powers, but rather on passion and idealism and the tension of tracking a real-life monster, not to mention the psychological stress of being locked up in a house for weeks on end as a love triangle plays out with his fellow agents played by Marton Csokas and Jessica Chastain.
"They were young idealistic people and not necessarily trained killers," Worthington says. "That's the difference between Jason Bourne and James Bond and other fictionalised spies.
"They are almost world weary whereas we had an innocence we wanted to portray."
Worthington was making Terminator Salvation - his breakthrough international role - in Albuquerque ("anybody who comes to Albuquerque, which is in the middle of nowhere, deserves my time") when he was approached by director John Madden to play the part of crucial part of the repressed, on-edge David.
None of Worthington's blockbusters had been released at the time but Madden had seen the England-born, Perth-raised actor in the much lauded Aussie film Somersault, which had garnered him the Best Lead Actor AFI in 2004.
"He liked the fact that the (Somersault) character was emotionally stunted and David, in a way, is the same kind of character," Worthington says.
"But where in Somersault the character doesn't know his emotions are kept inside - David does.
"His family has been slaughtered and in order to let those demons rest in peace, he has to complete this mission. Nothing is going to get in the way - not even his emotions."
To prepare for his role, Worthington read what he could find on the Israeli Secret Service and took lessons in its favoured form of martial arts, krav maga.
David, it must be said, is the most passive and tormented of the agents, and ends up being something of a punching bag.
"I kind of got my a--- kicked to be honest, mate," Worthington says of the lessons.
"I didn't really have to learn that much - just how to take a hit. Krav maga is an attacking form of self-defence.
"You actually put yourself on the line knowing you are going to get hurt in order to take down your opponent. But I also thought that was a good way into the Mossad mindset - they will sacrifice everything no matter what to get their objective done. That was a way in for me to the character."
Worthington is part of a breed of local talent benefitting from the recent trend of Hollywood looking overseas to find its "real men".
Alongside his sometime mentor Russell Crowe, as well as compatriots such as Hugh Jackman, and more recently Chris and Liam Hemsworth and Joel Edgerton, there appears to be some truth to the theory that Australian actors have an appealing blend of masculinity and vulnerability in short supply among America's home-grown stars.
"Sam has this attractive, masculine, powerful presence but he also has a vulnerability," says Madden. "That's what made him perfect for the part of David."
It's a sentiment reflected by his Avatar director James Cameron, who fought long and hard to have a relative unknown carry one of the most expensive films ever made.
"I had lobbied for him strongly from the beginning because I just felt that he had something that I hadn't seen before in a guy of that age," says Cameron. "There was this amazing sense of not only authenticity but just personal power in the voice and his demeanour.
He also believes Worthington has the perfect mix of tough guy charm and vulnerability to become one of the biggest stars in the world.
"You put those two things together and it's an irresistible combination and that's why I think he is going to go all the way to the top of the whole stardom game if he chooses to do that," Cameron says.
The stardom game, however, is not one Worthington is terribly interested in playing.
He was working as a bricklayer when he was accepted into the Sydney's prestigious National Institute of the Dramatic Arts on a scholarship and was famously broke and living out of a car when he scored his big break in Avatar.
Nor is he one to court publicity for its own sake, preferring to stay out of sight when not working and he'd much rather go surfing, snowboarding or watch his beloved West Coast Eagles play than walk the red carpet at a gala event.
WORTHINGTON is also a straight-shooter and wasn't afraid to go toe-to-toe with Cameron, who has a reputation as one of the world's most volatile and feared directors, if he thought he knew best.
He is equally open about his own work.
Although Clash of the Titans, in which he starred as the sandal-clad and sword-swinging Perseus, was a hit with nearly half a billion dollars at the box office, Worthington was nearly as scathing as the critics of his own performance, telling the Hollywood Reporter late last year: "I think I can act f---ing better'.
Having now finished work on the sequel, Wrath of the Titans, which will be released in March next year, he hasn't changed his opinion of the first movie.
"I think I coasted on it," he says. "I liked what I did but I have learned a lot more about the definitions of character inside these blockbusters.
"If you look at the Bourne movies - there is a definite character of Jason Bourne and I didn't really have a handle on the character of Perseus and what I wanted to say within it.
"With this Perseus, that's how we looked at all of it and you can create something that elevates the blockbuster rather than it being another generic, run-of-the-mill movie with monsters."
Worthing describes working with director Jonathan Liebesman on Wrath of the Titans as one of the best experiences of his life but disputes reports doing the rounds that he tortured himself to get in shape for it.
"I worked by butt off for Clash 1," he says. "Clash 2 I didn't do anything at all.
I am playing a 35-year-old dad so the studio and the writers and the directors and I approached it a bit differently to try something a bit unique."
After finishing Wrath of the Titans, Worthington returned home to his native WA to make his first Australian film since Rogue in 2007.
He piled on the kilos and cultivated a wild-man beard to play a surfing photographer in the '70s set drama Drift, which was recently filmed around Margaret River, and sounds like a rather thinly disguised excuse to hit the waves with his friends.
"One of my mates is the director and my other mate is the star - it's kind of criminal really," he says with a laugh. "I am playing a surf photographer, which is a bit different, and I look a bit different.
"I have been stacking on the pounds a bit and I know I am going to get worked over the falls like you would not believe.
"I will probably get smashed into the reef and drowned - all for the sake of my mate's movie."
He does, however, feel strongly about staying in touch with the industry that gave him his start and would like to continue to make films in this country when he can.
"The greatest thing about doing movies over here (in Hollywood) is that you work with a different calibre of people and you learn so much and bring that back to your own industry and helps support it," he says. "To come back and be able to push each other in that way, that's the exciting thing, to be able to give back to the industry that helped you start your own career."
Worthington has also been enjoying his first real break in four years - but is still waiting for the phone call from Cameron telling him to suit up again for the inevitable Avatar sequel.
"He has told me the basic outline of two and three," says Worthington. "It's monumental and extremely exciting.
"We don't have a start date yet but it will be whenever Jim wants to go."
Just how then, do you top the most successful movie of all time, with a global box office take of more than $2.7 billion?
"You don't try," says Worthington. "You just make a movie that audiences will get excited by.
That was an anomaly - who knows how the next one will go? That's how Jim thinks - you don't worry about topping any other movie, you worry about pushing and challenging yourself."
The Debt opens on November 10.
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