Close-Up: Jim Sturgess
Posted by Rob Ortenzi on 05-Jun-08 @ 04:04 PM
He's got the British accent and the asymmetrical haircut, plus he's worked with U2's Bono and apparently possesses a strand of Paul McCartney's DNA. But it took a starring role as Jude in last year's Beatles homage Across The Universe to turn one-time aspiring London-based musician JIM STURGESS into a bona fide rock star. Although he studied as a child at the National Youth Music Theatre and enrolled in film classes at the University of Salford, Sturgess spent most of his 20s focused on a career in rock, only taking the occasional acting gig. Little did he know his breakthrough performance in Universe would allow him not only to showcase his brooding frontman charisma, but open the door for more juicy acting roles--like that alongside Kevin Spacey and Kate Bosworth as a card-counting MIT student who beats the Las Vegas system in this month's 21.
INTERVIEW: Tim Karan PHOTO: Ashley Maile It seems like you've always been surrounded by music or acting. When did you realize you wanted to be a performer? There were various benchmarks in my life when I realized I kind of liked it. Being in [the National Youth Music Theater] was definitely one. But as I got a bit older, I got really self-conscious about [acting]. I didn't really think it was a cool thing to do, so I stopped doing it completely for a long time. Then in my early 20s, I started doing the odd bit of acting here and there when I could in short films or in radio plays. How big was winning your role in Across The Universe? It was huge. Before that time, I was just kind of hanging around in London doing music. I remember hearing about auditions for a Beatles musical and thinking, "Man, that just sounds like a really bad idea." [Laughs.] But I went anyway. Do you think that pessimism helped with your audition? It did. I had a naïve sort of confidence about the whole thing. Two or three auditions later when they sent me to New York City to meet [director] Julie Taymor, I was like, "Oh, shit. This could actually be really good." It wasn't until then that I got nervous. But everything I'd done in my life had kind of built up to that moment. All the experience I had with music and acting, it all came together for that one role. Are you now burned-out from listening to the Beatles? Pretty much, yeah. [Laughs.] No, there are so many Beatles songs that you can always re-discover more and more. I was such a huge Beatles fan anyway that it was a joy to do all that stuff. What attracted you to your distinctly non-musical role in 21? The story. I read the script and it was such a fun, exciting ride. Then I found out it was based on a true story, and I was like, "That's fucking cool." So I was intrigued. The fact that these kids, [these] everyday students from Boston, really went up against the system by counting cards and beat it, it's amazing. Your character Ben Campbell is a math whiz. If we gave you an algebra test right now, how would you fare? I'm an actor, man. I'd be fucking destroyed by it. [Laughs.] Math and me don't go hand-in-hand very well. Luckily, I didn't have to learn any math for the movie. Actually, the math in card counting is pretty simple--it's just adding and subtracting. But you have to do it at such a speed that it's impossible to keep up. So are you now trained to take down a casino in real life? Absolutely not. In fact, I won more money at blackjack when I had no idea how to play than I did once I started thinking I was any good at it. [Laughs.] The minute we hit the tables in Vegas, it was pretty clear that we had no idea what we were doing. Aside from blackjack, are you a big gambler? Not with things like cards. In fact, being in Vegas put me off gambling even more. You'd just see people throwing all their money away day in and day out. It's enough to put you off it for life. But I think the very nature of acting is sort of a gamble in itself. Luckily, you seem to be up at the moment. Not many people get to work with Kevin Spacey and Bono. Who's more intimidating? [Laughs.] Both. They're both sort of huge presences. You just know about them for such a huge part of your life, and then you're all of a sudden in a room speaking with them. It's sort of a strange experience. As strange as suddenly being the object of affection of millions of women? [Laughs.] It's been weird. But it's great. Obviously people are responding to [Across The Universe]. I just think the Beatles music has that kind of effect on women. I don't know how much of it is actually me. You've got to be doing something right... All you gotta do is sing a Beatles song, man. [Laughs.] I swear. ALT CHEAT SHEET >> Unless you're a connoisseur of the British television series THE QUEST or radio plays like TROILUS AND CRESSIDA (yeah, we missed both of those, too), your first exposure to Jim Sturgess probably came in the epic Beatles musical ACROSS THE UNIVERSE. He followed up that with a starkly dramatic turn alongside Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson in THE OTHER BOLEYN GIRL and will next hit the big screen as a card-counting MIT mathlete under the tutelage of Kevin Spacey in 21. ALT THE UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE "Music was really my entire life before I got Across The Universe," says Jim Sturgess. "In fact, only about a month before the audition, the band I was in for about four years--this seven-piece--split up and I had no idea what I was going to do with myself." A seven-piece? "We had two frontmen," he says. "I was one of them, and I played some keyboard, too. We were along the lines of New Order and the Stone Roses and that whole Manchester '80s scene." So what's he listening to now that he's endured a potentially dangerous level of Beatles songs on a daily basis for weeks on end? "There's a band from London called White Russians who I've been listening to a lot," he says. I really like Klaxons and Arctic Monkeys, too--all those sort of British guitar bands. I also just bought the soundtrack to The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, which is amazing." Still, if you're in a London pub at just the right time, you might spy Sturgess catching one of his mate's bands--or maybe Sturgess onstage himself. "I live in the Camden section of London, and everyone there is an aspiring rock star," he says. "All my friends are musicians, and we still play all the time. I don't have a band, but the minute I'm not acting, I start messing around with music. I definitely wouldn't mind playing out again." [TJK] |
