SAM WORTHINGTON (Terminator Salvation) and ZOE SALDANA (Star Trek) talk about seeing their avatars for the first time, keeping up with writer-director James Cameron, and rehearsing in rainforests.
Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana
MMM: What was it like seeing the Avatar versions of yourselves for the first time?
Saldana: It blew my mind. Jim would always incorporate us in the process of the results that we would get from Weta [effects specialists] and all the other companies we were working with, and we just couldn’t find words to express how we’d feel. It was something so new. They were so beautiful and it looked so much like us.
Worthington: I was a bit scared because I try to be a subtle actor and I was worried that the nuance of a performance wouldn’t translate. In the end though I believe, hopefully, that it is 100% my performance, that it captures every glimmer in my eye, every smirk, every goofy walk, that it has encapsulated my spirit, and hopefully as you watch the film you won’t see some big blue people but the spirit of us.
MMM: Zoe, is it hard to keep up with Jim’s vision on a film like this?
Saldana: I can imagine it would be hard if you were shooting green screen and you didn’t have enough reference pictures and footage.
But we went to Hawaii for four days before we started shooting, and spent the time jumping up and down in the rainforest getting our feet wet and learning what it was like to walk on that kind of ground, and how the sun was cast on leaves, and cooking fish on the ground. I think Jim knew he was hiring people who needed to make everything out of thin air, so he took us to experiences and answered every question we had.
So by the time he said ‘action’, we were there and this world was real, so much so that everybody around us was seeing it as well. It just brought it back to a child-like form of role-playing, which in reality is what an actor does. You lose your innocence and you try to gain it back.
Worthington with co-star Stephen Lang
MMM: Sam, what was your experience of Hawaii?
Worthington: We had nothing on but a light G-string, a couple of ears, a tail, and a weird wig! I thought Hawaii was going to be a holiday and I could go surfing! But we got there and we worked hard. And one day this guy walked past and he goes: ‘What are you doing?’ And I said: ‘We’re making a movie.’
He asked: ‘Who’s the director?’ And I said: ‘That bloke over there,’ pointing to Jim with his handycam. So he goes: ‘Is that James Cameron?’ And I said ‘yes’, and he said: ‘Fuck, he’s gone downhill since Titanic!”
By film journalist Jan Gilbert
