SCI-FI-LONDON: As an actor, how have you managed to overcome the residue, or legacy, of STAR WARS?
Hayden Christensen: I don’t know. I don’t know if I have overcome it. That’s for you guys to say. I think it is something that will follow me for the rest of my life. There will always be people at the front of the hotel waiting with STAR WARS pictures. So I don’t know. I had a great experience with making those films and I’m very fond of everything that it brought, but I don’t think it is ever anything that will leave me. It’s with me forever.
SFL: I mean, did it help you getting other roles or were you worried about being typecast?
HC: I don’t think Doug really cast me because of STAR WARS. He was more interested in SHATTERED GLASS and that’s what he spoke to me about, and certain aspects of my performance in that that he was interested in. But the STAR WARS movies have opened a lot of doors for me, and has allowed me to be part of a movie like this.
SFL: There are some fabulous locations used in the film, was this a big attraction when accepting the role? And what was the shortest time you actually spent in one place?
HC: I really like to travel and I read the script and with all the different locations we were going to cover, I got excited. We spent a lot of time on planes, in transit, so I wished I could teleport, but we were all over the place. Doug’s approach to filmmaking is quite unique and he has a range of how he approaches his movies, from big-scale productions to literally showing up, with a camera, at my door, and saying, “Let’s go and film in Ann Arbor for a day. Let’s go and walk around New York for a day, or Paris for a day. We were in Paris for like five hours. He likes the down and dirty guerrilla filmmaking. He likes to operate himself a lot of the time. He was working a lot of the time with this thing called a RED camera, I don’t know if you know anything about it but it’s this really new technology, and a lot of the footage on the movie he shot on that, which literally gave him the ability to have a crew of two or three people, where we could just roam around the streets and shoot stuff. It was funny at times because people would recognise me, or recognise Doug, and we were working on what was clearly a very small-scale operation. Some might even think it was a student film or something, and they are like, “Are you getting paid to be here?” I look forward to those people going to see the movie and see what we were actually doing.
SFL: Doug Liman said JUMPERS presented him with one of the greatest creative challenges of his career, but what challenges did it present you with as an actor?
HC: I think Doug has really made an attempt to challenge himself and do something new and original and so therefore encouraged his actors to try different things as well. Every aspect of making this film was really unique and felt innovative. From Doug’s approach to telling the story, taking a genre people are familiar with and trying to reinvent it, to the visual effects. We had the guys that created the bullet time effects on The Matrix working on the movie, and they were developing new technologies for the film. So from every aspect it felt like we were doing something new.
SFL: It is quite a physical movie, did you do many of the stunts or get any injuries? Or was it all stunt doubles?
HC: It was a physical part and my character takes a beating, so I got knocked around quite a bit. But I didn’t mind it. I enjoy the physicality of acting and I like action movies and I was game to do as much of it as possible. Obviously they don’t let you do all of it as they won’t let you kill yourself. I tried to do as much as possible but that doesn’t mean I did it all. Actually my stunt double was better at it than me so he didn’t get any injuries. I got a nice scar across my hand, I split my ear open, I knocked my head really badly in this one scene and my pupil got stuck in this really dilated position, which was really discerning because I couldn’t see. And some bumps and bruises. We kept a list of injuries sustained and it got pretty long by the end of the movie.
SFL: What about at the Colosseum, you couldn’t really shoot that guerrilla-style. Did you have to put up with lots of angry tourists?
HC: No. We had the place to ourselves. They shut the whole thing down for us. And of course they wanted to make sure we were very careful in there. Doug still managed to get the camera on his shoulder and run around and bump into things, but we didn’t break anything.
SFL: But it looked like you got to go places that the public and cameras usually aren’t allowed to?
HC: They had allowed a film crew in there 50 or 60 years ago but not down into the actual underbelly of it where we filmed. We got up to the really top rafters where they don’t let tourists go and we explored every nook and cranny of that place. It was really, really cool.
SFL: Working with Sam Jackson and with all the travelling you had to do, did it sometimes feel like you were making JUMPERS ON A PLANE?
HC: Jumpers on a Plane? It did, because we spent a lot of time on planes. When Jamie and I were travelling from Toronto to Rome, there was just the two of us, and after a couple of beers we decided it would be fun to make a little mockumentary about Jumpers who couldn’t jump and had to travel by plane and deal with all the nuisances of regular transport. I’ve got footage of Jamie reeking havoc on this airport, and me poking fun at everybody on the plane. He’s got an amazing sense of humour.
SFL: Is Sam Jackson as cool as he seems on screen?
HC: Absolutely. He is legitimately cool. It’s not an act. He’s the real deal. A real nice guy.
SFL: And yet, in contrast, his character is a dangerous religious fanatic. Do you think Doug or the writers were trying to say something about the current state of the world?
HC: I don’t know that he plays a religious fanatic. The religious comparisons are there to be made, but I think what Doug was trying to explore was the ambiguity of that conflict. He wanted to present a scenario where both sides were ones that you could reason with. I don’t see him as a religious fanatic. He’s a man on a mission. There are religious comparisons but I don’t think it is blatant in the movie.
SFL: But he acts like the Spanish Inquisition and he feels that he has a God-given right to kill the Jumpers.
HC: Doug’s a really intelligent man and he makes smart movies that work on many levels. There’s the popcorn value that will appeal to the younger audience, but for people, like yourself, there are more intellectual ideas to explore that hopefully people will be aware of.
SFL: Did you do any research into the scientific and practical possibilities of teleportation when you were preparing for the role?
HC: I didn’t do a lot of research on the actual science of teleportation when we started I didn’t feel it was going to necessarily inform my performance, although I spent a lot of time thinking about it. I got really interested in it and Doug and I actually got to go to MIT and sit in on this panel with two professors who were experts in quantum teleportation, which is a form of teleportation that actually exists. In a very limited context they have managed to teleport a photon, a particle of light, over a distance of a couple of kilometres. I think that’s pretty amazing. They spoke very intelligently about the science of it, which I wish I could do. It was very impressive and got me excited, so I’m really interested in it now. But being able to teleport would be awesome. The practicality of it is really appealing to me. To not have to sit on planes or be stuck in traffic and all those things that get stuck under my skin. You could be anywhere you wanted whenever you wanted.
SFL: The end of the film is very open to a sequel. Is there one and would you be up for it if there was?
HC: Don’t know too much about it but I’m very open to it – would love to do it actually. The story lends itself to continuing. I had a lot of fun on this movie and I think there is a lot of fun to be had with the concept of teleportation. There’s lots you can do with it. Speaking with the scientists, they were explaining all the possibilities and that got Doug excited and he said in a press conference recently in Rome that he already had the next four stories already planned out in his head. We’ll see.
SFL: Thanks for talking with us.