Sometimes actors don’t know best.
Take Alex Pettyfer, a 20-year-old Brit who walked into the audition for “I Am Number Four,” sat down but stood up and announced he was sorry, he wasn’t right for the role.
“Deborah Aquila, who’s the casting director, ran after me. She’s like, ‘Alex, Al
ex, Alex, you’ve got to come back.’ I said, ‘I can’t come back, I’m not right for it, and I don’t want to muck up your movie.'”
Two weeks later, a call asked him to reconsider.
“I still didn’t want to come in, but I came in a week later, and they still hadn’t found anyone, and I read for D.J. (Caruso, the director), and they seemed to maybe like what I did and screen-tested me. … And I got an e-mail from my agent, ‘Oh, we’re waiting to hear what Steven says.’
“I’m like, ‘Who’s Steven?’ Steven Spielberg. Oh, right, because I just did a screen test for Steven Spielberg, and he gave me the thumbs-up, which is a very, very, very big honor. It’s very humbling to realize there’s such amazing people behind this movie.”
Pettyfer, sitting a few yards from the makeup chairs in a trailer in Deer Lakes Park near Pittsburgh one evening in June, told this story with just the right amount of charm and self-deprecating humor.
Unlike some younger stars who appear tormented by publicity — none apparently on this set — he seems like a good sport who is about to gain more attention thanks to “I Am Number Four” and “Beastly.”
In one, he’s an alien with telekinetic powers and the ability to shoot light and energy from his palms; and in the other, he’s a dreamy but shallow teen who is cursed and transformed into someone as unattractive on the outside as the inside.
Pettyfer says Number Four, who goes by the name of John Smith, is a bit like James Dean in “Rebel Without a Cause,” trying to find his identity.
“I think every teenager comes to a point in their life — around 15, 16, 17, and I think most of it is because of coming into puberty — I think you’re kind of like, who do I want to be? What do I want to do in my life? You get the stroppy teenager and that’s how I kind of related to it.”
“Stroppy”? A British term for “ill-tempered” or “belligerent.”
When it comes to stunt work, Pettyfer is anything but stroppy, crediting 2006’s “Alex Rider: Operation Stormbreaker” in which he played a teenage spy for MI6, the British intelligence agency, for his fearlessness.
“I was so eager to do everything, and I had a real learning experience on that, and I’ve used that experience and brought it onto this movie,” he said. “I did a back flip off a 150-foot scaffolding to practice for this dive I’m going to do, and I’m training doing martial arts.”
Calling himself a “very naturally skinny guy,” Pettyfer said it was challenging to stick to a regime of eating a protein-rich diet (lots of chicken and rice) and working out while filming.
He doesn’t want moviegoers to look at him on screen and scoff, “He’s no leading man,” he said. “So I try and go to the gym, and I absolutely hate it. My brother’s a tennis player, and he’s like fitness, fitness, fitness. I’d rather be sitting on the couch playing PlayStation.”
Instead, he spent his summer engaged in cardiovascular exercises, fight training, stunt wire work and weightlifting, along with stretching.
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