Interview: The Cast of Spider-Man 3
Interview with Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, Thomas Haden Church & Topher Grace
Cast of Spiderman 3.
Click Here for Rare & Unseen Footage from Spider-Man 3 On screen, he may play rather serious chaps – one might even consider
the gifted Peter Parker a fella who walks around with the weight of the
world on his shoulders – but in real life Tobey Maguire’s a
wise-cracking nice guy. Clint Morris explains
Asked whether he felt any different having to wear a ‘black’ costume - as opposed to the usual red – for Spider-Man 3,
the acclaimed actor sits back, smiles and spits out a mischievous
retort. “Not really. Pretty much the same. I mean, yeah, what it feels
like and the materials are similar. It might be a little sleeker and
sexier, kind of like me in real life”.
Just because Spider-Man’s
wearing a different-coloured suit in the new film, doesn’t mean Maguire
had to change his performance in anyway.
Maguire, finishing
his giggle, explains that, “Peter Parker is Peter Parker so it's
important to not try and create new things just for the sake of
it - but on the other hand, I don't want to see the same scenes
played out with Peter going through the same kind of things he's gone
through already. As an actor, for me, there was nothing stale about it,
I got to approach it and got to do brand new really fun and interesting
things for myself."
And Mary Jane Watson, Peter Parker’s
long-term love interest, is still Mary Jane Watson – just a tad more
mature than she was when we first met her in the 2001 blockbuster.
“For
Mary Jane she's still an actress, you could see what it was heading
towards with Peter – she’s just much more mature and there’s a lot more
at stake because of her relationship with Peter”, says Kirsten Dunst,
the beauty behind the red-haired comic book babe. “Actually, there's a
lot more at stake for all the characters.”
Both Maguire and
Dunst agree that it’s the former who has to work his hardest off in
these films – if only because of the physicality required to play the
role of the webslinger; but Maguire says he sits out the really hard
stunts and lets the real-guys do the work.
“I enjoy doing this
stuff and I do the stuff that I can do and that's safe. It's an
interesting part of the job”, says Maguire. “When I watch the stuff
that the stuntmen do, the crazy stuff, my mind gets blown and I go, ‘I
can't believe they do that!’. It's really amazing. Me saying this is a
little ill advised, most actors, I don't understand how they do this,
the actors that come in and say, "I do all my own stunts." By the way,
I just want to tell you guys now, any actor that says they do all their
own stunts is not telling you the truth, unless they are jumping over a
little gate or something.”
Thomas Haden Church and Topher Grace,
playing the films villains Sandman and Venom, respectively, know
exactly where Maguire’s coming from – they did a bulk of their own
stunts, but let the real men do the heavy lifting.
Church, nominated for an Oscar recently for his role in Sideways,
says you have to honour the comics and do what’s required – and that
just doesn’t include putting on the make-up and wearing the character’s
clothes.
“You have a tradition with a comic book that you have
to honour and then you look at the requisite storytelling that went on
with the first two movies”, says the deep-voiced actor. “I just wanted
to do my part; I wanted to get in the game, be in for one minute, not
fumble the ball in the end zone, I just wanted to do what was being
asked of me. Sam [Raimi]
is such an actor's director I referred to him as Elia Kazan trapped
inside this Motor City madman action picture director body. He just has
a great specificity and I think that is part of the allure of the
movie, is to create people that are very accessible and hire actors
that are very accessible and identifiable to the audience.”
“It
was physically daunting to show up last year with the physique of a
fish wife and weirdly they said, "This won't work for us. You've got to
be more built." But actually Topher and I both trained... You try to
just toe the line and try to do what's asked of you. I've worked out
for about 16 months and it is a good discipline to have in my life.”
Topher trained for the role of Venom – probably the villain that Spidey fans are most aching to see on screen.
“He's
a great character to play. Unlike most bad guys he truly likes being
evil. He really comes to grips with it and he enjoys it. So it was fun
to play someone that finds his or her way to that place, it's a fun
thing to play as an actor. Before the role I went out and killed a hobo
hammer. And it worked; it was like all of a sudden people were treating
me differently”, he laughs.
Grace says he’s a major Spider-Man fan and probably considers himself one of the biggest fans of the film series.
“I
got into it when Todd McFarlane was illustrating the comics in the
mid-80s - which fortunately was right when my character was coming into
existence. What I love is when kids get cast in these movies they are
like, "You know I'd never even seen Star Wars
before” – nup, not me, I was such a big fan of Peter Parker and a lot
of the work Todd McFarlane had done so I am probably the geekiest guy
to ever be cast in a geek film”, he laughs. “The first day I was on the
set I was in the [Daily] Bugle [set] and like, just as a fan of the
first two movies, to be like there – wow! You know those theme parks
that are like, "We'll put you in the movie!?”… this was it. It was
tough, because I had to be angry and I was just smiling ear-to-ear.”
As Spider-Man fans will be, when the film is released in May. Click Here for Rare & Unseen Footage from Spider-Man 3
SPIDERMAN 3 WEBSLINGS IT'S WAY INTO CINEMAS IN MAY 3 2007 |
