"Unfortunately, I keep saying ones that I had something to do with. I was the
stunt coordinator on that, and I actually played the cop that arrested her at
the end. If I have any kind of acting ability, it’s from watching people like
Charlize Theron. I was on the set every day. I didn’t have all that much to do,
stuntwise — just safety issues and a couple of little stunt things — but I
could watch her work, and see how she got to certain places, and that’s the best
possible training I think an actor can have. [Theron did] subtle things
right before certain scenes, to get to a certain place. I think, even
subconsciously, I’ve incorporated some of those techniques. It’s nothing I can
really describe.
For the violent stuff, it doesn’t take long. It’s just very easy for me to get
from my personality to the murderously violent personality. I think I’m closer
to that than most people are, so it’s a short trip. [laughs] But for the
emotional stuff, and crying scenes and stuff like that, what works best for me
is to use music that means something to me, that reminds me of something in the
past that isn’t a good memory. Something like that. That helps me to where I can
convincingly cry, because I’ve seen so many actors — and these are whom I
consider good actors — who are not convincing when they’re crying. It’s just
not believable, it’s too forced. I think that’s obviously one of the harder
things to do.
Take [Hatchet series’] Danielle Harris. Most often, when you have a character
who has to have a lot of emotion like that, you start out as a regular character
and become that, like Tamara [Feldman] did in the first movie. Starts out normal
and then becomes emotional at the end. Well, because this picked up from the
very last frame of the first movie, from the very beginning, Danielle has to be
crazy emotional. She lost her whole family and found them dead. So, it’s one
thing to be able to get to an emotional point, but to have to do it so many
times is the hard part. Lots of people can make themselves cry once, but let me
see you do it ten times in one day, and some of those times being after lunch,
where you’re talking to friends, and then you gotta get back to that place. It’s
not that you just do it one time and they film it and you’re done. You gotta do
all the coverage and make sure the emotion matches. That’s the hard part."
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