SUBMITTED BY Stephanie
May 11, 2004 — Eric Bana sat down with CHUD for an interview on Troy (released nationwide, this Friday). In the interview, Eric talks about his fight scenes with Brad Pitt, working with actor legend, Peter O'Toole and how this film compares to his other blockbuster films, Hulk and Black Hawk Down.
You wouldn't know from his fillm career that Eric Bana was a hugely popular comedian in Australia. In Chopper he played an astonishingly violent and strangely likable lunatic. In Black Hawk Down he was the baddest ass in a badass Delta Force squadron. In Hulk he was a regular guy who got pissed off and ate missiles. Now he's Prince Hector, the Prince of Troy, leader of the Trojan armies and the second greatest warrior in the world.
Too bad for him the greatest warrior is on the other side. Warner Bros' massive epic Troy opens this Friday, and we'll be having huge coverage all this week. We already ran the interview with Diane Kruger, Helen herself, which you can find HERE. In the next few days you can look forward to reading about the likes of Wolfgang Peterson, Peter O'Toole and Brad Pitt. But let's start the week off with Bana, the tall and handsome Aussie who, if there is justice, will find that this movie turns him into a major star.
Bana came into the press room at the Essex House Hotel and was confronted with an array of microphones and tape recorders.
Bana: I feel like Im in the White House. Im under a little less pressure though.
Q: This is your second summer in a row with a big Hollywood movie. How does this compare to the Hulk for you?
Bana: I couldnt compare it at all. Other than they open in the summer I couldnt compare the two.
Q: Was doing an epic a lot harder than doing all the CGI stuff in the Hulk?
Bana: The weird thing about the Hulk is that it never felt to me like a big production, my scenes were very intimate. This felt more like Black Hawk Down in terms of scale and in how exciting it was to be on set. It took us a little longer to make, but it was a pretty awesome playground.
Q: The battle scenes seem like they would be tough.
Bana: Yeah but you get so much adrenaline, and everyone loved the story so much. It was a bit of a marathon. How should I put it? It was a bit of a tough job but it never felt like a chore. Every day you would wake up and tired as you were, sore as you were you never had a problem getting through the day. You get to work, there would be the stunt men and the swords and the horses and you just get up for it all every time.
Q: How long did you and Brad work on that big Hector/Achilles fight? And how much training did you do in general for the role?
Bana: I was cast in September, I started training straight away. In terms of specific training I started sword and horse training back home in Australia, before we got to the location. Then when we got to London, which was our first location, we started on day one basically choreographing that final scene, as well as all the other fight scenes we had to learn. While we knew that final fight scene would have to be the last one that we would shoot, but we started learning the moves for that on day one, which for me was March, and we shot it in December. I trained for that nonstop right up until the morning of.
Q: Did you get hurt at all?
Bana: Yeah, I got a few whacks. I got a Brad Pitt scar here, its a tiny one.
Q: How did that happen?
Bana: Its called a Full Fledged Backhand Fist to the Face.
Q: Did he feel bad?
Bana: He felt terrible. But luckily for us it was probably eighty-five percent through that fight sequence, because it does dull your confidence. I mean, we connected many many times, but if you have a beat connection as our fight coordinator said, even if youre a professional stuntman it does affect you. But it was like all bets were off at the beginning of that fight. We decided we were ready and we took chances that we probably wouldnt have otherwise. We werent precious about getting hurt or nicked so we just went for it.
Q: Did you actually go down?
Bana: Yeah, I went down. We had to stop for twenty minutes. This fight was the last thing we had to do. It was two months after principal photography had finished and we were still there, post-hurricane, post-injury, post second unit stuff. We were the last two men standing, and we finished it on the death knell of the 22nd of December. If we didnt finish it, the European crew wasnt going home for Christmas. So there was something in the air, we had to get this and if we hadnt had trained as hard as we did we wouldnt have gotten it done on time.
Q: How did this project come to you?
Bana: My agent mentioned to me a long time ago that they were in the process of doing the story of Troy, but I think that was when the script was in development still. Then aside from that its a great Hollywood story. My agent lives next to Brads manager and they got to talking one day and Brads manager mentioned to John that he had seen a couple of films I was in and was a fan. John mentioned to his manager that I was also a fan of Brads, so they arranged for us to get together and meet. Go on a date. We got together and kind of loosely talked about how cool it would be if we managed to do something together. We werent frantically looking for something but we mentioned how fun it would be if something came up to do it together. And then this came up and it was so ridiculously perfect.
Q: That happened right away?
Bana: No, it was some months later. Then I met Wolfgang and he asked me what I liked about the script and what character I liked, and I said I loved the character of Hector. He said that was great because Brad wanted to play Achilles. That was how it happened.
Then for a second Wolfgang was off the project, when he was going to do Batman/Superman, then he came back to the project, and they said are you still interested in Hector and I said definitely.
Click on the link below to read the entire interview. |
