Friday May 8, 2009
Launching into character
By EVELYN TEO
The actors in the latest Star Trek offering attended boot camp to get into shape and learn specific character traits.
ACTORS Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto may not have been fans of Star Trek before signing on as James T. Kirk and Spock respectively, but the handsome, young men immersed themselves in the Trek world soon after getting the coveted parts.
Both Pine, 28, and Quinto, 31, went to “Star Trek boot camp” to get into shape, master certain stunt moves that range from space diving – like sky diving but from a much higher altitude – to bar brawling, and learn specific character traits.
Zachary Quinto formed a friendship with Leonard Nimoy who played Spock in the original Star Trek TV series and movies. “We worked out for about two months before we started shooting,” Quinto tells journalists in a recent interview at the Park Hyatt in Paris, France. “John Cho (who plays Sulu), Chris and I went separately (to Star Trek boot camp). There, we worked with an incredible stunt team including Joey Box (who) is really renowned in the stunt industry.
“J.J. (Abrams, producer and director of Star Trek) is so meticulous and so hyper-aware of everything and how it relates to the characters and the story he wants to tell,” continues the actor.
“So each of us had a very specific kind of movement – Kirk was much looser and very much rooted in the American tradition of just fighting and brawling. Spock was much more contained, of course, and his physicality was much more rooted in martial arts. It was a fascinating time and it allowed us to experience something together, work out and hang out.”
Nevertheless, boot camp was not quite where Quinto picked up the nifty Vulcan nerve pinch that Spock employed in the 1960s TV series.
“That was one of the things that I did research on and talked to Leonard (Nimoy, who reprised his role as the older Spock in the movie) about,” he reveals. “There are certain aspects to the character physically that I really relied on him to sort of connect with. But mostly I really felt it incumbent upon myself to define this character and find it in my own body.”
Quinto, who hails from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, found Nimoy’s presence on the set invaluable when it came to studying Spock’s half-human half-Vulcan behaviour. Spock’s father is a Vulcan named Sarek (played by Ben Cross) and mother, Amanda Grayson (Winona Ryder), is a human.
Chris Pine watched some of the original episodes of Star Trek to get a sense of what William Shatner’s performance as James T. Kirk was all about. Green-blooded Spock grew up fighting an internal battle between the rational and the instinctual nature, a result of his mixed heritage.
“Leonard created, defined and originated Spock. The character itself requires a certain kind of economy of movement and stillness and perspective.
“It was really great to have Leonard around to just observe and absorb the impact that this character has had on his life and vice versa. We’ve become friends. I really, really like that guy a lot. He’s really cool,” he says.
For Los Angeles-born Pine, the absence of William Shatner, who played the original Kirk in the first Star Trek TV series and first seven Star Trek movies, on the set, did not prove critical to the understanding of his character.
“By watching some of the original episodes, I could get a sense of what Mr Shatner’s performance was all about,” divulges Pine.
“There are certain things which resonated with me that I enjoy and I thought would be fun to throw into this new version and other things that I thought I shouldn’t even try or didn’t want to impersonate or mimic. I just decided to start from scratch from a certain standpoint.”
Having said that, Pine, who movie audiences last saw with long hair in Bottle Shock, would still have appreciated meeting Shatner. “I wrote him a letter very early on and said I wanted to introduce myself and basically thought it was appropriate and probably the best choice to tell him who I was and this kid wasn’t here to take over the role,” he says.
“I was here to try to do justice to what he had done. He very nicely wrote me back but he was at the tail end of his experience on Boston Legal so he was very busy. I was just beginning the film. I don’t think it hurt my performance or it wasn’t something I regret not having because his performance is clearly so iconic on screen and on TV that it was enough just to watch it.”
What’s more, Pine knew he could fully rely on the script to help him with the nuances and persona of Kirk. “There are certain things that are inherent to the character that Bob Orci and Alex Kurtzman got so well in the script and really for me, my bible was the script. I read the script and my job was to bring life to that character and take certain pieces from Mr Shatner’s performance as homage to him.”
Pine embodies young, genius-level Kirk well on screen. His version of Kirk is charismatic with a hint of danger lurking just beneath those remarkable blue eyes. The son of George (Chris Hemsworth) and Winona Kirk (Jennifer Morrison) has a tendency to leap before looking. He is a rebel in search of a cause. The one thing that is missing from Pine’s version is the trademark speaking rhythm Shatner uses as Kirk.
The actors were aware that they couldn’t change too much from what had already been established over the years. Even so, Quinto did find a way to subtly change Spock’s mannerisms slightly to reflect where the character was at that point in his life.
“Leonard spends a lot of his time with his hands behind his back,” the actor who plays Sylar on Heroes says. “And there’s this very sort of rigid stance and pensive way. I said, ‘OK, what if I bring them around here (he demonstrates by placing his hands together in front of him)?’ It was little but it was something that I did that was different.
“I felt that this was a bit more guarded but it was also anticipating something as opposed to this (hands clasped behind his back) which feels much more settled, open and available. And that’s not where Spock is in that time, he’s much more unsure and unclear about the path he wants to go on. It’s something I thought I could add and it wasn’t such a radical departure from the essence of the character that it would be jarring. Spock’s physicality is kind of inextricable from the character.”
Indeed, Spock himself would have been impressed by Quinto’s observation and might even say it was a logical decision.
Star Trek is showing in cinemas now. To read more about the Star Trek hotties, pick up the 17-31 May issue of Galaxie magazine.
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