Robin91939
Master Tim
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In today's (6.20's) PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER there is a great SUPERMAN RETURNS article. It is an interview with Brandon Routh, that was on the front page in a tidbit, and on the front full page of the MAGAZINE section. Good read. The scans weren't working so I typed the whole thing out for ya'll.
-R
Philadelphia Inquirer said:LOS ANGELES- The first time Brandon Routh saw Superman, he go a headache, “I was born the year after Superman: The Movie came out, so I watched it on television when I was 5 or 6 years old,” recalls the 6-foot-3 actor.
“I ware my Superman pajamas and a little cape and was so excited to see the movie that I gave myself a migraine headache and got sick to my stomach. I was pretty darned excited, lying on my side, watching the movie through the stomach pain. It was something big and something special.”
Warner Bros. is banking on Routh (rhymes with south) to help make Superman Returns equally special. Plucked from the ranks of Hollywood actor-bartenders by director Bryan Singer, Routh plays the Man of Steel in the $200 million picture aimed at reviving the superhero film franchise, dormant since the late Christopher Reeve’s final outing in 1987’s Superman IV.
The story this time: Superman crash-lands in a Kansas cornfield after a five-year visit to his native planet, Krypton. Nursed back to health by his mom (Eva Marie Saint), he returns as Clark Kent to Metropolis only to learn that his embittered former flame, Daily Planet reporter Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth), has started a family and penned a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial titled “Why the World Doesn’t Need Superman.” To make matters worse, vengeful nemesis Lex Luthor (Kevin Spacey) and his sidekick (Parker Posey) are busy exploiting Krypton’s secret technology to create new continents and destroy the old ones.
Unlike his cast mates, Routh, 26, is virtually unknown to moviegoers, though soap opera fans may remember him from a year-long stint as hunky Seth Anderson on One Life to Live. Clearly, Singer didn’t cast Routh because of his resume. “Just look at him!” The director says. “Brandon looks like he walked off a page in the comic book.”
Singer, intent on casting an unknown, became intrigued with Routh on the basis of an audition tape in which the soft-spoken actor with broad shoulders, a gently cleft chin, and chiseled cheekbones seemed to emody Superman’s earnest heartland qualities. “There was something about his eyes, his stature, and the way he carried himself with this kind of vulnerability that interested me. I decided to at least meet him before I went on my location scout to Austrailia, so we got together at a coffee shop and that’s when it clicked in my mind: Brandon was the guy.”
So who is this year’s man in tights?
Routh grew up in Norwalk, Iowa, a farming community of 7,000 near des Moines. His father is a carpenter, his mother a school teacher. In high school, Routh competed in soccer and played Walter Matthau’s cheating husband character in a production of Plaze Suite. He then spent a year at the University of Iowa, intent on becoming a writer. Routh’s gene pool had other plan’s.
“In college I’d matured and grown into my face, and at the urging of some female friends, I looked into modeling on the side, just to make some money,” says Routh, radiating a formidable aw-shucks presence in blue jeans and T-shirt as he relaxes in a Los Angeles hotel suite. “That led me to this New York cattle call for…actors and models where you do monologues an walk the runways. I impressed my first manager, who oddly enough thought I looked a lot like Christopher Reeve, and he led me out to Los Angeles.”
Routh landed a five-line role on the quickly canceled Odd Man Out sitcom shortly after his move west, then spent a year in New York acting in the ABC daytime drama. “I made some good money, came back to L.A., and lived on my savings for a year trying to book another job,” Routh notes. “That didn’t quite happen, so I resorted to bartending, which lasted about 2 ½ years. I had that humble period where you go ‘OK, back to the real world for a little bit.’”
In 2004, after meeting with Singer, Routh taped a number of screen tests and began costume fittings before receiving word that he’d been officially hired to play Superman. “I called my mom in Iowa and she screamed,” Routh notes. “I was not screaming. I was overwhelmingly relieved. It was a seven-month process for me, so I was just, ‘OK, all these things I’ve been creating in my head for this character, I actually get to be.’”
Of course, a compelling superhero requires an intimidating villain, so when Spacey, star of Singer’s first hit The Usual Suspects, arrived on the massive Superman set in Australia, he stayed in character as Lex Luthor even when the cameras weren’t rolling. “They gave me this golf cart to get from one sound stage to another,” Spacey recalls. “We put a green kryptonite stripes on the side and tied a Superman doll on the back with a chain and dragged it all over. And I had this bullhorn, so I’d drive around on the cart screaming ‘Superman must die!’”
Routh didn’t much mind Spacey’s taunts, nor did he complain about the grueling daily schedule he maintained over the course of the movie’s marathon 10-month production. “I’d get up at 4 in the morning, work out at least an hour before, then put in 12 or 14 hours on set,” he says. Much of that time was spent in front of a green screen, strapped into a harness and pretending to fly. “It’s not very comfortable a lot of the time,” he says. “Working these very long days, consecutively, kind of puts you in a groove, but also made me slightly crazed for a little bit of time.”
On the plus side, Routh got to stride around the set dressed in the iconic Superman outfit. “It’s skin-tight, so the suit really lets you know how physically fit you are, or aren’t,” Routh note “When I was in good shape, I felt powerful and kingly. There’s a history and legacy that comes with the suit, so that whenever I wore the costume, you could see the effect it had, even on grown men who’d get so nervous they could hardly speak.”
Routh has signed to suit up for two more sequels if Superman Returns succeeds at the box office. Is he worried about being typecast? “I didn’t get into this business just to become this one character,” he notes. “My main goal has always been to make films that let people go on a journey. Braveheart is my favorite movie. It evokes so much emotion, and I want to be a part of films that do that. I believe I’m talented enough to do other roles, though I’ll be very happy to do more Superman movies if we make more. But ir is weird, seeing myself as Superman, because Christopher Reeve was my Superman. I don’t feel like I’m really replacing that. In my mind, I guess, we’re both Superman.”
-R
