Luke and Owen Wilson: A Bond of Brothers

Popular actors Luke and Owen Wilson are brothers who don't even look much alike. Owen is also a producer and screenwriter. Their personalities and acting styles are a bit different as well. Dark-hairedLuke is more quiet and introspective and blonde Owen is "out there" but they enjoy working together in the dysfunctional family comedy The Royal Tenenbaums which was co-written and co-produced by Owen. Luke is familiar to us most recently as a lawyer in Legally Blonde opposite Reese Witherspoon and was in Charlie's Angels and Home Fries with Drew Barrymore.

Owen cracked us up in Shanghai Noon with Jackie Chan and was in Meet the Parents, Armageddon, The Haunting and Zoolander. He can also be seen now in the action picture Behind Enemy Lines with his Tenenbaums co-star Gene Hackman.

We spoke with the brothers recently in Los Angeles and learned of their respect for each other and for their mutual co-star film legend Gene Hackman. Luke told us some strange experiences he had while wearing long hair and a beard and Owen was looking forward to his first ride in an F-18 fighter plane.

Teenhollywood: Luke, who was cast first in Royal Tenenbaums, you or your brother?

Luke: Well, I think Wes (Anderson, the director) wanted to do a movie with me in New York. It was always the idea that Owen would be in it too. Not that it's a competition but that's the answer.

Teenhollywood: It's interesting that you aren't playing brothers in this. Was that deliberate?

Luke: The first movie we did together was Wes's Bottle Rocket and we didn't play brothers in that either. I don't think that we look so similar that you would definitely think we were brothers although some people think so.

Teenhollywood: How was shooting in New York?

Luke: I loved it. I had never spent more than a week or ten days there, really got to love it. I walked everywhere. People were great. It's just not true about New Yorkers being rude. They were friendly people and I was always asked how to get places. I love that city.

Teenhollywood: Royal Tenenbaums has a huge ensemble cast. Was it weird working with that many people?

Luke: It was so fun. I would have done a movie with each one of those people and then you get them all together. It was exciting. At the Tenenbaum house we had a room set up as a green room with couches and chairs and it was really fun to go in there with Hackman and Ben Stiller and Angelica Huston. It was always quite a mix of people.

Teenhollywood: You've got short hair now. How long did it take to grow the long hair and beard you had in the movie?

Luke: I had done Legally Blonde where I was supposed to be a lawyer and I had to do battle to let it grow. The hair stylist kept saying lawyers don't look like this. I let it grow long, then in December last year I stopped shaving and we didn't shoot until February. I got to like it. It was pretty intense. I'd wake up in the middle of the night and catch a glimpse of myself and get stunned for a second. Is there a mountain man in the room?

Teenhollywood: Did people look at you differently?

Luke: People looked at me in a strange way. Definitely friends. I'd go back to Texas and I got that "What happened to Luke?" It changes your whole look. You are just a pair of eyes. It was an intense change but I got to enjoy it. I'm sure people thought I believed I was Howard Hughes or was on drugs or something.

Teenhollywood: When you do a film, how early on do you see the script?

Luke: Bottle Rocket, I didn't see it until it was done. It was changed a lot. Then, Rushmore, I didn't see it until it was totally done. This one, I saw like 30 pages. It seemed like they had 30 pages for a year. I don't see scenes here and there unless I see one of Owen's notebooks. He'll give it to me at the end and ask if I have any ideas. Sometimes he'll take them and sometimes they don't.

Teenhollywood: A lot of people were holding in emotions in this film. Did Wes Anderson direct you to do that?

Luke: I got the feeling Wes thought I'd picked up some bad habits. He said he didn't want me doing "my usual thing." I didn't know I had a usual thing but I guess I did. I think I tend to move my head a lot when I talk and that was one thing he didn't want me to do, bobbing my head around to make a point. I would get worried at the end of the day. I'd do kind of an emotional scene, and keeping it all in like that I wondered if I got what was on the page. I'd just have to rely on Wes. I'd have to ask him, I'm worried that I'm doing nothing in this beard and sun glasses.

Teenhollywood: How was working with Gene Hackman?

Luke: Unbelievable. It was the best experience I've had yet working with somebody just to see how intense he is. He's not glad handing on the set and fooling around. He's always got a script with him and he never leaves the set. He doesn't go back to his trailer between shots. People pick up on that. I certainly did. He's an incredible guy.

Teenhollywood: Do you like these characters that Wes or Owen have written for you?

Luke: Yeah. I feel like I have an idea of what those guys think of me as a person, then I see the parts they write for me and I think, that's nice. They write good parts...of course these guys I play all kind of had mental problems. Don't know exactly what that says.

Teenhollywood: What are your favorite Tenenbaum scenes and why?

Luke: The scene that made me laugh the hardest was with Gene and Danny Glover in the kitchen where they get in the argument and the scene that touched me the most was when Ben Stiller got the dog at the end and was saying he'd had a tough year. For me, the scene on the roof with Gwyneth Paltrow's character. I liked the cemetery scene. I liked every scene I was in actually.

Teenhollywood: Do you have any personal experience with over-achievement and failure like your character?

Luke: I don't know anybody like him in real life but I've read a lot about people like Bjorn Borg kind of burned out after he quit tennis in his late '20s. I've always been interested in people going off the deep, people like Howard Hughes, people who have it all and they just have something inside them and just walk away. I may have a slight self-destructive streak sometimes. I would think everybody has it in them but some people just go all out.

Teenhollywood: What would having it all mean for you?

Luke: There was a time when I thought let's just get Bottle Rocket made and I'll be okay. Then things kept changing, they I thought, well, I really love to work with one of my heroes and then I'll be okay. Then you get to work with Hackman and it's like I'd like to work with another incredible director besides Wes. So it's always changing. Maybe it's to put a movie together myself with crew people and actors that I like. That would seem like real success, to put all those elements together, producers, directors of photography, production designers, other actors. That would be one of my goals. Then I'd go into an insane asylum I guess.

Teenhollywood: What do you think is the theme of Royal Tenenbaums?

Luke: I think family is at the core. Even for people that aren't in the family, like Eli, Owen's character wants to be a Tenenbaum. I think it's yearning and trying to hold onto things that you can't. Relationships and how things are never quite perfect. You can be in love with a girl and she's your adopted sister (Gwyneth's character). You might be a successful writer (Owen's character) but a total nutcase in your personal life. There is something holding it all together.

Teenhollywood: How did you do that tennis scene where your character has a nervous breakdown on the court?

Luke: Well, I play a little tennis like once a year. I do have a good serve but no backhand. I knew I didn't have to play well in the movie since my character was losing it. We shot that sequence at Forest Hills.

Teenhollywood: What is your upcoming film Old School about?

Luke: That is a Dreamworks comedy by Tom Phillips who directed Road Trip. It's myself and Wil Farrell and Vince Vaughn. It's a comedy about three guys who are bottoming out in their lives. My character rents a house on the outskirts of a college and they're gonna get kicked out so they start a fraternity in order to keep the house.

Teenhollywood: Owen, the two characters you play in Royal Tenenbaums and Behind Enemy Lines couldn't be more different. Did you plan that?

Owen: Gene Hackman saw Shanghai Noon and recommended me for Behind Enemy Lines and that's why they hired me. We had always wanted him for The Royal Tenenbaums and Wes finally persuaded him to do it when we were shooting Behind Enemy Lines.

Teenhollywood: You and Wes Anderson both wrote the script for Royal Tenenbaums. How does that work?

Owen: It's not really dividing it up. It's spending time with each other and talking about ideas and trying to get each other laughing. The way it worked with this one was Wes wanted to do a movie set in New York about a family of geniuses. It spun out from there.

Teenhollywood: There were a lot of Beatles and other interesting music in the film. Do you get to pick that?

Owen: No. Wes picks all the music. Sometimes he'll play a song and say I was thinking about using this and it helps to see the scene.

Teenhollywood: Is the character you play like anyone you know? He really wants to be a Tenenbaum.

Owen: Like did Wes want to be a Wilson? I don't know. He likes our family and gets along good with my parents. Hummmm...

Teenhollywood: When you write a film do you always know you'll be in it?

Owen: I don't always know I'll be performing in it. I don't like to think that way because it alters the way I think creatively. I might pay more attention to my character. In this one all roads would have led to Eli. Wes is going to make the casting choices. It's got to be somebody he wants to work with. Luckily we're simpatico.

Teenhollywood: Did you write more material for Eli once you knew you would play him?

Owen: No. The character that I would have identified with was Ben Stiller's character. Wes wrote a lot of Eli's stuff. It worked better that way.

Teenhollywood: How was growing up with Luke?

Owen: People were asking me if there was any baggage when I work with Luke or Wes and the answer is no because I'm comfortable with those guys. I'm relaxed. There's more baggage when I'm working with somebody like DeNiro or Gene Hackman or Eddie Murphy because I'm nervous around those guys and it takes a while to get comfortable with them.

Teenhollywood: You and Luke have a different vibe. Like he wouldn't have been cast in Shanghai Noon for example.

Owen: Yeah. That probably helps in why we don't feel competitive in terms of movie stuff because we are kind of different. We don't look that much like brothers, me, Luke and Andrew.

Teenhollywood: Did you fight when you were kids?

Owen: We're all real close but we fought a lot and we still will fight but we probably spend more time with each other than we do anybody else.

Teenhollywood: For Behind Enemy Lines, did you have to do bootcamp?

Owen: Not so much but today I'm getting to fly on an F-18. When I get done here, I take a helicopter to Point Mugu in Malibu and get on an F-18 and go to San Diego for the premiere of the movie at the Naval Base. You know how long it takes to get from Point Mugu to San Diego? Eight minutes. Not exactly like hitting the (freeway). We're showing it to fourteen hundred sailors tonight. That'll be incredible. I didn't do survival training but I went to a Naval Base last summer and did that water training, like in Officer and a Gentleman where they drop you in the water and you take your seatbelt off and escape. I grew up going to the ocean a lot so I'm pretty comfortable in the water. My military advisor was shepherding me through the thing and we had to tread water. He said he'd do it with me and he's going under and I'm still going.

Teenhollywood: You shot on an aircraft carrier, right?

Owen: Yeah. All the guys were there. They're stationed now in the Indian Ocean. They're taking the movie to Bahrain, our base in Saudi Arabia then a plane from the carrier picks up the film and the director and they're showing it to all those guys. It'll be great because a lot of them were in it.

Teenhollywood: Behind Enemy Lines is being released when we're at war and there's a real need for Americans to kick some butt.

Owen: I'm not doing a lot of kicking butt like Schwartzenegger and Bruce Willis. The movie could have been called Running for my Life. The way the character was originally written it was more a badass naval aviator and when I came on I felt more comfortable changing it so he's the guy in the back seat. He's the navigator, not the pilot. That makes it easier to play. Same in Shanghai Noon, that guy was supposed to be an incredible outlaw and those guys aren't as funny to me as some one who is shifty and more of a con artist.

Teenhollywood: Enemy Lines was so different for you.

Owen: Gene Hackman wanted me to do it and I was flattered and excited about the idea of working with him so it didn't matter so much to me what the movie was. If I'd really paid attention to the script I would have seen that I didn't work with Hackman that much. I was behind enemy lines and he was back on the ship.

Teenhollywood: Is he a tough guy to work with?

Owen: I guess he's kind of a guy's guy. He was a Marine and stuff so you're kind of like extra respectful and polite around him but I can sometimes get him laughing. You hope he'll like you. You respect him. Maybe it's all the movies I've seen that I've liked him in. It would suck to think Gene Hackman hates me.

Teenhollywood: What did you think when you heard Gene got into that fistfight on the Hollywood streets?

Owen: I thought it was kind of good. Selfishly I was thinking about him in the movie. Boy, he's a bad ass. He's like 70 and he's street fighting. When I heard the story I can't say I was shocked.

Teenhollywood: You and Gabe Macht, who plays your pilot, were doing some Top Gun style banter.

Owen: You can't not think about Top Gun if you are wearing one of those (flight) suits, it just dominates the culture. We had a lot of fun together.

Teenhollywood: What's the next Shanghai Noon about? I think it's called Shanghai Night?

Owen: Yeah, me and Jackie Chan go to London to stop Jack the Ripper. It's like Abbott and Costello in a horror movie.

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Interviewer and writer Lynn Barker is a Hollywood-based entertainment journalist and produced screenwriter.