Emile Hirsch Goes "Into the Wild"

Young actor Emile Hirsch is kind of a chameleon. I first was impressed with him as a nerdy next-door neighbor to Elisha Cuthbert's hottie in the teen-aimed comedy The Girl Next Door. I next saw him morph into a totally different, intense skater-boi in The Lords of Dogtown and a tough, messed up young gangsta in Alpha Dog. Now Emile takes on the physical and emotional challenge of his career as Chris McCandless, a real-life young man who tossed in his rich lifestyle and the expectations of his dysfunctional parents for self-discovery on the road alone in the Sean Penn-directed adventure Into the Wild.

Meeting with the cute young actor in Beverly Hills, we noted that his usual brown hair has been dyed very dark black for his current role in the upcoming cartoon-based adventure Speed Racer. Picture Emile in jeans, blue and white stripe dress shirt under a black jacket. Get ready for the scoop on acting with bears and a dead moose to dangerous stunts and wazzup with Speed Racer.

TeenHollywood: You did a phenomenal job in this film.

Emile: Thank you so much.

TeenHollywood: At one point in this movie you are soooo skinny. Was that difficult to lose so much?

Emile: We did the extreme part of the weight loss three quarters of the way through the film. What I'll say about weight loss is that it's really about diet and exercise and a lot of paying attention to your body. Unfortunately, for me, at least, there's no secret other than the depressing one of diet and exercise.

TeenHollywood: What inspired your performance in this role?

Emile: I took inspiration for my character from what I learned about the real Chris McCandless, from talking to his sister Carine who speaks about him with such love and passion. Also talking to Walt and Billie, his parents. I knew that I was going in there [as] the Hollywood actor who had been cast to play their son who had passed away. You know I wanted to make sure it wasn't going to be an interrogation. They could just talk to me if they wanted to.

TeenHollywood: What did you pay attention to most in the performance? Chris is a complicated character.

Emile: I just really wanted to portray Chris in an authentic way that was honest and did not try to glamorize him and didn't try to demonize him. I wanted it to be what me and Sean [Penn} thought Chris was really like; someone who had a lot of flaws, had a lot of problems, but also had a lot of courage and a really wonderful soul that people he met on the road responded to. He was really a likeable guy but at the same time you have the contradictions. He's not talking to his sister who he probably loved more than anybody and his parents. So he was a guy who was probably very torn and had a lot of anger in him but also was looking for something different.

TeenHollywood: Some people would say that Chris is rebelling against what is expected of him. How rebellious are you? Like when you went into the business, were your folks happy about that?

Emile: They were cool with it. I've got really cool parents but I think that rebellion...certainly, I would think some of the movies I've chosen to do, people would consider as rebellious for a young actor to do. I don't know.

TeenHollywood: Did you have an opportunity to explore the real abandoned bus that Chris lived in up in Alaska?

Emile: I did. I took a snowmobile ride up to the bus before we started shooting and I'd never been on a snowmobile before. I went up with a really experienced Alaskan guy named BJ and it was about a 90-minute ride. We were hauling pretty good and it was beautiful. We were going up these creeks with these green ice rivers frozen underneath, seeing all the tracks of the moose and the fox and the quiet of the surroundings in Alaska. Then we got to the bus. Its profoundness for me was just in its simplicity, that it's a bus in the middle of nowhere, some overgrown plants and roots around it.

TeenHollywood: Had you read the book about Chris before you were approached to do the movie?

Emile: I had not read the book before Sean called me and told me to read it but I had seen an episode of '20/20' on TV when I was eight or nine years old. I never forgot it. It really moved me as a youngster; the idea that this guy would have the courage to go out into the wild on his own to me was something that, as a kid, was impossible to comprehend.

TeenHollywood: What he did must have seemed kind of frightening.

Emile: Well, when you're eight or nine, sometimes you're afraid to sleep with the lights off. The idea of sleeping alone with no lights was somewhat baffling so I never forgot it and when Sean approached me about the film, I read the book immediately and the memories of the show came back. I got the cover of the book and I went, 'Wait a minute. I know this.' It was strange. It was only 10 minutes how many years ago. I mean I'm 22 now. That's like 14 years ago.

TeenHollywood: Hummm, it was destiny, dude! So, what kind of wanderlust do you have? If you were to go on that kind of adventure, would you take more equipment than Chris did? Would you read the map?

Emile: I think if Chris were to be able to do that again, I think he would have done it a lot differently. He's a guy who made some pretty big mistakes with overestimating of his own abilities and the movie addresses that, It's not a portrait of a pure guy who did all the right things. It's a portrait of a young man who's very complicated. So if I were to go out, yeah, I would take a map. I would take the things that would help ensure my survival. But I love the outdoors and I have been on trips like that and I really hope to do more of them as well.

TeenHollywood: All the outdoor skills that Chris demonstrates, the kayaking, the hunting, that kind of stuff, was that all new to you?

Emile: A lot of it was new terrain. I really tried to learn as much as I could about that world in the four or five months of preparation that I had. Another really big thing for me was getting my body in really good physical shape so that I could handle what was going to be a really hard eight-month shoot. I knew it was going to be a beast of some kind. So I did a lot of running, a lot of weight lifting, a lot of hiking and just endurance.

TeenHollywood: So, with all that physical stuff, no injuries?

Emile: One of the funny things about this film is that I made it out physically smelling like a rose. I couldn't believe it but I never had any injuries. There's parts that took a lot of psyching myself up to do such as [shooting] the rapids. That was something I was very trepidatious about. But then in terms of just sheer physical hardships, a lot of that was the running uphill and the hiking. The hill that I run up, Sean had me run that a couple of times as hard as I could and I puked at the top.

TeenHollywood: Ewww, that sounds pretty awful for you.

Emile: It was very hot and I'd been drinking a lot of water but it was just the exertion because it was a pretty big hill and I was going for it as hard as I could. Sean got on the walkie I think the take before I puked and was like, 'I want you to just give it everything you've got and go animal crazy on it. Anything you've got I want you to give on this take'.

TeenHollywood: Any eye-opening moments working with Sean Penn?

Emile: Yeah. Sean, he's an actor's director but, at the same time, he's not going to hold your hand through the whole experience. He demands the best out of you. He can be hard on his actors, probably me in particular, but it's out of a place where he just believes in you so much that he wants you to do your best. So, it's always from a place of love and it would never upset me. But, we went through a lot of really difficult terrain and very challenging scenes and he didn't give me room to complain.

TeenHollywood: Are you one of those actors who likes to get in the mood for your role by listening to music on set?

Emile: I like to listen to music. I don't think it's something I always have to do but I sure do like it when I have it. Sean put together a soundtrack with a whole bunch of different songs he thought worked for the film so I was listening to those a lot as we approached shooting and during shooting. I don't think any of them made it into the film but they had the spirit of it.

TeenHollywood: What was it like working with the bear and other animals?

Emile: Ah, the beautiful animals of nature... and then the bear [laughter]. I got out of the car one day and chased down a porcupine. That was pretty wild.

TeenHollywood: 'Chased down'? You didn't kill it, did you?

Emile: [he's shocked] Oh, no, no! He climbed up a tree. I was excited to see a porcupine. I'd never seen one in the wild before. But the bear was different because that's a very dangerous animal so, when Sean told me about the scene I said, 'cool'. But, I knew the way Sean was probably going to shoot it, I was barely gonna make it out of there! [we laugh at his pun]. But, on the day, this 60-year-old guy named Doug who has had the bear Bart for years, was wrestling on the ground with this bear which weighs about a thousand pounds, putting his head in its mouth, playing with it, slapping it on the face playfully. They were just playing around.

TeenHollywood: Uh, you didn't have to do that, did you?

Emile: I said, 'well, I don't think I'm probably going to do that with the bear but maybe I can just trust the bear to kind of walk by me and give me a look and not attack me'. But, I'd seen some sort of thing on You-Tube, one of those clips of 'when animals attack' where this bear is just sitting with a circus hat on with his trainer and there were reporters next to him and, for no reason at all, the bear just immediately attacks a woman and is mauling her. So I said 'I'll trust the bear but I'm kind of rolling the dice on ya, buddy'.

TeenHollywood: He seemed to be very, very close to you.

Emile: The bear was very close. Probably about as far away from me as you are [indicating across a small table] and then he looks at me and was like [he opens his mouth and sort of hisses].

TeenHollywood: Okkaaay. Better you than me. Did you really skin the moose? Was it road kill?

Emile: Yeah, that was a real moose. And the moose was a real animal, not a prop and you don't treat it like a prop. You treat it with respect. It was hard. It smelled really, really bad. It was really grisly and a hot of people on the crew were 'Oh God [indicates holding hand over nose] but we got through it.

TeenHollywood: Enough dead moose story. Can you tell us a little bit on Speed Racer and your challenges on that?

Emile: One of the crazy things about that film was I went from only going outdoors, beautiful nature shots to not one scene do I shoot outdoors in Speed Racer. Everything is on a green screen stage. So, it like being in a sauna and then jumping into an ice bath for three and a half months. They both have their advantages. I think the green screen stage is probably a lot safer. I think people should expect something pretty special out of the Wachowski brothers on Speed Racer. I think that they really re-invented themselves. It's nothing like The Matrix at all. It doesn't look like The Matrix doesn't feel like The Matrix. It is its own new movie and that was something really important to them that they bring something new to the table.

TeenHollywood: Were you familiar with the character at all?

Emile: Yeah. I used to watch 'Speed Racer' when I was a kid, when I was around six on the Cartoon Network. So, go, Speed Racer!

TeenHollywood: Finally, what would you like audiences to take away from seeing Into the Wild?

Emile: I can't speak for what I want other people to take away from the film. What I took away from the book though, was this sense of wander-lust and excitement for life, an adventure. It was a cautionary tale on maybe how to do it and be smart about how you do it but I was really inspired by the fact that Chris decided to step out of his comfort zone and really try to have an adventure and live his life to the fullest and that's something that I think is important.

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