Sam Worthington's Personal "Clash"

Can you believe it? Hot, yummy, man's man, kick butt Avatar and Clash of the Titans action actor Sam Worthington calls himself "a sensitive pussycat" at our interview!! Meowwwww!  

We're back in the hills of Beverly sitting across from the hunky and very honest and candid actor. Sam is wearing jeans and a classic "Iron Maiden" tee and spilling funny info like how he didn't wear the classic sandals with his "dress" in "Clash" but Nikes on which he painted toes to fool his fellow actors.  

He says he felt like "Luke Skywalker" and a "boisterous teen" in the film and he's ready for Avatar 2 as soon as Jim Cameron is.  First, we wanted to know how he identifies with all these larger than life heroes he keeps playing.. or does he?

TeenHollywood: Sam, you've played a lot of heroes lately. What's the attraction in playing a hero and what kind of character traits do you see in a hero?

Sam: Heroic is not fighting. It's actually getting up or if someone else gets knocked down, it's you helping them get up. That's my definition of a hero. (In this film), I wanted Perseus to be like a troublesome adolescent. He loses his adopted family and he is a boisterous teen. He doesn't listen to anybody but he finds a heroic quality through finding another family. He learns to calm down and maybe become an adult.

A lot of the roles I do are about the duality of people. In Clash of the Titans, it's half man and half god. In 'Terminator' it's half man and half robot. In Avatar, half man and half big blue alien. So I'm definitely either screwed up and searching for something in myself or I just like that about characters.

TeenHollywood: Are you concerned that you'll be type-cast by doing these big action hero films though?

Sam: (People) get the idea that I'm a tough, heroic kind of figure. I'm a sensitive pussycat and it's a case where when I do my job I dive into these characters and try to flesh something out of myself and into these characters and so into the fabric of me. I do movies that I would like to go and see. I think that's a good barometer of how I choose films and I like going to these movies.

TeenHollywood: Were you familiar with the Greek myths that this film is based upon?

Sam: In Australia everyone grows up and you learn the myths; like the Minotaur and the Maze but I really didn't look at studying Greek mythology for this film. I think this is a fun ride.  It's me in a dress fighting guys in dresses with rubber swords fightin' monsters. It's not a history lesson.  I didn't look deep into the old Perseus because he wore no clothes. I think that would be quite horrific for young kids (laughs). But we were well aware of them (the myths). Aussies as much as anyone else.

TeenHollywood: These recent films you've been in also have a ton of special effects. Having come out of a drama school and gone the traditional route originally, does it get easier as you do each one or did each of the films have its own particular challenge for you?

Sam: Any acting is a stretch of the imagination.  That's the job. Acting is truth in imaginary circumstances. Acting with green screen or on a motion capture stage, you're striving for absolute truth in an absolutely imaginary circumstance.

We learned a lot of lessons on Avatar. If we can't act, we're nothing. It's impossible. Plus, your body reacts differently.  If you're hitting something that's not there, your muscles don't react so we built a big fiberglass scorpion.  We had, if need be, just guys done up in green screen suits. Anything to react off of makes our job easier. We had to know the dimensions of the scorpion; how fast is Medusa gonna run? Then, we can act accordingly when there's, supposedly, nothing there.

TeenHollywood: Can you talk about some of the physical challenges of acting in sandals and short... well "skirts"?

Sam: (laughs) I didn't wear sandals. I wore Nikes. Nike was a God anyway so that helped. I painted toes on my Nikes. The boys didn't know about this until about a month in. I was sprinting off and doing a lot bigger stunts and they had all the dirt getting in their sandals and were tripping all over the place.  I was the smart one. I was ahead.

TeenHollywood: You shot on some pretty remote locations; Tenerife in the Canary Islands and in Wales. Can you talk about those challenges?

Sam: We were above the clouds. The altitude is ridiculous. I don't know how high we were (7,000 feet) but we needed to be in great shape. And the terrain of Wales sucked. Wales is a beautiful place but not a f**kin' slate mine (laughter) with the rain going up. That was tough. That is the (real) entrance to the underworld. You know you're in trouble when everyone around you on set is wearin' a hard hat and things are falling off and you're just standing there in your dress. Yeah, you know you're in trouble.

TeenHollywood: And you have a few underwater scenes. How were those?

Sam: I came down and was like 'ahhhhh! Get me out of here!' Underwater is harder than we thought. Underwater is tough.  I thought it would be easy. It slows everything down and times everything by two.  It's weird. Screw doin' The Abyss. I don't know how Jim (Cameron) did it because underwater's a hard place to film. That's only twenty-odd seconds or thirty seconds of film and it took us four days.

TeenHollywood: Wasn't your character Perseus originally written as using his God-like (he's half Man, half God) powers more?

Sam: (In the original film 1981), there are themes of embracing the God-side and achieving things as a God, that I don't think are good for any of us. You can only succeed if you're a God? That's a terrible thing to say to a kid.

If you can say you can do it as a Man and look deep inside you and pull something of yourself out and do it with other men, I think that's a good message to anybody. I wanted to embrace that side of it. So, the good thing about the original is it's a good jumping off point for us but we were out to put our own modern-day spin on it.

TeenHollywood: Although Perseus is the lead character, he has a pretty cool group of guys and a gal going on his quest with him. Did you to make it more of an ensemble movie?

Sam: We didn't want the boys to get lost, to be honest. This movie is fun, fast, furious. There's a title for you (we laugh).  Look at Star Wars (and compare). You've got your Luke Skywalker. You've got your Han Solo. Gemma [Arterton] is your Princess Leah. You've got your other two boys which are CP30 and R2D2 and the bloke made of wood is Chewbacca. They're archetypes of an epic journey that you need to go along.

TeenHollywood: This movie is 3-D and Avatar was 3-D but they are very different. Can you compare the experiences at all?

Sam: You can't. Avatar was it's own juggernaut; it's own beast. I can tell you that by filming it you can't compare it to anything. But compared to say, 'Terminator' this was a lot tougher. I thought this would be a cakewalk, me in a dress, running around, that it'd be easy but there's a lot of energy on set. You're running around with three cameras the whole time. So in that regard, going to these extreme locations, too, it was tougher than I thought, I must admit.

TeenHollywood: Perseus rides a gorgeous flying horse, Pegasus and you are just beautiful together. How did you shoot those scenes?

Sam: Quickly, because me and the horse didn't get along. But I did a lot of that on a gimble (fake) horse and the rest of the time, I tried not to get my head bitten by that d**n mule because he thought that I was a sugar lump. He tried to bite me all the time. But we did the flying on a green screen and that was pretty cool.

TeenHollywood: We've got to ask. Has Jim Cameron talked to you about the Avatar sequel yet? Any scoops?

Sam: We have discussed Avatar 2. He brought it up when we were filming it. He would have ideas (about it). But, he's not the type of man that just goes into movies lightly. He's especially not going to make a sequel to just make money. We know that Avatar has been embraced by audiences and so we're probably definitely going to undertake another one but it's up to Jim to find a challenge to push himself. 'Avatar II' has to push the boundaries like 'Avatar I' one did. So I know he's doing that.