Garrett Hedlund: “Tron” Star is “Country Strong”

We’re with hunky young actor Garrett Hedlund chatting in Beverly Hills. It’s been an amazing year for this talented fellow. Two of his films are in theaters and they couldn’t be more different. Garrett plays a guy sucked into a video gaming world in the Sci-Fi actioner Tron and a budding Country Music singer/songwriter in Country Strong. He’s just wrapped On the Road, co-starring with Kristen Stewart and is telling us, in this exclusive interview, that he is now “a big couch potato”, taking a well-earned break!

One of the questions asked by Country Strong is whether or not fame and true love can co-exist. We are getting Garrett’s heartfelt opinion on this subject as a young, single man in Hollywood and learning that his first exposure to Country Music was on his grandpa’s turkey farm where they would crank up the Johnny Cash. The birds seemed to groove to it and he did too!

We’re chatting Garrett’s hopes and dreams as a teen on the farm, love, fame, cowboy hats and a whirlwind year!

TeenHollywood: You’re a young single man in show biz. Do you think love and fame can co-exist? Or maybe only if one of the partners isn’t in the business?

Garrett: It’s a tug of war between levels of passion. I like to write and read as much as I can and I spend a lot of my time doing that. But with the fame angle, what people think is so glamorous isn’t. It can get quite cold and cruel at times. For me it’s all about the love of the art. Being fortunate enough to be on a lot of wonderful films this year was great but a lot of work. To put that work in, to do the research and not cease and not give up and put a thousand percent of your focus on your task at hand, and not cheat yourself, that’s where my love is.

TeenHollywood: So no real time for a true love relationship?

Garrett:  If I meet somebody unbelievable, I would know it. But for me, it’s love before fame at least. If fame gets too invasive then, I’ll just dig a hole in the ground and hide. I’d do the exact same thing [my character] Beau did, go back and scale back. 

TeenHollywood: Your love interest Chiles [played by Leighton Meester] is all about the fame.. stardom and your character Beau about the art of his songwriting and performing.  When you were a kid or teen was having an acting career about stardom or just about the art of acting?

Garrett: I was big into sports as a kid. I always wanted to be a professional baseball player. I would write a lot of players hoping for an autograph in return. One day, Nolan Ryan sent me back his autograph. All my friends said it wasn’t real and I was eating cereal, spilled milk on it and the blue Sharpie smeared and I yelled ‘It’s real!’ So that encouraged me, when I watched film, to write to Universal or MGM and say ‘Can I be in one of your movies?’ Or ‘Can I be in one of your TV shows?’ 

At first it was just about wanting to be off the farm or going to California and the ocean. I’d see hay fields blowing in the wind and my dad would say ‘That’s our ocean’. When I was studying in Arizona I was studying dense stuff and any book I could get my hands on but the films that moved me the most were the ones that stirred up the most emotion. I just wanted to perform a role so well that I moved somebody in the way that it happened for me. 

TeenHollywood: So, then it was always about the art and not longing to be on the red carpet with paparazzi chasing you?

Garrett: [laughs] Yeah. I guess so.

TeenHollywood: You were born in Minnesota, grew up in Scottsdale, Arizona. So what is your Country Music background?

Garrett: We had a turkey farm and my grandpa would play Johnny Cash for all the turkeys and they’d just bop their heads. We had to do our chores in the turkey shed so he’d click on Johnny Cash as we laid shavings down for them. That was the first I heard. Then, just growing up with Tim [McGraw’s] songs. I was singing Tim’s songs working on the tractor and Faith [Hill] played our country fair when I was ten years old and brought Tim up on stage.

TeenHollywood: So it must have been bizarre to meet your childhood music idols then?

Garrett: Yeah. Finally to be down in Austin The first day of shooting, the director said ‘Do you want to meet your father?’ [Tim played Garrett’s dad in the movie Friday Night Lights]I said ‘Yeah’ and it’s Tim McGraw. Ultimately my character was not supposed to like him.

Then we ended up hanging in his bus between scenes and he’d have me come up on stage and sing “I Like It I Love It” with him in Austin. I couldn’t sing that. He said ‘You’ll catch on. Just sing the chorus’. Today, me playing a country singer with Tim McGraw is amazing.

TeenHollywood: How did you perfect Beau’s accent?

Garrett: I think I’m in such a melting pot of accents at this moment because Tron was much different from Country Strong and being in Nashville for four months hanging out and playing that character, I developed it. I have an ear for it and just wanted to be genuine. In On the Road, playing Neal Cassady, you’ve got the tapes [of his voice] to listen to so, all of a sudden [he starts talking with a totally different accent] and the rhythms change. I’ll be back to myself soon [laughs]. When I first came to Arizona I was nicknamed “Minnesota” because I talked so slow and with a Northern accent.

TeenHollywood: Before going to Hollywood, you were a kid reading old screenplays and pretending to then try out for the parts? How did you get the screenplays?

Garrett: There used to be a website called “Drew’s Scriptorama” where you could get them [hey, Garrett, it’s still there!]. I’d read it from the computer and prep a scene for a week and pretend I was doing it. It was something I was just trying because acting classes are all about rules. ‘Do this and don’t do this’. If you chuck out the rules and learn that there are no rules and watch great actors and what they’ve done with the dialogue on page, you learn that these people really cut the cuffs on their wrists and flew. I learned from that.

TeenHollywood: Beau puts his personal soul into his songwriting and performing. Could you do that or would it be too personal?

Garrett: This movie was a whole new thing for me. There are a lot of qualities in Beau that I never expressed confidently. It took six months for me to get the guitar down and be able to sing to express poetry in that form. I think, undoubtedly, the more interesting you are as a person, the more knowledge you have, that radiates from the surface. But, ultimately I try to feed the traits of what he is in the script and try and build around it.

TeenHollywood: You were co-starring with Jeff Bridges in Tron and he plays a mean guitar and sings up a storm in real life. Could he help you with this role?

Garrett: On Tron, Jeff tried to show me how to play guitar. Not so good. Then, seven months later, I’m in my trailer playing Jeff’s songs from Crazy Heart. It’s wild. Now, finally we’re in the trailer jamming together.

TeenHollywood: Awesome! You look really natural in your cowboy hat in the film. Where does that come from?

Garrett: [laughs] My grandpa wore a cowboy hat every day till the day he died but not me. I found the perfect one on top of Neal Casal’s [his guitar coach for the film] fridge. His ex-bro-in-law from Texas had given it to him. He said, ‘I can’t wear this. It’s my ex-wife now’. So, he put it on top of my head and said ‘Dude, rock it!’ ‘Can I just borrow it?’ He said ‘take it’. 

TeenHollywood: You also had a real Country style with the microphone, the way you stood and approached it. Did you learn that?

Garrett: I just jammed with the band. You work the mic like you have to lean down for a kiss. It’s about talking to the audience and telling them a story.

TeenHollywood: You have some great scenes with Gwyneth Paltrow. How was working with her?

Garrett: Let’s just say, it’s much easier working with an Oscar-winning actor than a Razzie winning one [we laugh]. Gwyneth is so phenomenal and so beautiful and a wonderful actress. We hit it off at the beginning. We’d only had a dinner before that and met once.

TeenHollywood: How do you hope teens will respond to Country Strong? 

Garrett: It’s kind of a great time for Country music right now. There are a lot of great, young Country artists that have really gotten younger audiences from all over the globe into Country music. This film is an addition to that. It’s a wonderful movie that will turn non-Country fans into Country fans because you get to invest in a beautiful story with great characters that are filled with soul and, hopefully it moves you at the end of the day.