First up: German actress Diana Kruger. A trained ballerina, an injury put an end to her career at 13. Not from a particularly artistic family but she wanted to perform so she became a model in Paris and then New York City to get out of her small hometown. Went to the movies for the first time in Paris and the seed was planted. After modeling bored her, she went to acting school for 2 ½ years and the rest is history.
What was it like returning to a character for a second time: “When we did the first film a sequel was never really anticipated. I’d never done a sequel and I wasn’t too keen on it to be honest with you. I think Nick wasn’t either and neither was John really. Because of the fact that they didn’t have a script somewhere hidden they had two years to actually figure out a plot. It is an adventure action film but there are historical facts that are in it so you can’t just sort of whip it up. It was fun, I have to say. I thought especially my arc in this one is a lot lighter. It’s more funny so I can actually do stuff than in the first film.”
What did she think of all those action sequences she had to do? “The balance platform was ok. It was the water stuff that was a little tiring. And it sounds silly but it takes three weeks to shoot something that’s only going to be in the movie for two minutes. You’re wet and you have to fight elements there: huge currents and waterfalls in a confined space with 60 people. It’s physically tiring.”
A lot of the dialogue between her and Nick was improvisation, things that real couples fight about and why they split up. “For example the big scene in Buckingham Palace, once we get arrested everything until we get to the actual [holding] cage is totally made up. It’s funny because I was watching it two days ago with my boyfriend (actor Joshua Jackson) and he was like ‘I can’t believe you said that in a movie!’ He was cringing. It was really fun to bring stuff that every couple fights about. There was this one line I said that every guy on set was like ‘ugh! I’ve heard that before!’”
Lighter side of Abigail: Diana prefers this Abigail compared to her character in the first film. “I’m tired of being put on this pedestal as this elegant, pretty, aristocratic person. I would love to explore the more comedic side, the more modern woman that is smart, sassy, funny, super-intelligent, yet adventurous and wants to be part of every day life. I feel like I got to do this in this movie and I hope if there’s a third one that they go even more in that direction.”
They say its clothes that make the woman: “Did you see my house?” Since she has money now, Abigail can afford the nicer things in life. Diana found them a little conservative compared to her personal tastes but they were nice none the less.
Diana talked a bit about her co-stars:
Nick: “his mind goes about 4 times as fast as mine. He can go off in any direction. Every day you come to work and you never know what you’re going to get. He’s very creative and I think he’s as enthusiastic about work as he was 10 years ago which is astonishing considering the amount of work he’s done. He’s very much the family man right now. Is he fun to kiss? “Very fun! No complaints.”
Helen Mirren: she recalls fondly the excited whispers on set the day Helen was to begin work. “Everybody learned their lines and was really proper. And then Helen comes and says ‘I can’t remember any of the lines you’ve written down. I mean it’s just impossible to say!’ So she’d put in the scene the words. She couldn’t remember because they were whatever technical terms she had to say. She’d put them actually in the scene: like she’d say a word here and then move over, remember the line and then say it to whomever. It just takes the pressure off. She might be one of the best actresses in the world but she’s so cool. She had no pretense or she’s not fake or anything.
Once again she got to work with her Copying Beethoven co-start Ed Harris. After they offered him the part he wasn’t sure whether or not he wanted to do it since he was preparing the project he was going to direct. Diana jokes how begged him to come on board, how she called and harassed him.
Future of the franchise: International Treasure? Shooting London and Paris weren’t as exciting to Kruger as they’re home for her. For Diana the most exotic place they got to shoot was South Dakota. “There’s something really great about always linking it to America. Maybe because it’s such a big country and if anything it’s still in need of that: of its treasure, you want to know about the conspiracies that were going on in America’s history. It would be great to branch out like we did in this one. Maybe go to Asia?”
Does she find difficulty getting people to look beyond her physical appearance? For Kruger it’s a problem in America, not in Europe. “Hollywood tends to put people in certain categories.” Troy was her 2nd movie ever so she was a little unprepared for the experience. “It wasn’t that much of a part anyway other than having that label (“the face that launched a thousand ships”) put on you which going in half of the people are going to agree with and half don’t. I’m grateful for it because it put me on the map but it also put a lot of light on a non-existent career. I feel like it’s been a blessing in disguise because a lot of people may not see my European films or follow my career as closely in America anyway. I still feel like I have to constantly prove to them that I actually can act. Then something unexpected [happens] like Copying Beethoven [which was] the first time in America that I got to play age-appropriate and I actually had to pick up a skill.”
What I did this Summer: Diana was the MC of opening and closing ceremonies of Cannes. She found it to be a terrifying experience: “I was not at all nervous until the door opened and the first person I saw was Wong Kar-Wai, staring at me. Because it’s not like you’re on the stage in the theater and you don’t see the audience. You see everybody and you don’t have Teleprompters. So you have to memorize 15 minutes of an opening speech in three languages. I don’t smoke and I smoked 58 cigarettes. I’m not kidding. It was terrible. I‘m not sure they understood a word I said.
Justin Bartha is a giver. As he entered the room he threw grapes at the reporters. Makes you wonder what kind of responses you’re going to get to the questions posed to him.
How protective of the character is he and what was Riley’s progression in the second film? “When we first started this process of trying to figure out what the sequel was I thought the most difficult thing would be: what’s interesting about being with this guy again? I didn’t want it to be the same exact thing as the first movie. So how did this guy evolve from the first movie to the second movie and how do I keep it interesting without it being the same shtick again and again? I think myself and the filmmakers found some interesting things to do with him like what did he do with his money, what happened to the money and does he become more comfortable with this life of being a treasure hunter.”
Surprisingly he is decidedly not a techno-geek like his character. “For all the technology things we prep with the specialists of what would be realistic, of what plugs in where. I just try to make it look good. A lot of these movies obviously have the techy sidekick guy and that’s the least interesting thing about the character. So I concentrate on every other aspect and that usually falls into place.
So is Justin like Riley, the never-recognized second banana: “I don’t know what anyone talks about Nicholas Cage because obviously I steal the movie. And I am extremely handsome, intelligent and humble and it makes no sense. But I’m not much like my character. I tend to be a little sarcastic like he is and I’m a lot taller in real life so it’s not that similar. Was he recognized while shooting in London? “Not really. I don’t really get recognized anywhere because I look so different from my character. [insert smirk here] A few people would come up to [Nick] and say ‘hey aren’t you Nick Cage?’ (Doing a Cage impression) ‘Yeah, yeah I am.’”
There is an adrenaline pumping car chase through the streets of the British capital in the film and Justin spoke a bit about that. “There was one point where John Turteltaub needed me to be in one of the cars while Nick’s stunt guy, who is this amazing driver, was driving. It was through London. I didn’t really know we were doing it. It was just like ‘Get in the car. I don’t know where your stunt guy is so you’ll be in there too’ and I was like ‘oh, ok.” So he starts driving like a maniac. The chase scene goes through all these extremely narrow alleys and he’s doing all these crazy turns and we almost smash into a tree, right on the passenger side and I almost died. And it was pretty scary and I changed my underwear. But I always bring extra underwear wherever I go. I have underwear right here because these interviews make me really nervous.”
The subject of improvising came up. How open were the filmmakers to Justin throwing in some improve? “At this point, yeah. Even if they don’t I just do it anyway and they get mad at me. Sometimes with these fantastic situations that these movies find the characters in, especially Riley in the first one and obviously at some point in this one where he serves as a surrogate to the audience. The comedy comes out of being someone from the audience finding himself in a car chase or finding along side an intense Oscar winner and reacting to that.
Working in London and Paris, driving a Ferrari: talk about perks! “What more could you ask for? You’re working with all these Oscar winners, these unbelievably talented film makers, the best producer probably in Hollywood history and traveling to all these amazing locations. I’d rather travel and work where I’m going than travel and do touristy things. I mean you do the touristy things and you get paid to go to these places. Come on, that’s the greatest. Most of the locations where we shoot at are the touristy places like outside of Buckingham Palace or at the Capital.”
What was his favorite part of playing Riley? “Working with all of these great actors that they assembled for this movie. I mean there are more Oscars in this movie than I think maybe any other in history. That’s the real pleasure: to one day go to work and be acting opposite Helen Mirren and the next day with Jon Voight and Ed Harris and Nick. It’s unbelievable.”
Has Justin encountered typecasting? “Movie making today is all about being finance-able in foreign territories and there’s a lot of [nonsense] that goes along with it. But it does help young filmmakers who have interesting projects get their projects made. I get sent, especially recently a lot of smaller scripts that are character movies that I feel really interesting. So it does open up those doors and more people are aware of me. When it comes to bigger Hollywood movies we all know that actors get pigeon-holed, whatever your last project was that’s what a Hollywood studio sees you as. After I did Gigli, which was my first movie before it came out there was a lot of buzz about me being a serious, brooding, young dramatic actor. And after it came out obviously all that buzz went away. But I did get a lot of scripts sent to me about retarded characters. It was kind of ridiculous. Then after National Treasure I did get sent a lot of similar sidekick roles.”
“You hear actors say this all the time: I love doing these big movies. It’s obviously a privilege to do them. But it affords me being able to do these small projects that are passion projects of mine that I find a bit more interesting and challenging.”
Two such upcoming passion projects are:
Shoe at Your Foot: “I play an American who wins a trip to Paris right when his girlfriend dumps him. So he goes alone and his suitcase is lost by the airline and is sent to a beautiful young French girl. I have no clothes and I spend pretty much the whole movie in a Paris hotel room in a robe with no underwear.”
Holy Rollers: This movie is based on a true story. In the early 90’s some people in the Hassidic community were involved in smuggling ecstasy in and out of Amsterdam to Brooklyn. “It’s kind of like ‘Jew Streets’, the Jewish version of Mean Streets. My character would kind of be the Johnny Boy character in Mean Streets where he’s a bit of a drug addict and already stuck in that world. And I help bring Jesse Eisenberg’s character into that world.
Bartha’s personal tastes veer towards more art house and foreign films. He rarely sees big budget movies “except for National Treasure which I watch over and over again.”
Jon Voight has always considered himself a character actor. He walks into our room a little flustered having been ushered unceremoniously from the previous room of journalists to make way for film producer Jerry Bruckheimer. Voight didn’t see his “boss” as he made his way from one press group to the other and feels he may have inadvertently slighted him. He jokes: “So now I’m feeling ‘that’s the end of this! Number 3, I won’t be in it.”
Voight has become quite the history buff. He figures that over the past 10 years or so he’s stepped up his interest in American history particularly the Founding Fathers. “America is an extraordinary idea: our democracy, things that we take for granted. The idea that came that came from those people at that time influenced the entire world in a very positive way. There are wonderful writers who’ve written about it and I wanted to get everything I could get at one point. I love reading about Washington. I’ve read 3, 4 books about him.”
“And then Lincoln, I must have read five books on Lincoln. Every time I’m just enthralled. One of the great books on Lincoln that I read was The Eloquent President (by Ronald C. White Jr.) and it shows you the enormous problems he faced. Look at Lincoln entering the war. He’s trying everything he can to keep the states together, bending as much as he can to get people to say: ‘ok we’ll stay in the union if this and this…’ and nothing could stop it. Those first days he just tried everything he could do to not create the circumstance. He was not going to be the one to pull the trigger. And he wasn’t. The South wanted it. They built up this fervor and they had to do it. Then everyone was critical of Lincoln. People were saying: ‘he’s stupid, he’s incompetent, he’s blood thirsty’, whatever. [He says much like the present administration.] And he answers each of these moments in history usually with a speech, some words that he wrote and put in his hat. Each time the answer was so eloquent. So powerful” He pauses to collect himself.
“Anyway, so many people were slaughtered in the process and he kept us together, he kept us going… Reading history is very important. You have a way of viewing the present in some kind of balance. Doing this movie was fun for me because all this history stuff is exciting. It also creates an energy to encourage kids to go look at the history. After the first movie people went to Philadelphia to look at the Liberty Bell and this one will encourage interest in the Library of Congress. It’s fun.
The point was made that played FDR in Pearl Harbor and there is reference to Roosevelt and the desk in the Oval Office in the film: “I knew a lot about FDR and it was nice for me to be able to say those words about [him]; the idea that this desk had the front put onto it so that people couldn’t see the wheelchair. [What’s in the movie] is all true, there are two desks and they came from that ship and it was gift from the Queen of England. Real neat stuff is in here, all throughout. When I saw the desk with the cover it was touching to me.
When speaking of his co-stars Voight states he’s “crazy about Nick” and feels paternal towards him. “We’re pals.” And he got to kiss Helen. Not a bad day at the office, eh?
Jon got to speak a bit about where his career path has taken him and where he’s going. His next project is Pride and Glory with Ed Norton and Colin Farrell. It is a New York City story written by Gavin O’Connor: powerful gritty police story filled with New York actors: “Took me right back to when I was in class and working in ‘A View from the Bridge’ off-Broadway and I felt back home in some sense doing that kind of stuff.”
“I’m a character actor. I was never a classic leading man unfortunately. I would love to have been. As I’ve aged I’ve made adjustments. Jerry says ‘can you play Nick Cage’s father?’ and I say ‘yeah! I think I can do that.’ In the end I still put on a little padding to make myself look a little bit professorial. I put red under my eyes to make it look like I’ve spent a lot of time in the books. I’m very, very fortunate to have had a career that’s lasted so long and has had so many delightful turns in it. And I’m still going and still looking forward. And I have to say I thank Jerry Bruckheimer and guys like that, the people who are having me in their sights now and who want to work with me. I’m very grateful.
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