Movies Features

Johnny Simmons – One to Watch

By Anne Brodie Jul 21, 2010, 17:00 GMT

Johnny Simmons hits the screen with Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and The Conspirator. © Albert L. Ortega / PR Photos

Twenty three year old Johnny Simmons has it all – talent, talent and more talent. The Montgomery, Alabama native has leapt into the spotlight mixing prestige productions with teen fare. 

Last seen in Jennifer’s Body, Simmons has gone on to work with Susan Sarandon, Robin Wright, Tom Wilkinson, Kevin Kline, Michael Cera and Pierce Brosnan and he plays a pivotal role in Robert Redford’s Lincoln assassination thriller The Conspirator. 

Simmons is currently starring in The Greatest now on DVD, as the grieving younger brother of a boy who dies in a car accident.  His parents, played by Brosnan and Sarandon are in terrible pain and fail to recognize his.  Monsters and Critics spoke with Simmons from LA.

Johnny Simmons in Hotel for Dogs.

Monsters and Critics - Working with Susan Sarandon and Pierce Brosnan must have been like a master class in acting.  What did you pick up from them?

Johnny Simmons - Everything.  Everything they dropped I picked up, everything I could do I tried to do.  I made a list in sixth grade of actors and actresses I wanted to work with and she was one of those.  And so now I can say I did.  She took me in and was really incredible and she’s so talented and an incredible woman at the same time.  It was pretty surreal. 

I just appreciate the opportunity and I think I took as much as I possibly could.  And I enjoyed watching my co-stars Aaron Johnson and Carey Mulligan take off.  These people are now the younger versions of Pierce and Susan.  I get to watch one career at a time, who knows, one actor that winds up doing incredible things and now three.  I’m fortunate.

M&C - Your character is the collateral damage left behind following Ben’s death.  His parents are so focused on their emotions that they don’t notice that Ben is falling apart.

JS - Everyone in their life has had a moment where they felt alone and angst.  There is a big feeling of that in adolescence that everyone can draw upon.  I’ve had moments where I’ve felt where you’d find it one way or another. 

My approach is to use anything and everything that’s I’ve had in my life happen and draw parallels in my character and personal life that everyone’s got that’s separate from you own experience.

M&C - Is it something you actually re-feel or re-live for work?

JS - In a way.  Phillip Glass quoted someone, an unidentified composer, who said, “Is is escape or is it liberation?”  Are we going into all this to escape it or be free from it?”  With any artform, anything, its cathartic.

M&C - Do you have a physical memory of how things feel?

JS - Oh, yeah, I think so, anything that’s eventful.  Movies deal with extreme versions of our own lives, extremes heightened, those experiences don’t tend to leave your mind very easily.  There is always plenty to draw from no matter what period it’s from.  It’s strange.

M&C - At the end of the day, can you walk away?

JS - I don’t know what I wanted to walk away from it.  It took me six weeks to figure my own things out, and that’s not actor bullcrap but it was.  What I really wanted to do which was the greatest was not take a character out of what this family was going through and truly dig in.

Everyone’s goal was to be honest and stick with it and figure it out.  At home I’d rework the next day’s work, new ideas would pop up and I’d play with them.

Johnny Simmons in Jennifer’s Body.

M&C - Why acting?

JS - I couldn’t imagine anything else.  If I had to, I would, but for me, every day is so different and there are new lessons.  I love psychology and looking at human nature if you break it down, that’s one aspect.  It’s very interesting.  I started professionally I moved to LA when I was 18 and six months after I arrived I did Evan Almighty.  I can’t believe that!  My first one! It was an incredible experience.  But I don’t know where the desire came from. 

I was five years old when I told my parents I wanted to act.  That seems to be an abundant story in LA.  There is nothing unique about this story here.  But I don’t know why I had the desire, but I was born with that.  It’s why my mother had the desire to be a nurse or my father to build things and why I became an actor. 

No idea.  I just knew I was very drawn to but and it never seemed like work when I was researching the possibilities, or the interest or the hours I spent on it, trying to figure it out or how to break into it.  It’s very interesting.

M&C - Maybe it was the movies you watched.

JS - I didn’t watch a whole lot of movies when I consider how much I watch now.  I watched all kinds of stuff, I love movies and I watch one movie every day.  I love them now but I didn’t watch a lot as young kid.  My favorites were Blow and Vanilla Sky.  Now it changes all the time.

M&C - The Conspirator sounds amazing.  And it sounds as though you have a central role.  (A group led by John Wilkes Booth plots to kill President Lincoln, the Vice President and the Secretary of State. 

Suspect Mary Surrat is the sole female member of the group; she is tried and executed.  Her son John escapes and travels the world through Canada, Britain, Europe and Eygpt hiding in Catholic homes but is eventually arrested, tried twice and released.)

JS - Robert Redford is directing.  I play Mary Surrat’s son John who was part of this conspiracy.  It’s rooted in fact and its interesting how many parallels there are today in the current situation, politically.

Johnny Simmons in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.

M&C - Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is expected to be a big one, an “epic of epic epicness”.  Are you excited? 

JS - I play young Neil and he’s a bass player.  The story’s set in this extreme reality, based on a comic book and Edgar Wright who directed Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz.  It’s unbelievable!  I’m so lucky! 

The photographer was Bill Pope who did Matrix.  And there was Jason Schwartzmann and Michael Cera.  I saw the film three or four weeks ago and I love it!  It’s genuinely a great movie!