C for Men Exclusive: Making it Count

April 12, 2011 2011
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Source: C Magazine
Spring 2011 Issue
WRITTEN BY KELSEY MCKINNON

THE ONLY PERSON WHO WOULD ACCUSE ACTOR AARON ECKHART OF TAKING LIFE FOR GRANTED IS HIIMSELF

If I could do it all over again, I’d be a guitarist, songwriter, racecar driver, adventurer. I’d be a great actor, too,” Aaron Eckhart rambles with such conviction you almost start to believe him. The problem is, at 43, the L.A.-based star has already built a citadel career on pillars like Erin Brockovich, The Dark Night, this month’s Battle: Los Angeles and in the fall, he will appear in Johnny Depp’s next Caribbean drama, The Rum Diary. It’s not a case of false modesty, either: “I’m not at all satisfied; I have to do better.”

This sense of persistent unrest defines his charmingly ascetic personality—one that embraces the big picture in an industry prone to triviality. Think Jack London over Jack Sparrow.

Answering his own call of the wild, Eckhart turned to the open road this past December. Embarking on a solo trip to Northern California, he was not far from his hometown of Cupertino, where his father was a computer exec before he moved the family abroad. With his bike and board in tow, Eckhart roamed the coast, pitching a tent wherever Surfline.com was inclined. (This is not unusual; Eckhart took two years off after high school for a surf sabbatical in Hawaii before attending Brigham Young as a film student.)

“I read a great survival book on this trip about a plane crash in the Andes where these men were left on the most impossible journey [Miracle in the Andes by Nando Parrado]. When he’s about to die, he has this epiphany and he realizes that life and death are meaningless,” says Eckhart, who, not surprisingly, has had a few of these moments (both on- and off-screen).

Take Battle: Los Angeles, an alien invasion thriller with special effects that make Independence Day look like an animated flipbook. “At first, I said I wasn’t really interested in doing an alien movie. But then Jonathan [Liebesman] showed me a YouTube video of Marines going into combat in Fallujah and said, ‘This is what our movie is going to look like.’”

Eckhart’s eyes light up as he responds in character: “I’ll do it. I’ll die for you.” After three weeks at a military bootcamp in the swamps of Louisiana as Staff Sergeant Michael Nantz, he was close to it. “We bombed the shit out of that place. It was the greatest time of my life. I wanted to join the Marines, but I’m too old.”

True, the cut-off age is 28, but Eckhart has embraced other forms of active duty. “MMA? Mixed Martial Arts?” No response. He offhandedly explains, “I go out to a park in Malibu with my trainer, I beat him up. Well, he lets me beat him up.” For someone so mild-tempered, full-contact, ultimate fight training may sound unnecessary, but it actually comes in handy for Eckhart’s other hobby: photography.

While filming The Dark Knight in Chicago, he recalls, “I was taking pictures of these kids playing with a fire hydrant when some dude comes over and starts asking me what I’m doing, like he wants to kill me. I told him I was a photographer. Turns out, he gives me his card and wants me to shoot his music video.”

Eckhart retrieves his iPhone and begins narrating: “Here are some delinquents in Puerto Rico…here’s the lesbian parade in N.Y.C…here’s a family in Shanghai. Oh! Want to see a great shot of Molly [Sims, his ex-girlfriend/supermodel]?”

Indeed, Aaron Eckhart is a man’s man: He has a motorcycle, he stands up to thugs, he surfs, he dates supermodels and loves football. But more impressively, he’s the quintessential actor’s actor. In his 10-year-plus career, Eckhart’s artistic range has jumped from a sycophantic ladies’ man (In The Company of Men), to a tobacco lobbyist (Thank You For Smoking, which garnered two Golden Globe nods), to a sinister, two-faced supervillain (The Dark Knight), and everything in between. Nicole Kidman hand-picked him to co-star as her grieving husband in the 2010 drama Rabbit Hole, a small-budget indie that catapulted on the festival circuit. Johnny Depp chose Eckhart for this fall’s The Rum Diary, the Depp-produced and starred adaptation of the Hunter S. Thompson novel.

“I’ve learned the difference between being the number one, two and three. Everybody has to be a whole person in a movie. That’s how movies work; that’s how they get integrity and depth.” As he sits across the table at a Santa Monica coffee shop, people gaze curiously but never with instant recognition. There’s freedom in relative anonymity, yet not the kind of creative freedom of which Eckhart dreams—the kind needed for carte blanche from studios. “Yeah, and I also don’t own my own island, either (referring to Depp’s place in the Bahamas). So, I’d like a little bit more of that please, with fries and a large Coke.”

Maybe it’s not an island, but Eckhart’s new pad overlooking Malibu’s Point Dume is nothing to balk at, nor is his home in Beverly Hills or his sprawling ranch in Santa Barbara. “I guess I have afforded myself some luxuries,” he admits. This would have been considered a breakthrough moment, if it wasn’t so quickly parried, “Well, I’ve only got a few more years left. I figure I’ve got ten more good years in me and then it will be curtains.”

One of Eckhart’s plans before then is to buy an apartment in Paris. He lived there briefly in his late teens. Working with Depp, who lives in Meudon (a suburb of Paris), clearly helped re-inspire the fantasy. He’ll get a taste for it this spring filming the 2013 thriller The Expatriate in Luxembourg, which is a four-hour drive from the French capital.

If it doesn’t happen this time around, there’s always next time. “There better be an afterlife or I’ll be pissed,” he says. “Or, as the French call it, l’au-delà.”

The Next Big Thing – Men’s Book Chicago Spring 2011

March 16, 2011 2011
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The Next Big Thing
by Elina Fuhrman
Source: Men’s Book Chicago
Spring 2011

He spent his twenties trying to break into acting and his thirties working nonstop. Now in his forties, Aaron Eckhart is living life his way.

“Every single day I thought I was going to die,” Aaron Eckhart says of the challenges filming this month’s eagerly anticipated Battle: Los Angeles. The picture, set in Santa Monica, might have been a bigbudget studio film, but the actor recognized that his part—a marine fighting an alien invasion—was a gritty role. “People would say, ‘Aaron, it’s a popcorn movie, why are you so intense?’ and I’d be like, ‘No, it’s not a popcorn movie, I’m at war! It’s life and death!,’” he says. He looks around the Santa Monica coffee shop where we’re chatting, a few hundred yards from where the Battle: Los Angeles alien invaders rise out of the ocean. “It was the hardest movie I ever did, both physically and mentally.”

Eckhart is beyond serious about acting and exceptionally single-minded about his work. “It’s the storytelling aspect, trying to be real under imaginary circumstances, what happens when there is energy between actors,” he says. “I’m addicted to the chase of that. It’s a feeling like no other; it’s addictive and exhilarating, and it happens rarely.”

Looking for roles that will take him there has become a requirement for the 43-year-old. “When I was doing Battle: Los Angeles, I thought I was at war,” he says, sipping his coffee. “I think people were like, ‘This dude thinks he’s a real marine.’”

Sitting at a small table in the Zen-like garden, unrecognized, dressed in a plaid shirt and cargo pants, Eckhart looks like nothing so much as one of the guy’s guys he’s made a career of portraying.

He played the biker boyfriend of Julia Roberts in Erin Brockovich, the tobacco industry lobbyist who struggles to make his son proud of him in Thank You for Smoking, Gotham City’s district attorney Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight and Catherine Zeta-Jones’ paramour in the romantic comedy No Reservations, among other memorable man’s man roles. That kind of strong character seems to be what appeals to Eckhart, who cites Sean Penn, Daniel Day-Lewis and Javier Bardem as actors he admires.

Also scheduled for release this year is Rabbit Hole, a gutwrenching story of a grieving couple who lose their child, starring Eckhart and Nicole Kidman as the parents. “This is one of those movies that you wait your whole life for, in the sense that it’s a great challenge,” says Eckhart. Even as he shines in the early glow of critics’ accolades for his portrayal of a heartbroken father, Eckhart shows humility and realism about the ambitions required to succeed in Hollywood.

“Everybody who looks at my career right now thinks that I’m doing pretty good, but I’m thinking it’s the worst time of my life,” he jokes. He catches himself and laughs. “I still feel that my career is an embryo. I still feel that my great roles are ahead of me, I still search for them, I still have the angst.”

Eckhart tells the story of how it all began at age 14. Between playing rugby, basketball and soccer in high school in England, he auditioned for the school musical You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. “I don’t know why I went to audition for it,” he says. “Nobody else auditioned for Charlie Brown, so I got Charlie Brown.” In some ways acting chose him. It wasn’t until that play that Eckhart realized this might be his future. “I mean, I’m a sports guy, but from that day on, I was an actor,” he says excitedly, as if the realization is still brand-new after all these years.

The California-born Eckhart spent his teenage years in Europe after his dad’s work took the family to the UK. The move also fostered Eckhart’s love for travel. “We’d jump in the car and drive from London to Algiers. We’ve seen every cathedral and every castle in Europe. I’d go with my friends and ski the Alps twice a year, which was insane,” he says of his formative years. Raised as a Mormon, he spent two years in his late teens in France and Switzerland on a mission. After trips to Australia and Hawaii, where he spent his time surfing, he wound up at Brigham Young University in Utah. “I went to college, but I never thought about going to college,” he says. “I never thought about going into business—I was an actor.”

Did he have any doubts? “Nooo,” says Eckhart. “I knew something was burning inside of me, and I was young enough not to be discouraged.”

He spent his twenties, like many actors in New York, auditioning for everything. “I went on thousands of auditions, but [he started making progress] when Neil [LaBute], my friend I went to school with, called me up and we did a movie called In The Company of Men,” he says. “It changed my life. From absolute nothing, not even able to get an agent for film—I could only get a commercial agent—to Sean Penn calling me on the phone the next day. It was insane. And it’s been a ride ever since.” The ultra-low-budget film noir (“The movie was made for $25,000,” says Eckhart) about conniving chauvinism in the workplace caught fire at the Sundance Film Festival in 1997 and gave Eckhart instant momentum and credibility.

More than a decade later, it’s a large dose of self-assurance that helps Eckhart win the roles he’s passionate about. He even seems proud to say he didn’t work in 2010. “I want to do a particular type of film right now. I just wait for that movie to come along that gets me excited,” he says. “My tastes have changed as I’ve gotten older.”

He looks forward to playing a CIA agent who flees assassins with his daughter in Expatriate, set to start filming in Europe shortly, and is already on a strict diet. “Whenever I do a movie, I tend to get in shape,” he says. Another movie, The Rum Diary, with Johnny Depp, is awaiting its release date.

Navigating your future in Hollywood is a tricky business these days, and much of it is out of your control. “As long as you’re willing to come at it in a different way, there’s no telling [what will happen], because you are telling a truthful story,” says Eckhart. He’s also not too shy to admit that reinvention is a normal part of an actor’s journey, and that he’s reinvented himself “two or three times.”

After another pause, Eckhart lets loose with one last observation. “I’ve never been, in my career, the ‘next big thing.’ I’ve never been that guy.”

Well, until now.

ECKHART SPENT SEVEN MONTHS IN AND OUT OF CHICAGO FILMING THE DARK KNIGHT IN 2007. HE RECALLS HIS STAY IN TOWN.

When you were in Chicago, where did you stay? What were some of the things you enjoyed doing?

I lived at the Sofitel; it was very close to the beach. I ran every day along the lakefront, swam in the lake. Special places? The lakefront path mainly, near the beach area, because we were there in the summer. I’m not good with names, but I kind of went everywhere around there.

What did you think of Chicago?

Whenever anyone talks about Chicago, the first thing they mention is cold and wind. And I didn’t have an appreciation for the city. I couldn’t believe how beautiful it is and how young it is and how active it is… the volleyball on the beach, the kids and the swimming and the runners and bikers, every day it just blew me away. The beauty and the skyline. I love Chicago.

The Chicago of The Dark Knight is quite gritty and Gotham-ish. How did that contrast with the real city?

Chicago has all the buildings and all that sort of stuff, but the Chicago I was living in was very sunny and bright and cheerful, and it’s a great place to take walks. I’m a photographer, so I like to wander around with my camera, and I wandered for miles east, west and everywhere with my camera. I thought it was a very happy place.

Filmmakers often rave about how easy the city makes their work. What was your experience?

We felt like we owned the city. I remember being in a scene on a skyscraper one night and seeing lights miles away. And I thought, ‘That’s nice, that’ll be good for the shot.’ And [director] Chris [Nolan] said, ‘Oh, [they did that for] us.’ So we had shut down the whole town. They gave us access to the air, the sea and the land. Very nice.

What Men Think: Aaron Eckhart

March 11, 2011 2011
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Aaron Eckhart, 43, star of Battle: Los Angeles, on love and other things
by Sheila Monaghan
Women’s Health
April 2011

The combat scenes in your new movie are pretty epic. What’s the best way to make up after a fight?
You know I’m not married, right? There’s a reason for that. I like to air it out. But after an argument, you have to stay in the moment. Do something together. Go on a road trip.

You’re very active. Do you like women who aren’t afraid to break a sweat?
Very much. I love women who will play tennis with me, cycle with me, ski, snowboard, surf…any of it. A woman who takes care of herself turns me on.

What about intellectually—do you challenge women?
I’m tough at first. In order to really get to know a woman, you have to pose questions that she’s not used to answering, that she has to contemplate, that really get her thinking about who she is and what she wants in life.

Should couples keep secrets from each other?
I feel like couples should always reaffirm their love, as opposed to telling each other about their crushes. It creates animosity. Some opinions you might want to keep to yourself.

What have you learned about love over the years?
That there’s no better feeling.

Aaron Eckhart – New York Moves Spring 2011

March 4, 2011 2011
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by Zoe Stagg
Source: New York Moves – Men

“Do I think aliens are going to come down? I think we’re going to kill ourselves before that… I don’t think car exhaust is doing it. It will probably be a nuclear bomb. People have been killing each other since we’ve been on this earth.”

In the geometry of masculinity, the squarer the jaw, the more acute the swagger. A glance at Aaron Eckhart and his improbably strong profile and almost archetypal classic movie-star visage, and you’d assume gruff confidence, brash indifference, a man of flashbulbs, and red carpets. Instead, the math proves wrong. One of the few truly transformative actors of contemporary cinema, he somehow pulls off this silver-screen trick in real life. Eckhart manages to be an actor’s actor, a marquis pull, and an unnoticed every-man, all at the same time.

Unrecognizable from his first breakout role as the ponytailed boyfriend in Erin Brockovich, to his Golden-Globe nominated turn as Nick Naylor in Thank You for Smoking, to Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight, he splits the Hollywood atom. Celebrity and craft need not be synonymous. Describing himself as a “Q-list celebrity,” it’s clear, his anonymity is calculated and coveted. “I think it just has to do with the quality of the actor. Actors that come from a craft perspective, their characters are taken more seriously. The actors I’m talking about shy away from the spotlight, or the spotlight is not interested in them. And I’ve never been embraced by the media. I’ve never been very interesting to the media. Nobody chases me around town or cares who I go out with.”

To underscore his humble obscurity, he explains how he’s able to go from Batman blockbuster to lunch rush supermarket line without a sideways glance. It’s because the whole construct of fame has nothing to do with the star to begin with. “If people aren’t made aware that you’re in the movies, then they don’t give a damn about you. I’m talking about anyone. It’s mostly about their fantasy about what that life is.” That fantasy life is just not in his bag of characters. “I have nothing really to say that’s interesting to anyone, lifestyle-wise. I’m not a big cavorter. I don’t have a fancy persona. I would rather err on the side of people not knowing anything about me, than knowing a lot about me.”

So to be an Aaron Eckhart fan is to have to create the man from his parts. Search and you’ll find clips and quotes of him dutifully talking about a role or film, but he always appears in an official capacity. There is little candid, personal, or scandalous. The actor exists in the public forum. The man does not.

But the man does exist.

He is fragile, hesitant, modest beyond reason. Conscious that the spotlight he reluctantly courts can turn into the glare of a searchlight without warning. He responds carefully with the flinch of someone who’s been burned. Eckhart grew up in the Mormon faith, one of the few personal details out for consumption, and a truly unique one in Hollywood. As such, a question in that direction sends the guard up. “Usually when I’m asked the Mormon question, it’s a very loaded question. People have very preconceived ideas. And so it’s not something I particularly want to touch. People always have an agenda when they ask that. They’re loaded, they want to catch me in something or portray me as some sort of otherworldly person, or somehow it’s contaminated or something.” The answer comes through the training and experience of being a big screen actor. It’s not the instinctual answer of the man behind the act, whose softer explanation makes clear he’s not “contaminated,” but absolutely created by his upbringing.

“My parents are two very humble, down-to-earth people from Montana. My mother rode her horse to school and grew up without electricity. And my father was basically in the same boat.” Suddenly the genesis of his theory of anti-fame becomes clear. He wasn’t brought up to worship at the dual altar of vanity and attention. “I’ve never been into jewelry or clothing or anything like that. I have a healthy suspicion of all that stuff.” The practicality and realism that keeps him grounded in heady Hollywood also tempers any glee of a job well done. Pride is a sin he doesn’t have to confess. “I wish I was more of an optimist. I can do it, but it’s more a conscious effort. I come from a family of hard grinders. The other shoe is always going to fall. It’s hard to embrace your victories.” And in the ultimate irony, he claims he’s not a perfectionist because he’s never achieved anything remotely approaching perfection. In a quiet understatement he finally admits, “I am hard on myself.”

Religion and philosophy rarely stop at the self, and Eckhart’s view doesn’t end there either. “I’ve looked at very many religions and philosophies and they basically all boil down to ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto yourself.’ We’re all trying to get to the same place. I think if anything, we’re just more political than ever, or driven by a particular agenda. I think that people feel like they have to protect things more today.” He tries to demur, claiming to be “just an actor,” but it’s that very study of humanity that makes him well qualified to offer his opinion. “I know our nation is becoming more polarized. I don’t know about more. I’ve only been on this planet for my 42 years, but I do know that religion can be very divisive and polarizing and I grew up with it, so it’s part of my fiber.” The polarity exists within as well. “It’s been a dance for me, but I feel like stories should be told. And I personally like to explore edgier material. So you have to reconcile that with yourself, and I feel like that’s mostly where religion is going, toward a self-reconciliation.”

Eckhart’s work ethic and pragmatism are never out of reach. “My whole philosophy on life is that life is work. And that’s my own life. I’m the most content when I am working steadfastly and headlong into a job. I feel like in our country and in the world, if people are getting agitated, it’s because they’re not working” He himself might not be optimistic, but he is for the rest of us. “That’s the great thing about this country, that we are tirelessly ingenious, and we will find a way.”

If work is one way to escape hard times, in his recent film, Rabbit Hole, with Nicole Kidman, he explored another: humor. Specifically, gallows humor, that sardonic shield against pain. Without pausing, he admits he uses it every day. “Humor is… what else do we have? It’s the thing that feels the best when everything else feels like shit. And it doesn’t cost anything.” Though, as is the case with most everything in his world, it’s not just what you see on the surface. The jester can be king. “It’s a mark of leadership in my opinion. If you can be relaxed enough to see the humor in something under duress, then you are a special person. Somebody who has the presence of mind to take care of others through humor in hard times is a good person.”

And hard times are finding their way into our entertainment, reflecting themselves into our popcorn. In Battle: Los Angeles, a 1942-inspired Sci-Fi invasion film, the “others” aren’t just aliens. “It’s a manifestation of everyone’s inner fears.” Playing Marine Staff Sergeant Michael Nantz, it was a world Eckhart loved getting lost in. “The film is a love letter to the Marines. It was filmed with their consent and they were with us the whole time. I have mountains of respect for the armed forces. We did it as accurate as a bunch of dumb actors can do. It’s the only character in my life that I felt sad when I had to leave.” He still carries a little bit of camo-fever. Though his 42 years would let him sneak in the Army, he’s too old for the Marines, even though he’s sure he could “Oorah!” with the best of them. “Of course, nobody was shooting back at me, and I had a nice trailer.”

But fake Hollywood little green men aside, does he really think there’s anybody out there? “I don’t know what the government knows. If you really boil it down, and you really believe in religion, or you believe in God – if you’re willing to believe there’s life after this life, then what aren’t you ready to believe?” Though recent mass bird and fish deaths prompted one entertainment magazine’s blog to suggest that The Core star might have the answer, he laughs and clarifies. “Do I think aliens are going to come down? I think we’re going to kill ourselves before that.” And not environmentally. “I don’t think car exhaust is doing it. It will probably be a nuclear bomb. People have been killing each other since we’ve been on this earth. It’s going to be the thing most unlikely that will afflict the most damage. Or life goes on and nothing happens. I think most of our fears happen in our head and we all just agree to go to work and try to feed our families and not be so worried about each other.”

Though a boot-strapping individualist, he clearly does worry about others, to the extent of not wanting to make it about him. The theme of “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” is absolutely tireless. “I’m not an actor who’s a self promoter in that way. I give to give. I’m not a champion for any cause. Look I’m a surfer, I’m a sportsman, I like things to be clean, I like dogs to be useful, I like kids to have musical instruments… I think that’s what we can all do, is instill our kids and the citizens of the world with a sense of optimism and a sense that they can do anything they want. I think that that’s the greatest lesson. That’s more important than money.”

From his struggling start as an actor in New York City, it’s a lesson of the optimism of poverty he learned well. “New York is hands down the best city in the world. It’s a city that I immediately embraced. I went straight from college to New York City. I was money poor, but I had the greatest time of my life. It’s the most beautiful jungle in the world.”

Eckhart and Soul

January 20, 2011 2011
1 comment

by VANESSA LAWRENCE
Posted MONDAY JANUARY 17, 2011
Last Edited MONDAY JANUARY 17, 2011
From MENSWEAR ISSUE 01/17/2011

Having a conversation with Aaron Eckhart can feel a bit like chatting with a more pensive version of Nick Naylor, the sly, charismatic-to-a-fault Big Tobacco spinmeister he so convincingly channeled in Thank You For Smoking. The sandy-haired, clean-scrubbed actor is thoughtful and polite as he reflects on his career in the penthouse suite of Santa Monica’s Hotel Shangri-La. But a simple discussion about the spate of less-than-likable parts he’s had quickly turns into a twisty meditation on the paradox of human nature.

“A role where somebody wants me to play the bad guy, I probably wouldn’t even read it [today],” he says flatly.

What about the malignant Chad from In the Company of Men? Would he play him now?

“I would….That’s the problem. I never think the bad guys I play are bad guys. Harvey Two-Face”—the acid-scarred villain he portrayed in The Dark Knight—“I don’t think is a bad guy. What they do is bad, but I look at them as having a story, like as the protagonists. So all of my bad guys are good to me. Even Chad. I’m just trying to make them human.”

But didn’t women on the street call him an asshole after he appeared in that role?

“I was in Rome the other day and I saw classic Chad and this girl, and I was having lunch right across from them, and I wanted to go over to that girl and just go, ‘Run.’ She was absolutely in love with this guy, and he was a scumbag through and through,” Eckhart says. “I see [those guys] all the time, guys who are cheating on their wives in the city, going out and getting wasted in strip clubs….As an actor, I don’t judge that kind of stuff. As a person, I might—which I don’t feel is relevant to the public—but as an actor I look at it and use it.”

Isn’t that moral relativism?

“How many times have I been at a wedding where the groom has come up to me and talked about f—ing around right as he’s getting married? Now is that guy a bad guy? Because if you put a camera on him and film that scene, the audience would hate him. He’s a douche, right? But if I put the camera on him at another time and he’s happy, they would love him. In other words, we’re all douches. We’re all heroes.”

In his latest role, in the movie Rabbit Hole, an adaptation of the David Lindsay-Abaire play, Eckhart is neither douche nor hero. As Howie, one part of a seemingly perfect couple dealing with the recent loss of their young son, Eckhart is the responsible, warm, keep-it-together guy in contrast with the withdrawn, mourning specter of his wife, Becca (Nicole Kidman).

“I think it might be the most vulnerable I’ve seen him. It pulls together all of his different skills—the comedy, the drama—yet he’s required to be an open wound at the same time,” says the film’s director, John Cameron Mitchell. “The other things he’s done are, I think, excellent work, but this is one where you actually see the breadth of his talent.”

Eckhart has a more modest take on his performance.

“You just got good words to say in the script and the director tells you what to do and it’s not that hard, you know what I mean?” he says, swirling a glass of orange juice with ice. “I mean, it’s not any great shakes. I think anybody could have done it.”

His co-star would clearly disagree. As a producer of the film, Kidman handpicked Eckhart for the role, even before the director was signed on.

“He’s just so American, which is great….And even though he’s not married, he has this kind of center like he’s a married man,” says Kidman. “He has an almost morality about him and a sense of justice and fairness, and I thought that was important for Howie.”

Those qualities have certainly become more important to Eckhart as he’s gotten older. Children, relationships and marriage are recurring motifs in his conversation, both professional and personal.

“I really like playing, despite my circumstances, family-centric films, because I feel even though I don’t have those, as I get older, I’m more concerned about relationships and teachable kind of films, where you’re dealing with skills that people can use,” says the 42-year-old actor, who admits without hesitation that he’d like to be settled himself.

“I see a good marriage as people who are human beings and qualified to play any role. Everyone wants to be challenged in their relationships; if it’s a one-sided thing, it’s not an appealing romantic relationship,” says Eckhart, who doesn’t believe in the stereotypes of traditional gender roles—the man strong and the woman weak—adding, “It’s probably why I’m not married.”

Eckhart’s penchant for family life is understandable. Born in Cupertino, Calif., the son of a business executive father and writer mother, he was the youngest of three boys. The brood moved to London for dad’s work when Eckhart was 13, and it was there that, at 14, he had his first brush with acting, playing the lead in the school’s Charlie Brown: The Doctor’s In despite being an avid athlete.

“I have absolutely no idea why I went to the audition…[but] from then on I knew I was an actor,” he recalls. “It clicked inside of me. I wasn’t particularly talented at it, but I just loved it.”

Raised a Mormon (“I’m not the poster child for it—it’s one of those situations where it’s in my blood, I grew up that way, I’m not, as they say, practicing”), Eckhart spent a few years after high school on missions in Switzerland and France before attending Brigham Young University, where he befriended his future partner in cinematic crime, Neil LaBute.

“He had a surf rack on top of his Subaru. And whatever he’s driving now, I’m sure it has a surf rack on topof it,” says LaBute, who met the actor when he was Eckhart’s TA. “It was a class in ethics in film and neither one of us had any ethics, so we quickly banded together.”

After college, Eckhart moved to New York, where he worked the typical struggling-actor scenario until LaBute cast him in his first film, 1997’s In the Company of Men, as the plotting Chad who convinces a co-worker to join him in a revenge pact that involves romantically leading on a deaf woman.

“He could handle the language, he understood what I wanted to do thematically, but he was [also] just this kind of brilliantly bright and handsome person who I could put out there saying these kinds of bad things,” says LaBute.

The pair have continued to collaborate on no fewer than four projects—among them Nurse Betty and Your Friends & Neighbors—as Eckhart has amassed a diverse body of work that includes romantic comedy (No Reservations), action (The Core), satire (Thank You for Smoking) and drama (Erin Brockovich). This March he’ll star in the blockbuster Battle: Los Angeles, and he also has an upcoming part, opposite Johnny Depp, as a seedy businessman in The Rum Diary.

Perhaps as a product of such a polyglot lineup, the tagline of “It” boy status has seemed to follow Eckhart over the years without the accompanying jump to “Leading Man.”

“He’s a character actor trapped inside of a really handsome visage,” LaBute says, then immediately corrects himself: “I don’t mean trapped—you know he’s able to be quicksilver. For a while I think he was dealing with ‘You’re the next Robert Redford’ when he really should have been groomed to be ‘the first Aaron Eckhart.’?”

“I’ve been doing this for 12, 13 years professionally, with the best people in the business, and I’m still looking for that thing to…” Eckhart begins.

But then his meditation takes another turn:

“It’s not for movie stardom. The only reason is to then go off and make the films that you want to make.

“Look, I’m done. I’m an old man,” he continues. “It’s for other people now, and I have to go and try to please myself. That’s the trick now.”

Welcome!

March 18, 2010 Uncategorized
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Welcome to the brand new Meet Eckhart Press Archive! To access the interviews and articles, click on the year or find the appropriate movie title in the tag cloud. If there’s an article you can’t find, use the search. Type in “Dude” and it will take you to the Angeleno Magazine July 2008 article titled “Dude Contact”.

If you have anything to contribute to the press archive, please email me here

Interview: Actor Aaron Eckhart

March 17, 2010 2009
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Published Date: 04 October 2009
By JAMES MOTTRAM
Scotland on Sunday

AARON Eckhart came to a realisation recently. “I like characters that move forward in a movie,” he says. “That’s where I’m at my best: characters that are like a shark. They’re not looking behind them. They have to move to live.”

While he may be talking in narrative terms here, it’s not hard to think of Eckhart’s range of roles in the same way. From the vicious executive in his breakthrough role in Neil LaBute’s In The Company Of Men, to his tobacco lobbyist in Thank You For Smoking, and even his recent take on Harvey “Two-Face” Dent in the mega-grossing Batman sequel The Dark Knight, they all have a shark-like quality about them.

So you might wonder then what on earth Eckhart is doing in a film with a title like Love Happens. The poster has him embracing co-star Jennifer Aniston, their foreheads touching, looking all doe-eyed.

Does this mean he wants to become a romantic lead? He has already, he argues. “Look at Erin Brockovich or No Reservations… it’s out there. But I don’t have any plans on trying to convince anybody that I’m one way or another.”

The trouble is, neither comparison really works. Erin Brockovich, in which he played the leather-clad biker neighbour to Julia Roberts’ tenacious legal secretary, was not ostensibly a romance. And the less said about the Catherine Zeta-Jones culinary-set cock-up No Reservations the better.

Indeed, Eckhart could even have added Possession, the fourth film he did with college friend LaBute, to this list. An adaptation of AS Byatt’s novel, it saw him and Gwyneth Paltrow play a pair of academics who fall in love as they investigate an affair between two Victorian poets. The shark in Eckhart looked more like a beached whale – totally out of place in this lame love story. Which is strange, for with his sandy blond hair and 6ft-tall physique, the 41-year-old certainly boasts the requisite looks to play the Hollywood leading man. “I’m interested in doing it. I think it’s well within my range,” he counters. “I’m an actor. I love to act. And I’m always looking to stretch myself as an actor.”

At least Love Happens isn’t quite what you’d expect from its title. As Eckhart puts it, “There’s a little bit of depth here. The movie revolves around loss and grief, and is therefore not your standard romantic comedy.”

He plays Dr Burke Ryan, a widower who has turned his grief into something positive, re-launching himself as a successful self-help guru with the hit book A-Okay! While on a gig in Seattle, Burke falls for local florist Eloise Chandler (Aniston), but not before he is forced to deal with the crippling emotional baggage left over from the loss of his spouse.

Admittedly, the Eckhart of old might well have played Burke as another shark-like figure. “I was very interested in not portraying this guy as a car salesman,” he explains. “And that’s how he was originally portrayed. They wanted him to be a little bit more slick, slimy and duplicitous. I felt like we’d seen that. People get into self-help probably for the right reasons the majority of the time. There’s always going to be 10 per cent who don’t. But I think it’s more interesting if the guy is emotionally conflicted. He’s challenged by his emotions and is not out for the materialism at all. And he hates himself for it. I thought that was more interesting.”

As part of his preparation, Eckhart attended real-life grief-therapy sessions, which he admits were “very hard to watch”. He also met a variety of motivational speakers. “The tricky part about those guys is the power. It’s like rock stars, y’know? They really are influential. People put their lives in their hands. In America, we have the televangelists. I don’t know any of those, but you have to hope that they genuinely want to help people. But I think we tend to look at the ones who take advantage, who are wholly false. That’s where I think the (bad] rap comes from.”

So does he read self-help books himself? He nods. “I’m always looking at self-improvement! I have a terrible personality and I’m a total loser, so they help me a lot!”

It’s this George Clooney-like insouciance that is Eckhart’s way of modestly handling all the attention he regularly gets. He’s much the same with his love life. Formerly engaged to actress Emily Cline, who he met during the filming of In The Company Of Men, he has since dated country music group SHeDAISY’s Kristyn Osborn, but is very cagey when it comes to talking about the prospect of settling down. Inevitably, this leads to gossip. When shooting Love Happens, “there were rumours going around” about him and Aniston, something she seems to get on every film set, he says. “When you know it goes with the territory, the upside of that is that people are more likely to go see her films.”

Despite coming on as a laid-back West Coast lad, the Californian-born Eckhart spent his “formative years” in England. His father is a computer executive, whose work brought him to the UK. Arriving in 1981, Eckhart and his two older brothers, James and Adam, were shipped out to sleepy Surrey, where he spent four years living in Walton-on-Thames, attending the American Community School. “Oh my God – I thought I was going to Mars, if Mars was a prison!” he laughs. “That’s a 13-year-old’s view of going anywhere but California. I was being raised in the surf culture and in girls and the beach, and then to be taken away from that. In the beginning it was torturous, because I thought I was being taken away from the centre of the universe.”

What it did foster was a love for travel. Having been raised as a Mormon in his youth, in his late teens he spent two years in France and Switzerland on a “mission”. After a sojourn to Australia and Hawaii, where he spent his time surfing, he wound up at Brigham Young University in Mormon capital Utah, even appearing in the Mormon-themed film Godly Sorrow. Eckhart has previously admitted that he doesn’t know if he’s a Mormon any more; still, it would be interesting to discover what his fellow Mormons thought of his next film, an adaptation of the notorious gonzo journalist Hunter S Thompson’s The Rum Diary.

Co-starring Johnny Depp, it’s being directed by the creator of the legendary cult film Withnail And I, Bruce Robinson, his first directorial outing in 17 years. The mind boggles at the thought of just how booze-fuelled the shoot must have been. “There were some interesting goings-on,” says Eckhart, evasively. And how was Robinson? “He himself is as interesting as his movies. He’s a cross between Richard E Grant and Mick Jagger. Bruce has this worldly rock’n'roll quality. And he’s totally invested in his movies. I think he did a great job on The Rum Diary. He and Johnny are really on the same page. I could see that Johnny really admires Bruce.”

Eckhart also stars in Rabbit Hole, another grief-stricken domestic drama in which he and Nicole Kidman play parents who have lost their child. “The thing about Rabbit Hole is that it doesn’t pretend to be anything but what it is – it’s basically just a gut-wrenching movie,” he says. By contrast, he’s just finishing off Battle: Los Angeles, in which he plays a marine helping to combat an alien invasion. “When the opportunity to do the movie was brought to me, I said, ‘I don’t want to do an alien movie. I want to do a war movie. And I want the war movie to be authentic. I don’t care who the foe is in it.’”

It’s not the first time he’s starred in a big summer movie. The Dark Knight aside, he’s also been in less successful efforts like The Core and Paycheck. “Not everything clicked on those movies and they weren’t as fascinating as they could have been,” he admits. Since The Dark Knight became the second biggest film of all time, however, he’s welcomed “the teenage demographic” into his life. “This business is just that – a business,” he says. “And movies are really geared towards that demographic, and you need that to really move along and get to do the movies you want to do.” Maybe there’s some of that shark in Aaron Eckhart after all. v

Aaron Eckhart Talks ‘Unconventional’ Romance Movie ‘Love Happens’

March 17, 2010 2009
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‘Love surprises you,’ the actor says of the plot of his new film.

By Larry Carroll
MTV.com
September 16, 2009

BEVERLY HILLS, California — Has there ever been an actor quite like Aaron Eckhart? The guy rose to fame playing one of the greatest jerks in cinematic history for “In the Company of Men” and returned to that territory again for 2005′s “Thank You for Smoking,” but spent the near-decade in between establishing himself as one of Hollywood’s most amicable personalities.

Now, after all these years of surprise successes (“Erin Brockovich”) and poorly conceived failures (“The Core,” “Paycheck,” “The Black Dahlia”), he utilized his unusual duality to great effect playing Harvey “Two-Face” Dent in “The Dark Knight” and has never been hotter. It only makes sense that once again he’d throw us all for a loop with “Love Happens,” a Jennifer Aniston romantic film that is far darker than you’d expect.

Cast as grief-stricken motivational speaker Burke Ryan, Eckhart spends much of the film hating life and longing for Aniston. When we caught up with him recently, he said that although his master plan is working for him, he doesn’t plan to go all Tony Robbins anytime soon.

MTV: Aaron, “Love Happens” is coming to theaters this weekend. In your opinion, what does that title mean?

Aaron Eckhart: You know, that whole thing when you’re looking for love and somebody says, “Don’t go looking for it. It just happens.” It’s that sort of thing. It comes at an unexpected time; love surprises you.

MTV: I ask mainly because most romantic movies have two people looking for love. In this one, neither person is — especially your character.

Eckhart: Yes, it is unconventional in that I play a self-help guru, a grief counselor. My wife has died three or four years before, and I help others heal from their loss — yet I haven’t come to grips with my wife’s death. Then I meet Jennifer’s character, Eloise, and she helps me do that.

MTV: Your character in this is a motivational speaker. Did you enjoy channeling your inner Tony Robbins?

Eckhart: Yes, I did very much. I can see how Tony Robbins would feel very empowered by what he does and that he’s affecting people. Because that energy coming from the people who are listening is intense, and their desire to believe and to want to believe to change their lives, it really empowers the speaker. I loved being up there.

MTV: Would you ever want to do that sort of thing in real life?

Eckhart: I don’t know if it’s for me — it’s a little bit too much responsibility for me. I feel like if you’re a politician, or if you’re somebody who’s helping healing people, you really have to be beyond reproach yourself. And I think that’s hard these days. You really have to watch yourself; it’s such a hard life — and if you’re a religious leader or something like that, you have to walk the walk. And I don’t think I’m ready to do that.

MTV: There’s a scene in the movie where you do walk across hot coals. Did you really do that?

Eckhart: No, that is the light-and-magic show of the movies.

MTV: Would you ever do it?

Eckhart: I have never. However, I will say that I would like to, and I’m not afraid to. If I went through the whole process, the psyching-up process, I think it’d be cool. I like rituals where you have to go to an unconscious state and get out of your head.

MTV: By our unofficial count, Jennifer Aniston has fallen in love on screen 20-25 times now. And that’s not even counting “Friends.”

Eckhart: [Laughs.] How many movies has she made?

MTV: Pretty much the same number. But there’s a small percentage of stars who people would pay $10 to watch them fall in love again and again and again. Why do people love watching Jennifer fall in love so much?

Eckhart: Because she loves it — that’s the answer. She’s such a lovely person inside, she’s so sweet, and she’s got this face and unique personality. People find joy in her finding joy.

Aaron Eckhart Talks About ‘Love Happens’

March 17, 2010 2009
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By Rebecca Murray, About.com

Aaron Eckhart (The Dark Knight, Thank You for Smoking) stars as a self-help guru who doesn’t practice what he preaches in the romantic drama Love Happens from Universal Pictures. Eckhart plays Dr. Burke Ryan, a widowed therapist who helps his followers deal with grief and move on with their lives, something he himself has failed to do.

Being the keynote speaker at seminars across the country means he’s always on the go, never allowing himself to become involved in anyone else’s life. But that changes when he meets a pretty florist in Seattle (played by Jennifer Aniston) who he has obvious chemistry with.

Eckhart said he read the script and knew it would be a challenge to play everything in the movie. “You know, you dealt with grief, the death of a wife, the inability to lead a life, an honest life afterwards. The inability to love again and then to love again, and I mean it had so many fun things as an actor to play that attracted me. I thought it was well written. I figured I hadn’t done something like this before, and then Jen was in the movie and I thought it was a challenge for me as an actor,” said Eckhart at the film’s LA press day.

The central issue of dealing with grief is one that Eckhart researched before tackling the starring role. “I hope that it will resonate with people who have had these issues, that are dealing with grief, who can find some sort of, not that this movie is…it’s certainly not a self-help movie or anything like that…but it does give an outlet to people who are grieving,” offered Eckhart when asked what he hopes audiences take away from Love Happens. “And if there’s anything that comes from this movie, besides just pure entertainment value, I think that that would be a thing that I would want to have resonate that way.”

“You know, studying grief and all that sort of stuff and talking to people who have been through that, it’s just so heartbreaking and heart-wrenching, and it’s really a lifelong thing. It doesn’t stop and there’s no timetable, and it reoccurs [at] birthdays and holidays. It’s just I’ve never dealt with it myself so I count myself lucky, but I’m sure people in this room have. And so I felt like I wanted to honor them as much as I could in the movie, and I think the script does because [writer/director Brandon Camp's] mom had died and he was very close to that.”

Since he’s not open and honest about his own grieving process and its root cause, you could consider Dr. Ryan to be a bit of a fraud. But he does help people, so he’s not completely selling a batch of BS to his audiences. “It’s an interesting question about religious gurus and Sunday nights, Sunday morning religious guys selling it. Is everything they do – even if they’re self-serving – are they still helping people? I do believe that they are, and I believe people gain solace from them and comfort and get strength from them, and I think Burke is helping people,” explained Eckhart. “I mean, you can tell by the energy in the crowd. You can tell by the respect and admiration they give him, by how they come up to him afterwards – that’s evident. Now, I think that it makes for good drama that he be kind of a slick guy who’s trying to brand himself in the media and make a good living off this and everything. But the thing I really liked about the movie was that I was conscious of not making him too Thank You for Smoking. I wanted him to have a heart. Even when he was manipulating or he was slick, I wanted him to have a heart and know in his mind that he was going too far or this wasn’t really who he was, that he was somehow contradicting his true nature.”

That introspection and the character’s good heart were aspects of his character Eckhart developed with writer/director Camp after he was offered the role. “I think it was more slanted, especially as the development process went on, that they wanted to make this guy an out and out, you know, just a car salesman. And it was very important that he not be a car salesman, that he shows a flicker of remorse or, not remorse – that’s not the word – a flicker of consciousness of what he was doing. He was aware that he hadn’t come to closure with his wife’s death and that he was sort of living a lie. And I think because of that he was more, I think the audience is more able to believe it, he could fall in love and that he could repair himself,” said Eckhart.

Working with Jennifer Aniston and a Feathered Co-Star
Asked about working with Jennifer Aniston, Eckhart replied, “Well, Jen’s such a better actor than I am. She’s so effortless all the time. I really get jealous of people like Jen because they seem just to do it. You know what I mean? And her timing and how playful she is, and yet can turn on a dime and just be so thoughtful. I don’t know. I guess my process might be a little bit more laborious than hers. I don’t know her process, but she seemed to have it at her fingertips at all times.”

And nearly every male who stars opposite Jennifer Aniston gets linked to her romantically in the press, even when there’s not one iota of truth to the hook up. Eckhart is one of the few actors who didn’t get that treatment in the media while working opposite Aniston on Love Happens. Commenting on that, Eckhart said, “I’ve never had an on-set relationship. I’m not interested in it. It’s not something that attracts me at all. I mean, I feel like I’m there to work and we work so much. It’s funny. You’re always being asked to fall in love with beautiful women who are talented. And I just worked with Nicole Kidman and I just worked with, this year, just did my last movie with her and now I’m working with Bridget Moynahan. You know, it doesn’t attract me. I don’t know why. I find it to be so much more fun being friends because then you don’t introduce that whole other thing, that responsibility of being in love with the person or feel what they’re thinking. I mean, filmmaking is hard enough without having to worry about your co-star. Unless, you know, I mean I don’t know how they do it, actually. People seem to fall in and out of relationships so easily. I just don’t do that.”

And speaking of worrying about your co-star, Aaron Eckhart had to deal with a 20 year old white-feathered, yellow-crested parrot in Love Happens. “That cockatoo is no ordinary cockatoo, as you could see in the last scene,” said Eckhart, laughing. “He literally did exactly what he was supposed to do. Now in my scenes we had a little bit more trouble, that damn cockatoo, he was so funny and his wranglers were… What you don’t see on the other side, it’s funny about movies and I don’t know if this will be on the DVD or not, here we are by this river and I’m sitting there on my hands and knees talking to a cockatoo. There’s a camera there and a whole bunch of people, then there’s wranglers on either side of me yelling at the cockatoo while I’m trying to do the scene. And I’m like trying to concentrate and say my words and they’re going, you know, ‘Whah, whah.’ You know, jumping all over the place, and it was a nightmare. But I felt like I had some good moments with him. I felt like we really were communicating.”

“He was a giving actor. He stayed right off camera,” joked Eckhart. “You know, he didn’t come into my trailer, but that’s okay. He actually did some very, very, very funny things. I think a lot of that was improv’d. I just started, I’d be like, ‘Wow, what are you doing to me?,’ all that sort of stuff that probably didn’t make the movie. But it was funny.”

Looking Into the Future
Every time Eckhart meets with the press he’s asked if there’s any way Harvey Dent will return from the dead in a future Batman movie, and the Love Happens press day was no exception to that rule. “Well, I suppose there’s always the chance. I don’t know anything. Chris [Nolan] hasn’t called me, so I’m going to seek other representation until further notice,” said Eckhart.

But definitely in the works is the sci-fi action thriller Battle: Los Angeles. Immediately after finishing up his press rounds for Love Happens Eckhart was off to start work on Battle: Los Angeles. “It’s going to be outrageous,” said Eckhart. “This movie’s going to be so great. I go out on a limb in saying that, but this movie is. We’ve trained hard for it. I’m coming dead right off boot camp into it. I’m going to start tomorrow. The director, Jonathan Liebesman, is great. We’ve got a great shooter and he’s going to do it like Black Hawk Down meets Alien, so it’s going to be real Marine stuff. We have been in boot camp for three weeks. We know our stuff and he’s going to film it in a very documentary style. So it’s going to be no ordinary aliens movie, I guarantee you that.”

Aaron Eckhart Ready For The ‘Intense Action’ Of ‘Battle: Los Angeles’

March 17, 2010 2009
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Posted 9/10/09 1:00 pm ET by Larry Carroll
MTV.com

Happy “Battle: Los Angeles” week, folks! We’ve been eagerly tracking this so-out-there-it’s-gotta-be-awesome project for awhile around these parts, and with Ne-Yo joining the cast it’s gotten even more interesting. Aliens, scandal-plagued rappers, Harvey Dent kicking ass -– as cameras begin rolling on the February 2011 flick, what more do you need?

One of the more interesting aspects of the film emerged earlier this year, when we interviewed filmmaker Jonathan Liebesman, who oversaw “Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning” and this year’s impressive Sundance thriller “The Killing Room.” At the time, the only actor who had come on board the aliens-invade-Los Angeles film was Aaron Eckhart, and Liebesman said that the star was planning to channel Dirty Harry.

“He’s like a Clint Eastwood-esque leader of the platoon,” Liebesman said of the “Dark Knight” actor’s first true action hero role.

But on Tuesday, we caught up with Eckhart himself as he promoted his September 18th romantic film “Love Happens” – and he was quick to distance himself from any Eastwood link. “Let’s see… well… I don’t know about…,” the actor sputtered when we told him of his director’s comparison. “Uh, you know Clint Eastwood is Clint Eastwood. Nobody can do what he can do. But I’ll just try to do what Jonathan wants me to do.”

At least the duo have the same mindset in terms of what they’re hoping to make the movie like. “Jonathan’s gonna make it real, like a ‘Black Hawk Down’ sort of feel. Very real; we just got through boot camp,” Eckhart said of his training. “We start tomorrow.”

“It’s gonna be an intense, action killer movie,” he said excitedly of the film, which is currently shooting in the area of Shreveport, Louisiana. “It’s about a squad of Marines that goes and takes on aliens. It’s gonna be a kick-butt movie.”

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