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

‘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.

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.”

Outside Magazine
August 2009

(Big thanks to Christian for typing this up)

When you’re as well traveled as Aaron Eckhart, picking a favorite town isn’t easy.

Like a lot of Hollywood stars, Aaron Eckhart’s been around. No, not that way. We mean he’s worked and lived, well, just about everywhere. “I’ve shot films in Santa Fe, Albuquerque, New York, Los Angeles, Vancouver, Seattle…”he says, then lists half a dozen more locations. “And I’ve lived in California, Utah, England, Australia, France and Switzerland.” Wherever he is, he makes time to ski, surf, fish, and hike, all of which more than qualifies him as this year’s guest expert for our annual Best Towns feature. Just don’t ask him to pick his favorite spot. We tried, and he settled on 11. -SAM MOULTON

There are two places I want to be. One is Montana. My whole family’s from Montana, and I’m building a cabin outside of Big Timber as we speak. Or I’d like to move to Paris. My formative years were in Europe, and I miss it.

I miss the slow, kind of languid lifestyle in the South of France, especially in Aix-en-Provence. I lived there for four months, and it’s my favorite place in France.

I also have a love affair with Switzerland and would love to have a place there to ski. The problem with the movie business, like the sports business, is that you can’t afford to hurt yourself, so I don’t snowboard as much as I used to.

I went to college at Brigham Young, in Salt Lake City, and skied a lot, mostly at Snowbird.

I think St. George, Utah, is a cool little town.

While I was a student at BYU, I lived for two semesters on the western shore of Oahu. I owned a 1972 Plymouth Valiant that we bought for $125. It was infested with cockroaches and geckos – it was its own little ecosystem. I surfed every day. It was the perfect life.

I have a place in Santa Barbara now, too. It’s a dilapidated old barn, really, but it’s close to some very good surf. One of my brothers lives in L.A., and whenever I’m in town we surf there as much as we can.

What other towns do I dig? Well, I was just in Seattle for the first time. The air of adventure there is impressive.

If I could live in any town right now, it might be Mendocino, California. I went on a road trip there last year and just fell in love with the northern coast. It’s so beautiful, and there’s surf, horses, bikes, everything.

But if I’m going to put in my vote for best town, I’m going to say Bozeman. I’m going to stick with that. It always makes me feel at home, and the outdoor potential is absolutely incredible. It’s also a college town and a farming community with a rich history. It’s a gateway to Yellowstone…I can understand being in a big city when you’re younger, but there’s something special about being in a smaller place, where people take it a little bit slower. The older I get, the more I’m thinking about making a permanent move to Montana. It’s in my blood. We’ll see. I might go there and hate it, but I don’t think I will.

AARON EKCHART’S NEWEST FILM, LOVE HAPPENS, IS DUE OUT THIS SEPTEMBER.
_____________________

Turns out actor Aaron Eckhart wasn’t always the Adonis he is today: He rocked a perm – for three yeara! – while moonlighting as a surf bum in Hawaii. “I’d get out of the water and have this cowlick, so I got a tight perm,” he says. “I wouldn’t have to comb it or do anything. And I’m not even ashamed of it. When the curl relaxes, you look cool. It becomes wavy.” Sure it does, Aaron. Sure it does.

Cosmopolitan
April 2009
By Molly Fahner

This past year, Aaron Eckhart, 40, starred as a good-guy-turned-villain in The Dark Knight, which was one of the biggest box-office hits of all time. As if that wasn’t enough, he also took on parts playing a sexual predator (in Towelhead) and an unhappily married guy looking for his piece of bliss (in Meet Bill). Next up is his portrayal of a self-help guru in Traveling. Seems there’s not a role this versatile actor isn’t game to take on.

You’ve played everything from a villain to a romantic lead. Is the diversity what appeals to you?
It’s a lot of fun to work with really great minds, and usually, great minds are either perverted or twisted in some way. It’s interesting to find the humanity in a bad guy and find the opposite in a good guy.

You’re 40 now. Do you feel settled?
No. I just had dinner with my two older brothers, and none of us are married. I come from a fiercely independent family, and I’m as hungry as ever to prove myself.

Are you a classic commitmentphobe?
I have serious commitment problems, and women just don’t seem to be into that. [Laughs] I’m a hot flame, and then I just get bored.

Do you believe in marriage?
I like the idea of building a life together from the ground up — finding a house and decorating it and having dogs and kids…It just hasn’t happened for me.

What do you do when you’re not working?
I’m an avid photographer — everything from street photography to fashion.