Deseret News (Salt Lake City)
March 29, 2003
Anthony Breznican AP entertainment writer

LOS ANGELES — First noticed for his turn as a misogynist in 1997′s “In the Company of Men,” Aaron Eckhart is trying to place himself in the company of leading men.

“I feel like I want to do more heroic roles,” said Eckhart, who has also played Julia Roberts’ dubious biker boyfriend in “Erin Brockovich” and Renee Zellweger’s sleazy husband in “Nurse Betty.”

“I haven’t been able to go to most of my movies with my family,” added the 35-year-old actor, who’s single. “I wouldn’t go to my movies with my mom and dad. . . . They like it when I play good guys.”

Eckhart stars as a clean-cut hero who journeys to the center of the Earth in the doomsday saga “The Core.” Despite the actor’s history of unsavory characters, “The Core” director Jon Amiel said he has always “seen a leading man lurking” in Eckhart, whose square- jawed face is topped by disheveled blond hair.

“He’s wonderfully good-looking, but not impossibly good-looking,” Amiel said. “He has a sort of craggy realness to his face — more Harrison Ford than Tom Cruise.”

Raised in northern California, Eckhart moved with his parents and two older brothers to England at age 13, and later lived in Australia, Hawaii, France and Switzerland. His interest in acting developed in high school.

Eckhart’s career breakthrough in “In the Company of Men” resulted from a friendship forged in the early 1990s with writer-director Neil LaBute when the two attended Brigham Young University in Provo.

LaBute’s theater productions, often dealing with sexual insecurities, psychological cruelty and everyday immoral savagery, shocked the Mormon campus — and Eckhart was often the star.

“It’s a very conservative school. They’re doing relatively mainstream theater and don’t have an appetite for the other stuff,” he said. “We just developed a relationship working really hard on our plays, and we would do them one time because the school would shut the theater down. It was very controversial.”

He becomes annoyed when asked how his Mormon faith influences his work, saying he shouldn’t be “the poster child” for the church.

“It’s a great moral culture. It has a lot of character. It’s family-oriented. It stands for hard work. It stands for believing in something. . . . Whether or not I personally can abide by it 24 hours a day, seven days a week — that’s my own problem. People are titillated by that sort of stuff.”

Eckhart was a struggling actor in New York, subsisting on a handful of tiny movie roles and TV commercials, when LaBute asked him to star in “In the Company of Men,” about an office worker who conspires with a colleague to emotionally destroy a deaf woman for sport.

That first film for both went on to win the Filmmakers Trophy at the 1997 Sundance Film Festival.

“My entire life changed, going from absolutely having nothing . . . to getting opportunities to do great work,” Eckhart said.

“Not big movies, but leads,” he emphasized.

Suddenly, the actor found himself with stage fright. “I didn’t feel like I could do it on my own,” he said, choosing to stay close to LaBute “to slowly bring myself into this world” and learn more about the craft.

The pair made three more films together, starting with Eckhart playing a narcissist whose love for himself cripples his marriage in the 1998 psychodrama “Your Friends and Neighbors.”

His first likable starring role in 1999′s “Molly” resulted in a critical and commercial flop: with Elisabeth Shue playing a dreamy autistic woman and Eckhart as her supportive brother.

He resumed making inroads to mainstream Hollywood with supporting roles in “Erin Brockovich,” the football drama “Any Given Sunday” and the Jack Nicholson murder mystery “The Pledge,” working with directors Steven Soderbergh, Oliver Stone and Sean Penn, respectively.

The 2000 comedy “Nurse Betty,” about a woman who becomes infatuated with a soap-opera character after witnessing a killing, strayed from the audacious cynicism of Eckhart and LaBute’s previous films — although Eckhart again played a slime ball.

LaBute gave him the chance to play a romantic character alongside Gwyneth Paltrow in last year’s “Possession,” adapted from the A.S. Byatt novel about two contemporary scholars investigating an apparent love affair between two Victorian poets.

In the book, Eckhart’s character was a stuffy, dowdy Englishman, but LaBute converted him to a handsome, charismatic American — which displeased fans of the novel, but benefited Eckhart’s screen image.

After paying his dues in edgy cinema, the actor now says he wants to make a run at stardom in big-budget pictures. (In his next film, the serial-killer thriller “Suspect Zero,” he stars with Ben Kingsley.)

“I sit there and sometimes say, ‘Why not me?’ . . . I can be mediocre just like the next guy,’ ” he said, laughing.

Copyright C 2003 Deseret News Publishing Co.
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.

NEW YORK, Dec. 29, 2003
CBS News

Actor Aaron Eckhart is best known for his critically acclaimed performances in the films “Erin Brockovich”and “In the Company Of Men.” In his latest film, “Paycheck,” he plays a billionaire entrepreneur who promises lucrative compensation to an employee played by Ben Affleck.

In John Woo’s thriller, Jimmy Rethrick (Eckhart) and Michael Jennings (Affleck) were buddies who wanted to save the world through technology, but in the end Rethrick ends up using his best friend, explains Eckhart.

He tells The Early Show co-anchor Hannah Storm, “I create a machine that can see into the future. I fund it and I organize it and then he turns his back on my project, which makes me mad, so I have to try to kill him.”

In real life, Eckhart says the thought of looking into the future scares him. He says, “Luckily, we haven’t gotten there as far as I know, yet. I can’t watch myself on television and would never be able to watch myself in a futuristic machine.”

The reason he feels uncomfortable watching himself on TV is because he likes to be in control, he admits. Referring to his work in “The Pledge” under Sean Penn, Eckhart says, “Sean is great because he’s an actor and he allows you the time to create with him and the crew and he has complete control. Sean is a control freak, too, by the way. We’re all control freaks so I’m not an anomaly. I’m not normal, but I’m not an anomaly. You know, he makes actors comfortable and creates a safe place. John Woo, also.”

But now that he had his share of villain characters, he says he is ready to be the good guy. “This is my last bad guy. Forget about it,”he says. “I want to do a romantic comedy or family dramas.”

About Aaron E. Eckhart

* Born in Cupertino, Calif., on March 12, 1968

* Eckhart spent part of his formative years living in England, and, after dropping out of high school, in Sydney, Australia. Eventually earning his high school equivalency, he enrolled at Brigham Young University (majored in film) where he met future collaborator Neil LaBute.

* After college, moved to New York City. His first taste of success was being a construction worker in an advertisement for Miller beer; reportedly earned $40,000. He also had small roles including a turn as Samson in the 1993 CBS special, “Ancient Secrets of the Bible, Part II.”

* In 1997, first caught moviegoers’ attention in his film debut as the unctuous businessman Chad in college classmate Neil LaBute’s wicked black comedy “In the Company of Men.” And the following year he was in LaBute’s “Your Friends and Neighbors.” Cast as an overweight, impotent and unhappily married man.

* In 1999, he landed a more conventional role, playing the title character’s overprotective brother in “Molly.” And in 2000, he was seen as the pony-tailed biker who eventually wins the heart of Julia Roberts’ “Erin Brockovich.”

* Also in 2000, he reunited with LaBute to be a used-car salesman who neglects his sweet-natured spouse in “Nurse Betty.”

* In 2001, Sean Penn tapped Eckhart to play a young detective partnered with a grizzled veteran on the verge of retirement in “The Pledge.”

* In 2002, he was cast opposite Gwyneth Paltrow as an academic attempting to reconstruct the relationship between two Victorian -era authors in LaBute’s “Possession.”

* The following year, he portrayed a geophysicist who, along with Hilary Swank and Bruce Greenwood, set off to detonate a nuclear device and save the world from destruction in the sci-fi thriller feature “The Core.”

* He currently has a small part in Ron Howard’s “The Missing” opposite Tommy Lee Jones and Cate Blanchett, and will star in the upcoming “Suspect Zero” with Ben Kingsley.

Aaron Eckhart talks ‘Paycheck’

By Stephanie Snipes
CNN
Thursday, December 25, 2003 Posted: 1446 GMT (10:46 PM HKT)

(CNN) — Many actors struggle their entire careers to land the lead role in a big budget blockbuster movie, but not Aaron Eckhart. An actor’s actor, Eckhart says he chooses parts based on their dramatic appeal in an attempt to avoid cliche roles that dominate today’s Hollywood movie scene.

Perhaps best known for performances in “Erin Brokovich” and “In the Company of Men,” Eckhart currently stars in “Paycheck” opposite Ben Affleck.

CNN sat down with Eckhart to discuss the film.

CNN: Tell us about your character

ECKHART: I play a guy named Jimmy Rethrick who is an entrepreneurial billionaire, who has the wherewithal to commission Ben Affleck to build me a machine that sees into the future. He does that for me and a condition of that employment is that I get to erase his memory, which I do. So, basically the premise of the movie is Ben Affleck’s character is trying to get this paycheck that is worth a significant amount of money and I’m trying to stop him.

CNN: Do you like playing the bad guy?

ECKHART: I do, it’s not my favorite thing. I like to play characters that are multidimensional, complicated. I like drama. I also like to play the good guy who gets the girl.

CNN: What was it like to do the fight scenes?

ECKHART: Ben and I had a good time. You know fighting has to be carefully done. You don’t want to hit Ben in the face, and I don’t want Ben hitting me in the face, ’cause he’s a big dude.

CNN: What was it like working with [director] John Woo?

ECKHART: John’s great, John’s the captain of his own little ship. Everybody respects him. He keeps a calm cool set. [John] really knows how to use the camera, really likes watching his actors.

CNN: What drew you to this movie?

ECKHART: Well, John, working with John. And I have a relationship with Paramount. I like Ben and Uma [Thurman].

CNN: Is picking your roles a fun process?

ECKHART: When I read a script I get excited, my heart starts beating and before I’ve even gotten 10 or 20 pages into the movie I’m calling my agent saying “OK, when is this movie? … Have I been offered the role?” Then I can get really excited about it. And that happens a lot, I get excited about scripts a lot ’cause I like to play characters. The part that is not so fun is then going and putting all the elements together … the preproduction part, they call it development hell.

CNN: It seems you really enjoy taking a wide variety of roles.

ECKHART: It’s true, I think that when you go back, if anyone ever does this in my lifetime, and looks at my movies they will see, if nothing else, that I try and do different things. I don’t know why I do it, it’s probably held me back in a lot of ways, but that’s the only way I can be interested in my characters. I can’t do the same thing every time. I’m just not capable of it. It holds no interest. I don’t get enthusiastic about watching actors who do that. It’s boring. That’s why my favorite actors are actors who challenge me. That’s not always the best way to get to the top.

CNN: You must hold a lot of pride in those decisions.

ECKHART: I am proud. I’ve only just begun. I really feel like my career is an embryo right now and that I have a long way to go.

CNN: You’ve done a lot of work with Neil LaBute ["In the Company of Men," "Nurse Betty"]. What is it like working with him?

ECKHART: Neil is great … we might do something this year, an original Neil, and not an adaptation or somebody else’s work. I love working with Neil, he and I have a good relationship, an easiness about us.

CNN: Would you ever consider directing?

ECKHART: Yes, I really feel like the more I look at directors the more I want to direct. I see where the directors are deficient, especially in working with actors and really getting good performances. Most directors don’t know what they are doing in terms of actors, and that’s why if directors knew what actors wanted to hear, or how they could push actors, we’d be seeing better performances consistently in the movies today.

CNN: So, character-driven films?

ECKHART: Yeah, I think so. You know, those are the movies I like to make.

CNN: There don’t seem to be many films like that nowadays

ECKHART: No, and when you do see them people say, “Why don’t you make more of those?” The problem is they don’t make a lot of money. And this, as in any business, is driven by money. That’s just the way it is. Ron Howard has been very successful with this, telling a good dramatic story and being able to make money. Steven Soderbergh does it [too].

CNN: If you couldn’t act what would you do?

ECKHART: I would love to be a songwriter. That was my main thing in high school. I wrote a lot of songs in high school, I played guitar. I really wanted that. I fell in love with songwriting and found a lot of romance in that. People say it takes a lot of guts to be an actor, for me it was harder for me to say listen to my songs. Listen to my words. Because, I really wanted to be a lyricist. And, I still do write songs, but I was afraid, I was too afraid.