Since Twilight, you look like you have definitely slimmed down a bit, a little less bulky.
Taylor Lautner: A little bit, right?
Is it nice not to have to keep up the whole regimen of working out and eating so much?
Taylor Lautner: It is, it’s just a different kind of working out now. Now I get to stay more active and play more sports, which is a treat for me, I can pretty much eat what I want – which is not necessarily junk because I’ve always eaten pretty healthy. I just don’t have to force myself to eat when I’m not hungry now. I don’t have somebody coming and shoving food down my throat every five minutes (laughs). It’s great!
What specifically drew you to this script and character in the first place?
Taylor Lautner: In the first place, it was this character, Nathan’s journey. Just hearing the idea of the script and where the character starts and where he ends, and everything he deals with, I knew it would be exciting and challenging for me, as an actor. Originally that’s what attracted me to it. I read the script like a book, I could not stop turning the pages, I loved the character, everything he goes through in the story. Nathan changes a lot, overall it was a challenging role for me, and that’s what I wanted to do next. It was physically challenging and also emotionally challenging.
Nathan is a normal High School kid, he has fun with his friends, parties, argues with his parents, girl problems – all that normal teenage stuff. And then he’s thrown into a situation that turns his whole life upside down, he has to adjust to that and turns into a completely different person by the end of the movie.
Was getting to do some Parkour fun?
Taylor Lautner: It was, definitely. It wasn’t actually in the script, that was actually true for the Parkour and also with the glass pane that I slide down – neither of those were in the script. But, when we went to the baseball stadium and looked at it, we were like, ‘Oh, we’ve got to figure out a way to incorporate this giant glass jumbo slide into it somehow.’ And that’s the same with the Parkour. We just came up with an idea where the bad guy literally knocks people over, running in a straight line, and then Nathan is just all polite and does Parkour around the stadium, to not run into people.
What was it like to work with Lily Collins?
Taylor Lautner: She was great! She was awesome. Lily is super-talented, I’m so excited for people to see her in this movie. Now she’s taken off and going off and doing other things. It was just a matter of time before she was discovered. We had a lot of fun on this movie.
Taylor Lautner: Yeah, she’s with me, besides the stadium for the most part, she’s with me the entire time. Pretty much everything I’m doing, she’s doing. She was a tough cookie. She enjoyed it though. We had fun doing stunts. She was actually just as bad as me, she wanted to do everything as well, and I was like the insurance going, ‘I don’t know if you should do that,’ (laughs).
How was it working alongside the likes of Jason Isaacs and Sigourney Weaver? You‘re surrounding by some amazing actors in this film.
Taylor Lautner: Jason Isaacs is one of the funniest guys I’ve ever met. The relationship in the film is really intense, he’s really stern with Nathan. But before cameras role we were joking around, and as soon as cameras role we’ve got to go into this mode. We spent a lot of time choreographing that fight scene, that was pretty cool.
With Sigourney Weaver, when I heard she was going to be playing this role I was like, ’no way!’ (Laughs) I couldn’t believe I was having the opportunity to work with Sigourney Weaver. We filmed for a week together, it was so much fun. She is so gracious, such an awesome woman to work with. I learned a lot from her, I’m just honoured to say I worked with her.
I heard much of the scene during the Baseball game was shot during an actual game?
Taylor Lautner: We did film one day during an actual game, the Pirates played the Mets. The stadium was sold out, it was awesome – it was hectic because we only had three hours to shoot everything, so that was pretty tough. Actually it was the shortest baseball game I’ve ever been to (laughs), it lasted two hours and eighteen minutes, so we ran out of time, it was a lot of fun, we got some great shots in. After that we had four days where we had the stadium to ourselves.
Where do you see yourself two years from now, after all of the Twilight movies are done? What direction do you want to go in?
Taylor Lautner: That’s a good question. If you had asked me that question two years ago, I would not have guessed that I would be sitting here today. My goal is to continue to challenge myself to do a wide variety of roles and genres. Another thing that attracted me to this was that it was different than anything I had ever done before, and I had a great experience with it. I love it, but now I am definitely looking forward to doing something completely different.
Do you feel like you need to take a break at all, or do you feel like you should keep the momentum going by just diving right into something else?
Taylor Lautner: It’s a good question. I’m having fun right now. I’m promoting and I’m travelling, which I really enjoy. I love travelling, so I’m definitely good to still go. But, I definitely find time to relax, and I definitely find my downtime.
Were you a fan of John Singleton before you got involved in this? Had you seen a lot of his movies?
Taylor Lautner: Yes, I was definitely familiar with his work and knew he was very talented. We had a fun time together. I think the biggest thing he brought was just passion. That’s the biggest thing that everybody brought to this movie – the entire cast, the crew and him. We were all so passionate about this movie that we gave it our all. I think that’s the biggest thing everybody brought to it. He’s one of the most passionate people I’ve ever met. He taught me a lot – which is all I can ask for. He’s great with the action, but even more importantly, he pulls emotion out of every single character.
Was it fun to get to use your martial arts training? How different is movie martial arts from real martial arts?
Taylor Lautner: It was very exciting that I got to use it for the first time in a movie. It is different because it’s all choreographed, but it was definitely exciting. What was also exciting was being able to learn new things, like boxing, the motorcycle riding and wrestling. Those were all very new for me. I had to do about three months of training in all of those aspects before filming, which was a lot of fun. I wanted to make sure that when I showed up to Pittsburgh to film, I actually looked like I knew what I was doing.
Which training did you like most?
Taylor Lautner: I really enjoyed the boxing, it was a great workout. It’s very different than martial arts, so I had to drop everything I knew and start brand new and fresh, which was exciting for me. It’ so looseand flowey, martial arts is more stiff and mire about strength and structure. It’s such a great workout because my sessions were an hour and fifteen minutes to an hour and a half, but by the end of it, you barely even realize you worked out that hard and you are just dripping wet.
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