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Posted on 11.12.2007 in Interviews and Rogue |He is best known for playing a cool, composed CIA agent, but Hollywood star Michael Vartan was anything but calm when shooting his new film in the Outback.
The actor was the only foreigner in the cast of crocodile thriller Rogue, the follow-up to director Greg McLean’s 2005 debut Wolf Creek.
Vartan, who found fame playing agent Michael Vaughn on hit television series Alias, says the month-long shoot in the Northern Territory was the most physically challenging thing he has ever experienced.
“I’ve been in hot places, but Darwin is a tropical heat that makes you want to put a bullet in your head,” he says with a smile. “Especially the first few weeks where we were shooting all the landscape shots and not really doing anything.
“Two days into shooting, I was sitting in this polyester suit on the front of a boat in 52C heat and I realised that I hadn’t gone to the bathroom to pee yet — literally. I know that sounds impossible, but I hadn’t.”
Vartan plays a travel writer who embarks on a river cruise that turns into a battle for survival when a rogue crocodile attacks.
Filming in Kakadu was a revelation.
“There were man-eating crocs everywhere,” Vartan says, eyes wide. “It all added to the sense of fish out of water. Our little boat got stuck once, so (co-stars) John Jarrett and Robert Taylor were on each side with an oar to try and move us and I had an umbrella at the ready to stab a croc if it tried to . . . well actually, what the hell’s an umbrella going to do against a 15-foot man-eating croc?”
The French-born actor says his peripatetic upbringing — spent shuttling between his mother in California and father in France — had helped him adapt to life as an actor.
Vartan’s life changed dramatically when he was forced to settle in the Normandy village of Fleury for high school when he was 11.
“It was quite an adjustment. I went from school in a sports crazy nation with cheerleaders and then overnight — boom! — a village in northern France: Catholic school from 8 to 6, it rains everyday, no sports, no cheerleaders,” the 38-year-old says, with a rueful laugh.
“I was flunked back two classes because the US education system is so horrible compared to the French and all of a sudden I’m this 11-year-old kid who’s two heads taller than everyone else, with beach-blond hair, completely tanned, with all these French boys looking at me like an alien.”
When he turned 18 in 1987, Vartan moved to LA and — while he was nominated for a French Cesar for his acclaimed work in European film — he struggled to launch a career in Hollywood.
His big break came when Drew Barrymore rallied to have him cast opposite her in 1999’s Never Been Kissed.
Vartan says he owes the actor a debt of gratitude.
“This business is a very tough — 99 per cent of your life is rejection,” he says.
“It’s a very odd way to make a living and, back then, I didn’t have much confidence in my abilities and to have her, who was such an icon, say `No, I want you’ was wonderful.
“I probably would not be talking to you today if it had not been for her.”
Source: Herald Sun
Commented on September 10, 2008
i love the horror you have put into rogue film. its awesome. please reply :)but i what to now do you and captin Katie Ryan (Rhada Mitchell) get together after saving her life please contact me
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Commented on September 10, 2008
i love the horror you have put into rogue film. its awesome. please reply