Peter Sarsgaard Interview For ‘Green Lantern’

In a universe as vast as it is mysterious, a small but powerful force has existed for centuries. Protectors of peace and justice, they are called the Green Lantern Corps. A brotherhood of warriors sworn to keep intergalactic order, each Green Lantern wears a ring that grants him superpowers. But when a new enemy called Parallax threatens to destroy the balance of power in the Universe, their fate and the fate of Earth lie in the hands of their newest recruit, the first human ever selected: Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds). Alongside Reynolds the film stars Blake Lively, Mark Strong, Jon Tenney, Geoffrey Rush, Tim Robbins, Angela Bassett and Michael Clarke Duncan. Check out what Peter Sarsgaard had to say about ‘Green Lantern’ below. In the film Peter Sarsgaard stars as Dr. Hector Hammond, a scientist who discovers the fragments of a strange meteor that causes his brain to grow to enormous size, granting him psionic powers. Look out for ‘Green Lantern’ in cinemas June 17th.

How much did you know about Green Lantern before you started this?

Peter Sarsgaard: None, I knew nothing about it. To be honest I don’t know the world of comics that well. I grew up in a rural area where we just did stuff outside all the time, we pretended we were superheroes, but they weren’t based off actual ones.

Did you dive into the comic books to prepare?

Peter Sarsgaard: Yeah, I wanted to know about it. I went back and read some. There’s a place around the corner from my house in Brooklyn, a comic book shop, the guy who runs it…it’s on Bergen Street in Brooklyn, the guy there set me up, he said you need to know this one, you need to know this one, the defining ones.

You were unrecognisable in this film…

Peter Sarsgaard: Good (laughs).

When you realised what is going to happen to Hector Hammond what was your reaction…

Peter Sarsgaard: I didn’t think about it until the first make-up test. I put it on, I walked outside, people started looking at me, then I immediately started acting a certain way, it’s hard to explain. For example during Halloween, you put something on and it makes you feel completely different, you act differently. It gave me licence to be like somebody a lot different than myself, which is what I think it does to Hector in the movie, he’s given licence to be his more expressive self because of what happens to him.

He’s shunned by his Dad, his friends, society, then he becomes what he becomes, where do you go for the metal transformation of a guy like this?

Peter Sarsgaard: I started in the Mariana Trench, the deepest place of any ocean in the world, they don’t go down there very often I believe (laughs). I really looked at all the images of the little creatures that lived down there, so that’s the beginning, then I imagine he kind of floated up to the top and tried to take over the world.

The thing is I was wearing a head, but then I started behaving differently physically, so much so that for many of the easy stunts I’d ask to do it myself because the guy wouldn’t look right to me. I lost a lot of weight doing it because I thought this is a guy who’s body is disintegrating while his head is going big. I wanted his body to look like it was weak. Then I started talking a certain way, that changed as the head changed because I guess….you resonate different places in your head when you talk, falsetto is in the skull, so I started talking differently depending on what the head was doing. I would think about what the weight of the head would do to your body and your voice.

Working with Ryan Reynolds, why do you think he made such a great Green Lantern?

Peter Sarsgaard: I think because Ryan is very smart, he’s very direct, simple in the way he approaches things, I think that’s what we think of as being noble, as a quality. He’s an incredibly handsome guy who doesn’t just stand there and be handsome. I remember going up to him one day and I said, “I bet when you were in High School”……this might have been Hector Hammond talking (laughs)…..”I bet when you were in High School everyone came up to you and said wow you’re a really handsome guy, how did that feel (laughs).”

You’re a very versatile actor, when you were a young kid was there ever an actor or particular movie that made you decide you wanted to become an actor?

Peter Sarsgaard: I didn’t want to be an actor until College, I always liked the actor Dirk Bogarde, but that was when I was in College and watching those kinds of movies where he would play a funny, duplicitous guy. I always liked John Malkovich, I guess I liked a lot of baddies. I remember in College, right when I first started acting ‘Bad Lieutenant’ came out, I watched that like four times in the theatre, more just because I was amazed that you were allowed to do that in a movie. I never witnessed anything like that. Scorsese’s films, all of them as well (laughs).