Chris Evans Interview For ‘Captain America: The First Avenger’

‘Captain America: The First Avenger’ tells the story of Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), a sickly yet courageous young man from Brooklyn who is transformed into super soldier Captain America to help the war effort. However, Captain America must stop Red Skull, Adolf Hitler’s ruthless head of weaponry and leader of a terrorist organization, who intends to use a mysterious tesseract energy-source for world domination. The Marvel Comics adaptation comes to cinemas July 22nd, 2011 in the US, and July 29th 2011 in the UK. ‘Captain America: The First Avenger’ also stars Hayley Atwell, Sebastian Stan, Hugo Weaving, Tommy Lee Jones, Neal McDonough, Dominic Cooper, Derek Luke and Toby Jones. Check out what Chris Evans had to say about the film below.

Captain America has such a huge appeal, over such a long period of time…

Chris Evans: He’s the guy you’d follow into battle, he’s the guy you would want to lead you. Not because he’s brave or courageous, but because he’s a good man. He’s the guy who would make sure you make it back. I think also there’s the great thing that he was given this gift, he was chosen – a lot of superheroes are either born with their abilities, or they get them by accident. This was a normal guy who lived for the majority of his life as a normal guy – struggling, fighting, always getting the short end of the stick. This kind of good fortune happened to him, I think that is something everyone hopes for.

Steve Rogers has a laundry list of ailments, he has not been dealt the best hand in life. He’s five feet nothing, ninety six pounds, sick, his parents have passed – in spite of all these negative elements in his day to day life, he’s managed to become a good man, he manages to do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do, not for praise or anything else. He chooses not to be jaded or bitter about his shortcomings, he’s a good, honest, noble man. As a result, those characteristics, those morals, those virtues afford him to become Captain America. He’s able to balance this new life he has with his old set of morals.

Was it a challenge to handle the psychological aspects of this character, the scrawny kid who turns into Studley Do Right overnight?

Chris Evans: It was fun. I can definitely relate to being the wimpy kid. If you’ve seen pictures of me when I was a kid, I weighed 135 pounds until I was at least 17, so I know what it’s like to be small. The truth is…..I think we tried to keep him relatively the same man psychologically throughout the film. I think the goal is, in the last frame of the film, you hope to still see the skinny guy. The part of the movie, when you’re meeting him, if you connect with him and like him, hopefully that’s the same guy you see at the end. And there’s hopefully not too much change. But I think the reason he was chosen for this experiment is because he wouldn’t let this physical form change who he is. He is who he is, and that’s what makes him worthy of this gift. He appreciates everything he had before, he was okay without it, he’ll be okay with it.

Trying to get your head around that this isn’t just a new story that you’re trying to tell people, this isn’t a script where you get to make the first tracks in the snow with. A lot of people have an idea of who this guy should be, a lot of people really care with what you’re gonna do with it. That’s the tricky thing, how much of other peoples opinions do you want to dedicate your performance to, how much do you feel like I’ve gotta go with my gut.

How important was it for you to have Joe Johnson on board as the director of this film?

Chris Evans: It was fantastic, Joe was one of the main reasons I signed on for this film, I had my apprehensions with jumping on the film – for personal, psychological reasons (laughs), but on a creative level it was a no-brainer. Joe Johnson and Kevin Fiege, these are the guys you want to be making movies with. He was open minded, he listened, he collaborated, there was wriggle room to have your opinion heard – which is rare, especially on a film of this magnitude.

Joe Johnston said it was a tough call for you to take this role. Was it because you had played a big superhero before? What was the moment when you knew that this was what you wanted to do?

Chris Evans: It was two things – one was the commitment, it started out as a nine-picture deal, then it dropped down to a six-picture deal. But even six movies, they could spread those out and it could be ten years. I could be doing this until I’m forty. That’s a crazy thing to think about. I don’t think anybody can make a decision for the next ten years of their life – that’s crazy. Movies for me up until now have been one at a time. If my passion shifted, if my search in life went somewhere else, I could go do that. This just meant that I couldn’t, and that’s scary. Then secondly there’s the potential lifestyle change. I’ve been making movies for ten years, but I can still go to a ballgame, I can still go to Disney World, the grocery store, the gym – I can still live my life with relative ease and anonymity. This movie could potentially change that, and that’s scary too. So those two things sparked the apprehension.

But it’s too bad, because the people involved are so fantastic. Joe, Kevin Feige, if this movie were in a vacuum, it would be a no-brainer. They’re great people to make a movie for. If it was one gig, it wouldn’t even be a question. Even more importantly, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that you can’t make decisions out of fear. Those are the ones you end up regretting. The more it kind of came back to me, it felt like I was running from it for all the wrong reasons. So I went for it.