| Emile Hirsch Takes Some Severe Steps Into The Wild |
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| Written by Brad Balfour | |
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 In order to transform himself into Christopher McCandless in "Into The Wild," actor Emile Hirsch had to lose 41 pounds—mostly by jumping on a treadmill for an hour every day   Emile Hirsch and Sean Penn on set—presumably before their snowmobile accident  With "Into The Wild," Sean Penn (shown here at the Film Independent's Spirit Awards), has directed his first feature since 2001's "The Pledge," which starred Jack Nicholson  When asked about his motivations in playing Chris McCandless, Emile Hirsch responded, "It was a combination of the spirit of adventure that I've felt in my life; I know what wanting and craving adventure feels like—and when you combine that with pain, you get a need to seek love." Based on a true story (and Jon Krakauer's bestselling book), the film details the life and death of Christopher McCandless (played by Hirsch). After graduating from Emory University in 1992, the top student and athlete abandoned his possessions, donated every penny of his $24,000 savings to charity, and hitched to Alaska to live in the wilderness—where he would encounter several life-changing characters. Unfortunately, McCandless pushed things to a fatal extreme. The Los Angeles-born Hirsch has certainly been testing himself in the industry ever since he was a kid, playing both heroes and heavies in such films as "The Girl Next Door," "The Lords of Dogtown" and "Alpha Dog." [Read our "Alpha Dog" interview here] However, his lead role in "Into The Wild" has the potential for the young actor to be seen in a wholly different light. intothewild.comQ: Your character, Chris McCandless, completely left the comfort of wealth and privilege behind to live in the wilds of Alaska. How did you prepare for the role? Emile Hirsch: As much as the physical training of running and weight-lifting and hiking was really important, there was also the mental exercise of reading a lot of hours, always reading every day—whether it would be [novels such as Jack London's] "Call of The Wild" or reading [Henry David Thoreau's] "Walden" and getting into that whole world. That kind of mental discipline would turn out to be really important throughout the shoot. When you're reading about the world in a different way than you're accustomed to seeing it, it expands your mind. It definitely had me look at who I was in a different way and the world that I'm in, even the world of Los Angeles and Hollywood. When you're reading Thoreau you look at Hollywood differently, let me tell you. Q: What were the challenges of shooting in the wild? EH: We were in all different types of climates. It would be really cold in Alaska and we'd be climbing a snowy mountain one day, snowmobiling around. On the first day, me and Sean [Penn] actually flew off of our snowmobile together. The whole crew was running up to us, "Are you OK?" and Sean was like, "That was cool how you jumped off and you were flying off [away from the snowmobile]. It's good that you lunged off; it's safe so it won't roll on you." And I was like, "So you're trying to turn our snowmobile wreck into a lesson on how to crash properly!" Everything was a challenge. We'd be in Lake Mead when it was like 120 degrees and everyone would just be hot. One of the guys got heat stroke and was vomiting, and had to quit. I really missed having a trailer. I would literally just lie on the mattress, the bed in the bus [that McCandless lived on in the film] for 45 minutes before the scene. I'd just pull up my sleeping bag—and just kind of shiver away. Q: By the end of the film you were almost skeletal—did you need to lose a lot of weight? EH: I went from 160 to 115. So that was 41 pounds. I was 26 pounds overweight when I got the part, now I'm 130. So just to get into shape to play the part, I had to lose 26 pounds—it would look like I lost weight because I was 130 in the movie. So, I made it harder on myself by being heavier then Sean wanted me to be. Q: What were your diet secrets? EH: Just a willingness to punish one's self. Q: Did you not eat, or was it just from working out? EH: it was working out. Not eating is hard and you can't do anything else if you're not eating—and I had to do so much through this process. It was all about jumping on the treadmill for an hour a day. Q: Did this movie change your lifestyle? EH: Absolutely. It lit the spirit of adventure inside me, and I hope it never goes away. All the physical aspects stuck with me—I still run a lot, and I never ran before the film. Q: Did you think that the message at the end of the movie was that it didn't mean anything if you didn't go for it? EH: I think that it had changed him as a person. It would have made his questing different if he had done it differently. |