“I do know about ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ because Alice Eve, who’s in our film, [the ‘Star Trek’ sequel], has been reading it like crazy, so yeah, I’ve heard about it,” he told Access Hollywood at CinemaCon 2012 in Las Vegas on Monday.

When asked if he’d play the novel’s Christian Grey, the square-jawed hunk didn’t say no.

“It’d be a hell of a choice for me, I think,” he smiled. “It sounds like an interesting film.”

Chris is currently reprising his role as James T. Kirk in the J.J. Abrams helmed “Star Trek” sequel, and he said the film is going to impress.

“Of course I’m gonna tell you I think it’s gonna be better,” he laughed. “You pick up the characters from where they left off, and the development of the characters — I think — is just as exciting as the first one.

“And it’s relentless,” he added. “I think that’s the best adjective I can use.”

Chris said the team is actually close to wrapping up the second installment in the sci-fi reboot.

“We’re almost done,” he told Access. “It’s wrapping up very soon. It’s just as action-packed as the first one.”

You can check out the interview in full over at AccessHollywood.com

Men’s Fitness magazine has announced in a news release its list of the 25 Fittest Guys, and Alex O’Loughlin of “Hawaii Five-0;” Joel McHale of “Community and “The Soup;” Joe Manganiello of “True Blood,” Henry Cavill of “The Tudors” and Chip Wade of “Curb Appeal: The Block” and Designed to Sell” are among the men chosen from the small screen.

Other honorees include Chris Evans, Liam Neeson, LeBron James, Michael Fassbender, Bradley Cooper; Kellan Lutz, David Beckham, Chris Pine, Dr. Dre and Jeremy Renner.

For the complete list and some information on the 25 Fittest Guys health regimens, check out the June/July issue of Men’s Fitness magazine, on sale nationwide May 9.

source

Congratulations to Chris and his father Robert on their awards!

Chris Pine earned a lead performance plaque for his role of a sociopathic terrorist in Martin McDonagh’s The Lieutenant of Inishmore at the Mark Taper Forum. Sharing triumphs in the solo performance category were Ed Harris for Neil LaBute’s Wrecks at the Geffen Playhouse and Leslie Uggams for her biographical musical Uptown Downtown at the recently reopened Pasadena Playhouse.

Two generations of Pines made their way to the stage when separate awards were announced. In addition to Chris Pine’s acceptance for his Inishmore win, Pine’s father, Robert Pine, came to the stage along with his fellow company members when the Antaeus Company took the evening’s final award for its production of King Lear.

source

“We have two clear messages we would like millions of Americans watching the Super Bowl to know about BMW,” said Dan Creed, Vice President, Marketing, BMW of North America. “Even in the depths of the recession, BMW continued to invest in America, and as the global benchmark for clean diesel technology, we’re challenging stereotypes to show our advanced diesels are part of the future.”

Both these messages will be carried through BMW’s marketing efforts throughout the year. The Super Bowl advertisements also mark the debut of actor Chris Pine from Star Trek in 2009 and Unstoppable in 2010 as the voice of BMW.

Peter Ramsey is directing the pic based on “The Guardians of Childhood,” an upcoming series of children’s books by William Joyce, who will co-direct.

Guillermo del Toro and Michael Siegel are exec producing, while Christina Steinberg and Nancy Bernstein will serve as producers.

Pulitzer Prize winner David Lindsay-Abaire wrote the screenplay, which follows a group of heroic childhood legends, each with extraordinary abilities. When Pitch (Law), an evil spirit akin to the boogeyman, lays down the gauntlet to take over the world, the immortal Guardians must join forces for the first time to protect the hopes, beliefs and imagination of children all over the world.

Project was originally announced in December 2009, with Leonardo DiCaprio voicing Jack Frost, a role Pine will be taking over. He’ll be joined by Jackman’s Bunnymund (the Easter Bunny), Baldwin’s North (Santa Claus) and Fisher’s Tooth (the Tooth Fairy).

“It’s a thrill to be working with such an all-star team of actors and filmmakers,” Bill Damaschke, DWA’s chief creative officer, said in a statement to Variety. “When we bring Bill Joyce’s imaginative vision to the screen in 2012, audiences will experience an incredible story with a truly epic sense of adventure.”

DWA will release the film on Nov. 21, 2012.

source

As usual, Hollywood celebrities factored in to the choices: Ed Harris for Neil LaBute’s “Wrecks” at the Geffen Playhouse, Chris Pine in Martin McDonagh’s “The Lieutenant of Inishmore” at the Mark Taper Forum and “24″ star Gregory Itzin for the Antaeus Company’s “King Lear” at Deaf West Theatre in North Hollywood. Tony Award winner Lin-Manuel Miranda picked up a nomination — and a win — for his score to “In The Heights” at the Pantages Theatre. (He was the only nominee in the category.)

The awards ceremony is scheduled to take place March 14 at the Colony Theatre in Burbank, where it was held last year. Founded in 1969, the organization’s voting members include theater reviewers from around Southern California, including two regular contributors to the Los Angeles Times — F. Kathleen Foley and David C. Nichols.

Read the full list of nominees at our Awards Tracker blog.

source

Unstoppable looks an insurance company’s nightmare – how many stunts did you take on yourself? As many as I could. There’s a point where I’m riding between two cars in a pretty precarious position, and I was proud that I actually said yes to that. It was a thrill – it’s certainly pretty scary looking at a two-tonne train that’s going 40mph and realising that, even if the director yells ‘Cut!’, it’s doing its own thing.

Did they let you drive a real train?
No, thank God. LA is so crowded, I’d be worried I’d be the breaking story on the news.

Did Denzel show you which lever did what?
I tried to soak in as much as I could. You know, I have the best job in the world because I get paid to go to graduate acting school, and this was like having a seminar with one of the best. Is the US as full of train nerds as the UK? I’m not sure it’s as big as in the UK – I actually lived in Leeds in my year abroad at university. I lived on Brudenell Road and loved getting fat off pints of bitter – but there is definitely a ‘trainspotter’ community in the US.

What was your childhood obsession?
I told Tony [Scott] this, I was like six or seven when Top Gun came out and all I ever wanted to do was be a fighter pilot. I read books about aircraft carriers, knew the payload of a Tomcat… all sorts of stuff. But I’ve never been in a plane. My publicist told me that one of her other clients got a chance to fly with the Blue Angels and he puked everywhere. I don’t know if I’d have the balls to do it. But I have flown in a simulator when I was much younger.

Is there any update on the Star Trek sequel other than ‘sometime next year’?
I wish I had news – I feel like I’ll be the last person to know, given the amount of secrecy that JJ and company like to shroud their projects in. Us actors are low on the totem pole of information. All of us go through mini email bursts – something will happen and we’ll mail one another for a little bit, then go incommunicado. I stayed in touch with Simon [Pegg], but we haven’t talked in a while.

What are you doing in the meantime?
This week I have rehearsals with guns and stunt guys [for upcoming action rom-com This Means War], I’m just working on prolonging childhood for as long as possible. I’m really excited as I’m starring with Tom Hardy, who is a rare talent. I loved him in Inception. My competitive edge is at an all-time high, it’s going to be an acting-off. And then I get to do some brain ninja moves and get my Jack Ryan on. I’ve always loved spy fiction, so to get a chance to play one of my favourite characters is a dream come true.

As, presumably, was going gun-crazy in Smokin’ Aces?
That was, and always will be, one of my favourite experiences. Our tech guy was former SAS, and a fucking blast. I got to use a World War II greaser gun, a machete – I wish my nine-year-old self got to do the stuff I get to do now.

Speaking of which, we are obsessed here with Victoria’s Secret models, are you a fan of their work?
Oh God! I think that’s a rhetorical question… Yes I am. Big, big, loving fan. I’ve never been invited to any of their parties, though, so can you get me an invite?

We’ll see what we can do. As an appreciator of the female form, if you were editing FHM, what girl would you put on the cover?
Good question. I’m a huge Jessica Biel fan, but I don’t want to offend Justin [Timberlake], who I know. He’s a hell of a good guy, but goddamn if his girlfriend isn’t beautiful. I think we all should be in agreement on that one.

source

Esther and Richard Shapiro’s flick would be a prequel centered on a young Blake Carrington and his first wife Alexis.

Well, I just chatted with the original ruthless and bitchy Alexis—Joan Collins!

Who does she think should play the young future oil moguls? Read on to find out…

For Alexis, Collins thinks onetime Bond Girl and new face of G-Star, Gemma Arterton, would be perfect.

“She has all the qualities that Alexis needs,” she exclusively told me from Birmingham, England, where she’s costarring in stage show Dick Whittington. “She’s sexy. She looks clever and she’s kind of vixenous.”

As for Blake (originally played by the late John Forsythe), Collins said, “I do think Chris Pine would be great as Blake. He’s a wonderful actor.”

Collins said she’d love to play Alexis again. “I certainly couldn’t play her in a prequel in the 1960s,” the 77-year-old Hollywood icon said, laughing. “But I always thought they should do it today with Alexis’ grandchildren, who about 20 years ago were five and six.”

source

The film, somewhat of a reboot of the franchise that kicked off in 1990 with Red October, will be directed by Lost alum Jack Bender. It was reportedly going to shoot as early as February this year. Seems not.

Asked by the lovely Neala Johnson whether or not he was prepared to be ’stacked up against those who have come before’, Pine replies assuredly “Look, at the end of the day, people will obviously prefer one version over the other, whether it be Alec Baldwin or Harrison Ford or Ben Affleck. I feel the same way about Star Trek – the only thing I can do is the best version of myself. I can only bring who I am to bear on the part and people either like that or not. Again, I don’t have much control over that, so all I can ask of myself is to do my best, try my hardest and to make sure that we have a really good story to tell, and then it to the hands of fate.”

Pine doesn’t know whether or not he’ll be doing anything as physical in the film as he did on Tony Scott’s Unstoppable.

“I dunno if any trains are gonna be involved”, the actor laughs. “I dunno what’s involved quite yet, I haven’t really seen the finished script, but some assorted running, for sure”.

In a recent interview with the delightful Katey Rich at Cinema Blend, producer Lorenzo Di Bonaventura mentioned that the script for the film is currently undergoing a rewrite and as yet, there’s no set date for filming.

“We’re going to shoot in the spring. There’s no set date. It’s a slow process of figuring out how much it’s going to cost and all that stuff. [It's] the same story– [Anthony Peckham] is going to bring his own particular flair to it. It is the origin story of Jack Ryan. Where you pick him up in his career is very true to what Clancy had as his backstory. You can explore some of the backstory you never had in previous movie. That will be fun for Clancy fan, and for an audience that hasn’t seen [the previous films], or seen them all in theaters. Chris Pine is going to make a great Jack Ryan. We really lucked out there.”

In Moscow, Ryan (Pine) will be fresh out of the Marines and gets himself involved in some sort of financial scandal in Russia. Apparently Wall Street plays a big part in the movie.

I had one casting director stop me and say, ‘All right, now do it again and make me believe you’,” he recalls with a traumatised laugh.

“That was half of what she said, but also the tone that I can’t really recreate. It was just about the most miserable feeling on the planet.

“I just interpreted that as like, ‘OK, stop sucking, and try to be talented’.

“At that point you’ve lost, at that point it becomes not about the material at all, it becomes about your personal beef, and that’s never what it should be.

“The audition room is one of the most awkward, uncomfortable places to be, period. I don’t even know how producers do it, quite honestly.”

But an actor’s gotta do what an actor’s gotta do.

“Yup,” agrees Pine, “par for the course. Born masochist.”

And yet, if an actor does it well enough, or gets lucky enough, auditions can become obsolete. And that’s where the Los Angeles-born and bred Pine finds himself right now.

After fighting for roles in films such as teen-ish rom-coms The Princess Diaries 2 and Just My Luck and offbeat indies Smokin’ Aces and Bottle Shock, in 2009 he struck gold playing Captain Kirk in J. J. Abrams’ Star Trek reboot.

Everything about the sci-fi blockbuster was huge – from its box-office gross to the impact it had on Pine’s career.

Pine sums up the Star Trek effect in succinct terms – “I can say ‘No’ more easily. It’s the first time in my life I’ve ever been offered stuff. And that’s really nice.”

But Star Trek may not have happened for Pine – before it he was so unhappy with the direction his career was going that he had told his agents not to bother (or bother with) him for a couple of years.

“Really what it was, like any actor you don’t have much … maybe this is not entirely true – you always have choice – but in terms of the breadth of choice and the opportunity and the luxury of being able to say ‘No’, and really truly cherry-picking, that I didn’t have at all.

“Like any actor I would go on an audition and hope to get the part, and if you get the part it’s very hard to say ‘No’ – it’s very hard to turn down work and the pay cheque and the opportunity to work on your, not to sound too artsy-fartsy, your craft, what you do for a living.

“But shoot, the summer before I worked on Trek I did a movie (Bottle Shock) with Bill Pullman and Alan Rickman and Dennis Farina and Freddy Rodriguez and Rachael Taylor – I worked with really talented actors.

“And at the end of the day, I was working – that alone separates you from a large swathe of the acting community.”

So now, post-Trek, Pine reckons he’s “won the lottery, so I’m going to try to enjoy my time with my winnings”.

That means relishing the ability to say ‘No’ and knowing the days of hellish auditions are over.

“I don’t know for how long, but for the time being it seems that way,” he says. “I just don’t know for how long … ”

Those winnings this year will bring a Star Trek sequel his way, the rom-com This Means War with Reese Witherspoon and sharing a locomotive cabin with Denzel Washington for much of his latest movie, the Tony Scott-directed, runaway-train thriller Unstoppable.

“I spent as much time as I could just watching and observing and asking as many questions as possible ‘cos it was like going to grad school,” Pine says of working with Washington.

“There were certain times when I think anybody, no matter how nice, would have shrunk away and avoided my persistent pestiness, but he was really kind about it.”

In the film, Pine is the newbie sent to learn from Washington’s grumpy and intimidating freight train driving veteran. And intimidated the newbie was.

“There’s no way not to be!” Pine exclaims.

“Denzel’s an intimidating character, just because he’s so talented and he has so much charisma that it can be kind of blinding. But I just looked at it as a way to step up my game.”

Pine may fake it pretty well in the movie, but don’t count on him to handle a locomotive in real life.

“If you were on the train, I’d tell you not to trust me. ‘Cos I’m an actor,” he laughs. “I don’t actually drive trains, I’m an actor.”

While he says he knows “for sure” that he wants longevity as an actor, the way he talks also suggests Pine wants something more – directing, perhaps?

“Yeah, I could see myself heading there at some point,” he says.

“I don’t know when but … especially after seeing how good Ben Affleck has succeeded in transitioning in his career. I think it’d be a lot of fun; it’d definitely take a lot of the onus off the acting, which can be petrifying sometimes.”

source