I highly recommend checking out the entire interview over at VeryAware.com
What was it like getting beat up by Elizabeth Banks and what was the rehearsal time?
Pine: “I will say through the majority of the film, Sam was getting beat up- physically or emotionally. That’s not to say some of it’s not righteously done since Sam perpetrated the biggest mistake and lie in the film. That he doesn’t tell Frankie the truth. That was a hard scene to do.”How many takes was that?
Banks: “Not that many.”
Pine: “Alex, to his credit, realizing doing this for the first time, he covered the living daylights out of that scene. So there’d be masters – there’d be all sorts of coverage. I think the really big credit belongs to Liz because the revelation of the truth, she’s gotta hear that for the first time all day long. My job was as difficult to tell the truth but she has to listen and process that moment, which is extremely difficult to do well and to do truthfully. The credit belongs to her.”
Banks: “Thank you.”
Can you both talk about the moment you wanted to become an actor? Obviously, your father was in CHIPS. What was that like growing up?
Pine: “I never wanted to be an actor for a second in my life until maybe I was twenty. My father’s been an actor for 50 years. He came out to LA in 1964. He was under contract when they still had contracts at Universal. When you got paid to be an actor even when you weren’t working, which you can imagine is a stunningly awesome thing. My father has like 200 credits. He’s a rare breed. He’s a working blue collar actor. The man has made a living as an actor, put two kids through private school, and managed to do it when things were really bad and when things were really good. Obviously, the marker for a young child is when things were really bad. For me growing up, I was a child of someone who had a business that was sometimes really good and sometimes really bad. There wasn’t anything romantic…I wasn’t like Denzel Washington’s kid. That was not my family. I didn’t have no rose-colored glasses. I really found out later on because I enjoyed it and it was something I could do.”
Your characters are both on the brink. Have you guys both felt that way in acting? Were there any moments where you thought, ‘this just isn’t gonna work out and I’m ready to walk away?’
Pine: “100%. I’ve been very lucky. It took me about a year before I could quit my job working at the Grove.”
What were you doing at The Grove?
Pine: “I was a food runner and a host. And not a good food service representative at all. But yeah. There was a time when I cam back to LA and had just done a pilot. I really wanted to live on the Lower East Side and eat bread. Do the whole poverty stricken artist bit for awhile. In those moments where you don’t care and you walk into an audition… (snaps)”
Banks: “Totally. Totally.”
Pine: “It’s like landing like gangbusters. That’s what happened. I moved back to LA. I was going to move to New York. I had a place and was like, ‘Done!’ Do the poor artist thing. And started working and there you go.”
