SHARK ALERT!
Not one to be easily frightened of water, world-class diver and action star Jason Statham, talks about how he overcame his fear of sharks before filming The Meg – out in the UAE today – in which he takes on a pre-historic deep-sea monster
Jason statham is 51 years old, but he can still take off his shirt in his new film, The Meg, and draw appreciative whistles from a preview audience. No matter that his character is supposed to be a hard-drinking recluse for whom a ‘beer belly’ probably would be more appropriate.
“It’s ‘protein beer’ I’m drinking,” he joked during an early-morning interview at a hotel in downtown Los Angeles. “I guess a ‘beer belly’ is in the eye of the beholder. I’m partial to a pint from the UK myself.”
Statham has been a movie star for 20 years now – his breakthrough came in Guy Ritchie’s Lock, Stock and
Two Smoking Barrels (1998) – but he insists that he doesn’t feel like one.
“I still see myself as a pretty standard sort of chap,” he said.
In The Meg, an action film opening in the UAE this weekend, Statham plays an emotionally wounded diver named Jonas Taylor, who is the sole survivor of a shark attack but can’t convince anyone that he and his friends were attacked by a giant shark more than 70 feet long, a prehistoric monster that had risen from the depths of the ocean.
Still reeling from the loss of his friends, Taylor goes to ground, guzzling beverages and trying to forget what happened.
Then there’s a knock on his door. He’s summoned to join a mission to save several people – including his ex-wife – who have been trapped in a sunken submersible that is under attack by that 75-foot Megalodon shark, not far from a heavily populated beach.
Based on a book
The film, based on Steve Alten’s Meg:
A Novel of Deep Terror, also stars Ruby Rose and Rainn Wilson.
It was filmed in West Auckland, New Zealand, both in tanks and in the open ocean. In either venue, Statham took the job seriously and prepared for underwater work.
“Before filming began,” he recalled, “we had a couple of free dives to help me figure out how to relax and retain my breath in the water.
“I can hold my breath for about three minutes,” Statham continued, “which isn’t that hard. Pretty much anyone can do it. People can even hold it for seven minutes, because holding your breath is actually a reflex action. You can hold your breath underwater longer if you relax, because it’s like being in the womb. You can even go 600 feet on one breath of air.”
Water is nothing frightening to Statham, who was once a world-class diver, but what’s in it is another story.
“I think anyone who has been out in the open water and has fallen off a boat has had the same first thought,” Statham said. “I know I immediately think, ‘Am I going to get eaten by a shark?’ You worry about your feet. What is that touching your feet? Does it have teeth?
“Yes, sharks get a bad rap,” he conceded. “But they are the biggest predators in the ocean.”
Facing fears
It’s not the sharks that are the scariest thing, though: It’s the unknown.
“I think my biggest fear is not knowing what’s under me in the ocean,” Statham said. “Filling in the blank in your mind puts the fear of God in you.”
The antidote to fear is familiarity. “I went to Fiji to dive with 30 bull sharks in the open water,” Statham said. “Before you get into the cage, someone feeds them by throwing this bloody chum into the water, so the sharks circle around. I think the biggest moment of fear for me was before I got into the water. All my fear was left on the boat.
“From that point on,” he recalled, “it was fascinating. My mind was blown. It was exhilarating, combined with this peacefulness of being one with nature that was really beyond my imagination.”
Back on the set, Statham had to deal with one of the more physical shoots of his life, with plenty of climbing, running and fighting – with sharks and people alike. That should have been daunting for a man who’d passed the big Five-Oh shortly before filming began, but Statham is making few concessions to ageing.
“I feel great,” he said. “There are days when the joints don’t agree with what the mind tells me. The key is, you just do more maintenance. You don’t eat all the crap. You put down that drink. You don’t really need it. You service the car more and don’t wait for the warning lights to come on.”
High on action
Statham’s movies are heavy on action, which is partly a result of typecasting and partly a reflection of Statham’s own tastes.
“I’m a bit of an adrenalin type,” he explained. “I like to do movies that get the heart going. It makes me feel alive – and I hope the audience feel alive too.”
His appearance as Deckard Shaw in Fast & Furious 6 (2013) led to
Furious 7 (2015) and The Fate of the
Furious (2017) –and also to his next film: He will reprise the role in Hobbs
and Shaw, a spinoff that will focus on Shaw’s unlikely partnership with US Diplomatic Security Agent Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson).
And, yes, Statham and the artist formerly known as The Rock do get into it along the way.
“We like doing the rough-andtumble moments,” he said. “He’s a physical guy, I’m a physical guy. We’re creating something that hopefully people will be invested in, rooting for their favourite bloke to win.”
Statham is known for doing most of his own stunts, which some find a little crazy: Most stars of his magnitude have teams of stuntmen working to make them look good.
“You just don’t want to dig your own grave,” he said with a laugh. “You do get a bit hurt each time, realising that accidents do happen. You always sustain some kind of a bang. You bump into something. But, overall, the stuff I do is very safe.
“Anyway, early on I’d dug my own hole,” he added, laughing.
“I did so many films when I first started where there wasn’t much of a stunt budget. I remember we would save the big ‘jump off the building’ stunt for the last day – at least they would still have the film if something went wrong!”
At 50, admittedly, he experiences a few more aches and pains afterward than he did at 30.
“I’m not interested in the pain part,” Statham said, “but I still push myself to the limits of getting it done. The bottom line is, basically, producers get a bit nervous because they want you to turn up for the first and the last days of filming.”
Also in the works for the actor: Spy 2 and a television series, Viva la Madness, in which he’ll play a drug dealer
I think my biggest fear is not knowing what’s under me in the ocean. Filling in the blank in your mind puts the fear of God in you.” Jason Statham
trying to escape the world of crime.
Statham turned 51 on July 26, and spent the day at home in Malibu with his partner, actress Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, and their year-old son, Jack Oscar.
“I did what I love to do,” the actor said. “I was running around the house chasing after my little man.
“There’s nothing better.” Cindy Pearlman, The New York Times Syndicate