Finding the Face of evil
WCHRIS EVANS’ METICULOUSLY GROOMED FACIAL HAIR GAVE HIM THE MINDSET OF A PSYCHOPATH
hen playing Captain America, it was the character’s famous red, white and blue shield that helped the pieces all fall into place for actor Chris Evans. And when it came to finding the essence of Lloyd Hanson in The Gray Man, it was a magnificently manicured moustache that did the trick.
Evans says the fantastically follicled facial fuzz – which would make Freddie Mercury and Magnum P.I. proud – spoke volumes about the psychopathic assassin who goes toe-to-toe with Ryan Gosling’s titular spy in the Russo brothers’ $200m actionthriller, the most expensive movie ever made for Netflix.
“I think Lloyd is someone who is very meticulous about his appearance,” Evans says over Zoom from Los Angeles, sitting alongside co-star Ana de Armas.
“Anyone who came up in a certain background of a military mindset probably has a very quotidian, measured, regimented approach to their daily routine and there’s something about a moustache, and particularly a very groomed moustache.
“I imagine each morning he probably clips every single hair to make sure it’s completely, exactly the way he wants it. He’s probably a very exacting man and that felt like a manifestation of his mentality.
“The second that we cut that moustache I was like, ‘Oh, there he is, there’s this psycho’.”
Since Evans tapped d out of the Marvel Cinematic c
Universe in 2019 after r three solo movies and d four Avengers movies s playing upstanding, upright Captain
America, he hasn’t been afraid to show a more villainous side.
His first gig after
Avengers: Endgame was in the hit mystery thriller Knives Out, in which he played (spoiler alert!) an entitled playboy who was prepared to resort to murderous means to ensure he got his share of a family fortune. for He concedes that th “playing a villain is always a little more fun” but says it’s not intentional in – he’s also al played a lawyer in the th crime-drama Defending Defen Jacob and is currently voicing vo Buzz Lightyear in the Toy Story spinoff – and he’s grateful for the opportunity to mix things up a bit.
“That’s the beauty of what we do,” he says, “we’re allowed to follow our creative appetite and enjoy the variety of playing different characters. I read [the script] and was really drawn to Lloyd. It was so well written and I don’t get the opportunity to play those types of roles often. I don’t think that’s how I’m seen. But as an actor you’re dying to do stuff like that.”
Joe and Anthony Russo, who directed him as Captain America in The Winter Soldier, Civil War,
Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, think he’s selling himself short. Both laugh heartily at the suggestion they have turned the character referred to as “America’s ass” in Endgame into America’s asshole in The Gray Man – but point out that the real Evans is nothing like either character.
“We just knew from eight years of working with him that he is a very gifted actor and a very technically savvy actor with a great range,” Joe Russo says. “Personally, and this is not a
slight on Chris, he’s nothing like Captain America. He’s charming and funny and high energy – Cap is very low energy and understated – and we wanted to give him something he could have fun with and sink his teeth into, so we wrote as eccentric a villain as we could, one that was a pure sociopath at heart. I think Chris is at that point in his career where he wants to take risks and have fun.”
That said, Joe was impressed with the way that Evans, who he describes as a sensitive actor and a person who revels in using his profile to promote causes from hospitals to feeding the poor, “understood the assignment on this one, that he was playing a character that stands for things that are the opposite of what he believes in as an actor”.
“I loved that he embraced how eccentric he was from a vanity standpoint – the hair, moustache, the tight designer clothes,” Joe says. “He’s a noisy character who likes to draw attention to himself and is selfish and extravagant, whereas the Gray Man is the exact opposite. And the movie is really a parable about these two forces on a collision course. I think what also impressed us about Chris is that Lloyd leans away from humanity and the Gray Man leans towards humanity and that’s the simple driving narrative of the movie.”
The Gray Man reunites Evans with his Knives Out co-star de Armas – and the pair has also just finished filming the romantic adventure movie Ghosted for Apple TV+. Evans describes his Cuban-born co-star as “relentless” and says he was impr impressed with her action cre credentials as an op opposing secret agent in the fight-heavy The Gray G Man, and her willingness w to push through the pain barrier as required.
“I just finished another a movie with Ana A which is very action ac heavy and I have hav seen her be injured,” injur Evans says, “but in this industry you don’t get a day off for that, you just have to plough plou through it. I have seen her come com to work injured, but when they th yell ‘action’ she steps up and powers through it. That’s not an easy thing to do.”
De Armas already had some fighting skills to her name thanks to her brief but eye-catching appearance as kick-ass Cuban CIA agent Paloma in the recent Bond film No Time To Die, but she says The Gray Man was on a completely different level. She says she felt underprepared for her Bond role, but the experience left her wanting more and she appreciated the extra time to get into top physical condition, and the opportunity to talk to a real CIA agent about the mindset and protocols of the mysterious American spy service.
“I was training for months,” she says. “The movie pushed farther away from its start day and I had more time to prepare and I felt like I got to the point of really enjoying it and feeling strong for real.
“The choreography was incredibly complicated with two and three actors at a time on locations or in the studio or jumping out of windows and off rooftops and carrying really heavy guns – my last fight with (Indian superstar) Dhanush in the movie I had four ribs out of place and I couldn’t even breathe and that fight took us a week to shoot.
“It’s way more complicated than people might think – if you see a fight that lasts two minutes on screen, it takes weeks of shooting.”