Getting in on the action
Owen Wilson tries his hand at a new genre
Preoccupied with a device on his wrist, Owen Wilson nearly bumps into his interview chair before he slowly takes his seat.
“I have this Fitbit watch,” explains the 46-year-old referring to the device which measures steps and calories burned. “If you do 10,000 (steps) they guarantee that you will live until you are 150.”
Wilson is promoting the serious action thriller, No Escape, in which he plays an American executive who brings his wife and two daughters to a Southeast Asian country for a new start.
Soon after arriving there’s a coup, forcing the family to evade rebels who are executing foreigners in the family’s hotel and on the streets.
Lake Bell plays Wilson’s wife, and Pierce Brosnan shows up as an operative who may or may not be able to lead the family to safety.
Brosnan, the former James Bond, is familiar with the action genre, but Wilson admits it is mostly a brave new world for him.
“I think it works even though I haven’t done many movies like this,” he says. “It takes the dad from Marley and Me, and sticks him in Southeast Asia.”
The No Escape filmmakers John and Drew Dowdle wouldn’t have it any other way. John, who directed and cowrote the screenplay with brother Drew, fought long and hard to keep Wilson in their movie.
Certainly, he wasn’t a first choice for many of the studios offering to back the film. To ensure Wilson stay as headliner, the Dowdle Brothers went the independent financing route.
“Owen feels like a friend,” says John Dowdle of his everyman persona. “So he was a different kind of choice, and it meant a smaller movie with less money, but we were fine with that.”
And they bonded with Wilson almost immediately in pre-production and during the gruelling 39-day shoot in and around the isolated city of Chiang Mai, Thailand.
“I really got along well with the Dowdles and I appreciated their ideas,” says Wilson. “They managed the set and managed us as actors, so that made it enjoyable.”
Understanding his role as a protective father was inherent. Wilson’s oldest son Ford was two at the time of the No Escape shoot, yet he thought the motivation came naturally just the same.
“I think it’s just the way humans are wired whether you are a parent or not,” he says.
Indeed, the protective feelings he had for Sterling Jerins and Claire Geare, the actresses playing his young kids, almost overwhelmed him. “I would see their faces in these intense scenes and it was easy to connect with what they were feeling.”
It’s why he needed breaks. On Wilson’s days off, he would occasionally travel to Bangkok, nearly 700 kilometres south of where they were filming.
He enjoyed the change of pace, and now and again was reminded of his celebrity status.
“Sometimes, they would recognize me,” says Wilson of the city’s residents.
“When you have worked with Jackie Chan a couple of times (on Shanghai Noon and Shanghai Knights) you get that in Asia. It’s funny, they don’t call you a star, they always say, ‘superstar.’ ”
In the comedy world of movies, Wilson is a superstar.
He got his start in Wes Anderson’s droll flicks, and even picked up an Oscar nomination for co-writing Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums.
He struck box office gold with Shanghai Noon and Shanghai Knights, followed by Wedding Crashers and The Internship, interspersed with the three Night at the Museum movies.
Back by popular cult demand is Zoolander 2. He recently wrapped the sequel which will open next February and feature Ben Stiller’s return as selfabsorbed model Derek Zoolander opposite Wilson’s Hansel.
“You definitely have more cardio on an action movie like No Escape than you do on a comedy like Zoolander,” says Wilson. “Although on the new Zoolander, we do have some runway stuff where we’re walking around.”
In fact, he’s amazed they did a sequel at all.
“We finished in Rome and we were shooting there for four months,” Wilson says of Zoolander 2. “It was good to be doing it again, but it was kind of weird too because when Zoolander first came out, it didn’t do well.”
A potential third Shanghai western with Chan makes more financial sense, and plans have, indeed, been moving forward.
“I would love to work with Jackie again,” says Wilson. “And there have been some talks about doing a Shanghai Dawn in China.”