Child’s play works well for young new actor
By making acting seem fun, director elicits strong performance from 6-year-old
Hanging a movie on the work of a 6-year-old is a risky proposition. But Heaven Is for Real director Randall Wallace ( Secretariat) had a plan for working with untried child actor Connor Corum.
“I had worked with children before and had the idea to get several photo doubles (stand-ins for the actors) who can play the scenes out, block everything and set lights and cameras, and then bring in Connor so he would be filled with the spirit of play,” explained Wallace.
Despite his age and lack of experience, Ohio native Connor impressed his director from the start.
“I had never worked with a child of that age with that focus,” said Wallace. “He’s the cornerstone of the movie.”
Based on the bestseller by Todd Burpo about his real-life family, Heaven Is for Real is now in theatres. Connor plays Colton Burpo, the 4year-old son of Nebraska preacher Todd (Greg Kinnear) and his wife Sonja (Kelly Reilly). The child survives a near-death experience during surgery to wake and start talking about his visit to heaven.
Colton asserts to his father that he left his body on the operating table and visited heaven, looking down on his distraught parents while they awaited word of his outcome. He said he met Jesus in heaven, along with his long-deceased grandfather and a baby sister he didn’t know he had.
“The challenge in getting a performance was that it be authentic, that it not be a performance,” Wallace said, explaining how he worked with Connor, who has a sizable amount of screen time and navigates complicated dialogue with adults.
Wallace said he didn’t want the blue-eyed child to appear to be obviously acting, rather to “create an atmosphere in which he knew the lines he would say but he was being himself.”
It also helped to have his family on the set for the film, which was shot in and around Winnipeg. “I am a father of sons and I told Connor’s mother I am a father myself and no film is worth ruining the life of a child if it proved to be a bad experience,” Wallace said. “She really understood that and I could see how strong and grounded she was; polar opposite of the stage mother.” Kinnear, a longtime friend of Wallace and the first actor hired for the film, admitted to the director he hardly needed to stress about his performance after watching playback on an early scene with Connor. “Everybody’s going to be looking at him,” Kinnear joked. Wallace said shooting in Manitoba “was a joy” although he initially “really dreaded it.” “I had shot in British Columbia and
“The challenge in getting a performance was that it be authentic, that it not be a performance.” RANDALL WALLACE DIRECTOR, HEAVEN IS FOR REAL
had a wonderful experience so I was used to that,” said Wallace. “When you go to any place that you’re unfamiliar with, my thought was, can we find the extras we need and crew we need? And it was fabulous. We came away feeling wonderful about it. We weren’t going to have an American crew and a Canadian crew. We were all one family.”