A CHIP OFF THE OLD ROCK
Alexandra Daddario shakes it up with a disaster film opposite Dwayne Johnson By Ian Spelling
Alexandra Daddario lives in California, so she has lived through a few earthquakes. Nothing major, mind you. “Not even a painting fell off the wall,” the young actress said. “They’ve just been little earthquakes, the ones I’ve experienced, but they’re still scary. “You see how strong the little ones are, so I can’t even imagine how something like a 5.0 would feel.” A 5.0? How about a 9.0? That’s the magnitude of the catastrophic earthquake that strikes the West Coast when the San Andreas Fault ruptures and finally gives way in the new disaster film San Andreas. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson stars as a search-and-rescue helicopter pilot who teams up with his ex-wife (Carla Gugino) in an effort to save their estranged daughter, Blake (Daddario). Daddario spoke about the film, now showing in Thailand, during a recent call from the Los Angeles set of her latest movie, The Layover. Although she had made big movies before — most notably Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief ( 2010) and Percy Jackson : Sea of Monsters ( 2013) — she found San Andreas a vastly different experience. “I was very interested in working with The Rock,” Daddario said. “I was very interested in going to Australia. I was very interested in doing a disaster movie of this scale. It just sounded like so much fun. I loved the script, I loved the director, Brad Peyton. “One of the interesting things that stuck out for me, when I spoke to Brad, was that he said he wanted this movie to, yes, have all this crazy stuff going on around the characters, but at the core of it he wanted to tell a small story about these characters, about this family, so that you care about these people and what happens to them. He said that, without that, the movie would fail. So I was in, and I was excited to go on the journey with all the other actors.” Daddario described Blake as a chip off the old block, or Rock, as it were. She’s tough to begin with, and emerges as a true fighter when the earth starts to rattle and split open. “Blake has a lot of her dad’s qualities,” Daddario said. “I’m a very strong and intelligent young woman. She’s been taught a lot of things by her father, because he’s in search and rescue, and she uses what she’s learned to get her friends and herself out of the situations they’re put into. It was fun to play somebody who’s that strong and that powerful, in a sense, and can make quick decisions in a difficult situation. “We were talking about my being in real earthquakes, and I’ve always wondered how I’d react in a situation like that, where you don’t know what’s going to happen, if you’re going to live or die. Do we break down? Do we problem-solve? What do we do? It was interesting to go through that process and figure out what Blake would do and how she’d react, how she felt on the inside and what she did on the outside.”
As good a time as Daddario had making San Andreas, she acknowledged that it also was taxing. In addition to the typical running, jumping and greenscreen work required for an action movie, she found herself on sets that shifted below her feet, with objects hurtling toward her. And then there was the water tank. “We shot in this giant water tank for several weeks,” Daddario recalled, “and that was challenging for many reasons. It was really an incredible thing. It was huge and filled with … I don’t even know how much water. But they built an entire set and then submerged it underwater.
“When we were shooting, we’d have crew members in wetsuits setting up and doing all the things they do, but doing it underwater,” she continued. “Water would be sucked up and then it’d hit the building, and we’d do that again and again. There was a lot of stunt work, and you had to hold your breath for long periods of time too. So it was incredibly challenging, but I enjoyed the challenge and it was a great deal of fun, actually, and it will look great on screen.”
Johnson, who first achieved fame as a wrestler, has a reputation in Hollywood as one of the good guys. This impression has only been heightened in recent weeks when he officiated at a fan’s wedding, surprising the groom in a stunt for the Screen Junkies YouTube channel that went viral. Johnson managed to promote San Andreas as part of the ceremony. Daddario said her experiences making San Andreas only confirmed that good- guy reputation.
“He was able to make me feel incredibly comfortable,” the young actress said, “and he was there for me in real life. He’s as tough and caring off- screen as he is in the movie. It was great fun to work with him.” Beyond San Andreas, Daddario has a trio of other films on the way. She co- stars in the horror comedy
Burying the Ex, in which she plays a woman who falls in love with a guy (Anton Yelchin) whose dead girlfriend (Ashley Greene) rises from the grave. That will be followed early next year by The Choice, a romantic drama based on the 2007 novel by Nicholas Sparks. It stars Teresa Palmer and Benjamin Walker, with Daddario as “the other woman”.
Now she’s shooting The Layover, which Daddario described as a road-trip comedy directed by and co- starring William H Macy, and also featuring Rob Corddry, Kal Penn and Kate Upton. The film will be released next year.
“It’s nice to be able to do a lot of different things, like I am at the moment. I’ve got a big action movie, a couple of comedies and a romantic movie where I get to kiss a guy in the rain. I like to show my range. That’s what every actor hopes to get a chance to do.” Daddario, who is 29, was born and raised in Manhattan. She started acting at 16 and first caught audience’s eyes in 40- plus episodes of All My Children. She’s worked steadily since then, appearing in such shows as Law & Order, The Sopranos, White Collar and True Detective, as well as the films Hall Pass, Texas Chainsaw 3D and, of course, the Percy Jackson adventures.
Like any actress, Daddario has had her ups and downs and experienced periods of self- doubt. That
never goes away, she said, but it’s something that she’s come to understand and accept.
“It’s been hard, and definitely when I was younger … As a teenager, you have a tough time of it anyway,” Daddario said. “Then, being in a profession where a lot of it is image- based and you’re judged … When I started out, I was a pretty terrible actress and, to get better, that’s something people have to tell you. It’s very difficult to hear that and, when you’re doing it professionally, that becomes a whole different kind of pressure.
“Then, when you’re not working, you worry about working again,” she said. “That’s something you just have to learn to cope with, because that’s how it’s going to be your entire career. I’ve spoken to people who’ve done this for 50 years, and that never really changes.
You’re always worrying about the next evolution in your career, the next step. The good thing is that it keeps you on your toes.”