Now here's someone who can really get the respect of both the poker and Hollywood celebrity worlds in an instant! Thanks to the hit movies “Terminator: Salvation”, and recently Osacars nominated movie “Avatar” from the director of James Cameron. Sam Worthington is becoming the hardest working man in the Hollywood.
In the interview of Esquire Magizine, Sam Worthington talks agbout his career, his other project and playing poker, here's some of the snippets:
And yet, it's not just about sizing up the competition, finding niches to exploit. 33-year-old celebrity poker player Sam Worthington who makes these lists and charts uses them as prods. ("I walked up to [Danish actor] Mads Mikkelsen and said, “I've seen every single movie you've done,” and he said,
“That's insane, but why?' And I said, “Cause now I know where you come from, I know what work you're good at, and I know damn well you're not doing that about me.” So if it's poker, I've got the upper hand.") They are a form of power. No other actors do this. Most actors are inherently lazy. (He knows, because he was once one of them.)
About Sam Wothington: Sam Worthington began his career in acting by supporting his girlfriend in her audition into a drama school. Sam Worthington was accepted into the school, but his girlfriend was rejected, thus ending their relationship. Though it’s now hard to imagine him as anything other than a successful actor, Sam Worthington didn’t embrace the idea of pursuing a career in the arts until he was well into his 20s. Having dropped out of school at 17, Sam Worthington had been biding his time working a series of odd jobs -- though his path changed dramatically after he agreed to accompany a girlfriend to her audition for Sydney’s National Institute of Dramatic Art.
After learning the ins and outs of the acting craft during his stint at NIDA, Sam Worthington emerged hungry for work and subsequently began auditioning for roles with gusto. He spent the first few months of his fledgling career appearing in local stage productions, with his onscreen debut coming in 2000 with a small part in an episode of JAG. For the next several years, Sam Worthington appeared in a variety of television shows and movies, including the 2002with Bruce Willis on Hart’s War and the 2002 Toni Colltte and John Goodman comedy Dirty Deeds.
In 2004, Sam Worthington received considerable praise for his turn in the unique and greatly acclaimed Australian drama “Somersault”, playing Joe, a sexually confused young man who becomes entangled with a teenage girl (Abbie Cornish). Written and directed by Cate Shortland, “Somersault” took 7 years to make, and naturally Shortland wanted to cast the perfect actor in the role of Joe. The film did amazingly well, making a clean sweep of the Australian Film Institute awards in 2004 to win in all 13 film categories – the first time this has ever occurred in the award’s history. It beat the previous record of eight AFI awards shared by Lantana (2001) and Newsfront (1978). Sam won the AFI for best male actor.
In 2005, he returned to American movies with a supporting role in “The Great Raid”, another WWII drama, this time about the liberation of American POWs from the Cabanatuan Prison Camp in the Philippines. In 2006 proved to be a particularly lucrative year for Sam, as the rising star took on the title role in a modern retelling of William Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” and landed a starring role opposite Radha Mitchell and Michael Vartan in the 2007 horror flick “Rogue”, a suspenseful, ‘Jaws’-style thriller about a boat tour’s gruesome encounter with a king-sized crocodile. Sam Worthington played Mitchell’s rakish boyfriend, whose rescue attempts lead to a gruesome end.
His reputation as one of Hollywood’s most promising up-and-coming performers brought him to the attention of several high-profile directors, though it was James Cameron who ultimately cast Sam in his biggest production to date, and his first movie in over a decade, the science fiction epic “Avatar” in 2009.
Avatar is an action drama that blends groundbreaking CGI techniques with 3D technology in its storyline about humans in conflict with the inhabitants of a newly colonized world. Sam’s character, a paraplegic ex-Marine, undergoes an experiment to become an “avatar,” an alternate version of himself, designed to exist more cohesively in the new environment.
The massive project required the actor to split his time between location shoots in the United States, Australia and New Zealand. The role in ‘Avatar’ afforded Sam the opportunity to share the screen with such familiar faces as Sigourney Weaver, Michelle Rodriguez and Zoe Saldana.
Director James Cameron was so impressed with Sam Worthington's work that he suggested him to director McG for a role in “Terminator Salvation”, the fourth in the long-running and successful futuristic action franchise, and he soon found himself working side-by-side with Christian Bale and Bryce Dallas Howard.
Sam Worthington's sky-rocketing profile continued to reach new heights as 2009 progressed, with starring roles opposite Keira Knightley and Eva Mendes in the infidelity drama “Last Night” and “The Debt” both in 2009, about Israeli agents hunting Nazis. Just in the same year, He got also his first Teen Choice Award nomination for Choice Movie Fresh Face Male in “Terminator Salvation”, and he won the “GQ Man of the Year” award in Australia over Eric Bana and Russell Crowe.
Sam Worthington fantasy efforts were cheered by his casting as Perseus, hero of Greek mythology, in a big-budget remake of the Ray Harryhausen spectacular, “Clash Of The Titans” this year.
