Director James Cameron and Avatar star Sam Worthington
Last night I changed my regular Thursday night behaviors and I went with my wife and daughter to see the new James Cameron movie Avatar in 3D. Avatar is a breathtaking film, but I will leave the reviews to the experts like CoolShite.net.
The star of the movie is Sam Worthington, former bricklayer and Australian actor who appears to have got lucky and become an overnight success with major roles in a string of recent movies including Terminator Salvation, Clash of the Titans, Last Night and the blockbuster Avatar.
Yeah, Worthington has “got lucky” but he is also the consummate Luck Hunter.
Nam Le writes in Esquire Magazine (August 5th 2009):
The walls of his room are covered. They have been for years. Lists. Pie charts. Graphs. Name after name after name. Some annotated, some circled or crossed out, lines going wildly in every direction. Identifying paths of least resistance.
The names are of other actors. They are of movies and directors. They are the systematic and scientific schemings of an impatient man.
And yet, it’s not just about sizing up the competition, finding niches to exploit. The thirty-three-year-old Australian who makes these lists and charts uses them as prods. 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.)
So he draws up his lists, over and over again, little pie charts and graphs, his apartment decorated like a war room.
In Sam Worthington’s own words (taken from Esquire Magazine, August 5th 2009:
“My room’s like John Nash’s head, I cover it with everything…AS soon as I got out of drama school, I wrote down a list of every Australian actor there was, and then I went and watched every actor’s work, knowing full well that no none knows mine”
“So then you kind of research and then you think, ‘Well, how do I fit into that pie?’ Because if I am too much like him, or I’m too much like this person, I’m never going to get a job. So you kind of realise where the hole is where the gap is. Then I did the same thing in America. I researched everybody.”
Wow, this guy is a Luck Hunter Extraordinaire!
- Manically sizing up his competition
- Manically networking
- Finding his own style niche
- Working hard
To boot, Worthington has a whatever it takes attitude a key character trait of Luck Hunters. He reportedly told James Cameron “I’ll do whatever you need me to do to sell your movie; I’ll call my first kid Avatar if that helps you sell it”.