‘Captain America’: Chris Evans says CG team ‘nailed it’ with frail Steve Rogers scenes

Chris Evans can’t stop wondering – what it would be like if you were a man lost in time? It’s a mental exercise that began on the London set of “Captain America: The First Avenger,” the film that reaches theaters on July 22 with a World War II setting and the tricky challenge of winning over young Internet-era audiences with a story of the radio-days past.

“A great story is a great story no matter when it’s set,” said Evans, the 29-year-old actor who will wear the red, white and blue costume of a comic-book character that dates to 1941 and was shown punching Adolf Hitler on the cover of his first newsstand issue.

For the screen, the core mythology of the hero’s origin remains in place: Steve Rogers (Evans), a sickly young man deemed unfit for combat duty, volunteers for a secret experiment that transforms him into the first of a “super solider” army — but a Nazi spy kills the scientist (Stanley Tucci) before the process can be duplicated. With his compatriot James “Bucky” Buchanan (Sebastian Stan), the hero fights the good fight against Axis foes such as the Red Skull (Hugo Weaving) and Arnim Zola (Toby Jones).

Director Joe Johnston has some specialized experience in retro adventure as the director of the underrated, serial-spirited “The Rocketeer” in 1991 and as the visual effects art director on Steven Spielberg’s “Raiders of the Lost Ark.”

“When you sit down to watch it, it’s certainly not ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark,’ which is a very different kind of film in the final analysis,” Johnston said. “But sometimes when we had questions and we were stuck we would say, ‘What would Indiana Jones do? What would be the answer to this in “Raiders of the Lost Ark”?’ I’ve always loved ‘Raiders’ and the great achievement of it was the tone and the fresh feeling of the movie. It was period but didn’t feel like it was made in the period. It felt like a contemporary film about this period in the past, and that is the goal we have with ‘Captain America.’ And I can say this — it definitely has an Indiana Jones pace.”

The film will have some darker nuances to it – the character of Bucky is far more haunted than the vintage version from comic books, for instance, and Captain America chafes at the way his government handlers spin his public persona. Asked about his greatest concern, Evans conceded that he fretted a great deal about the CG-effects needed for the scenes showing Steve Rogers before his transformation. “If something like that isn’t done right, it takes you right out of the movie. You’re suddenly thinking, ‘Wow that doesn’t look real, look at that actor’ and it can really ruin it. And if it’s early in the movie it can undermine the whole way the audience connects with the story.”

Evans knows that fans and bloggers zeroed in on the frail Rogers sequence in their criticism of the first trailer, but he said the ongoing visual-effects work is like a sculpting process and those scenes will deliver in the finished film. “They nailed it, it works, they really put a lot of time into it. It was a big relief for me.”

The entire movie is like a puzzle piece in a larger picture. Evans is now on the set of “The Avengers,” the 2012 release that pulls his character into the modern day and teams him up with Iron Man, Thor and the Hulk. That has Evans pondering some Rip Van Winkle questions.

“Just think about text messaging,” Evans said. “That’s the way I communicate with my friends now. If one them calls me I’m like, ‘Why didn’t you just text me?’ And that’s pretty new. Cellphones haven’t been around that long – I remember when people didn’t have them, really – and the Internet has totally changed the world in a relatively short period of time. Think of how strange all of it would be to someone from the 1940s who looks around and wonders what happened to all the things that were important to them.”

– by Geoff Boucher for latimes.com

New Captain America pic

With all these updates about Chris Evans, Captain America, Puncture and What's Your Number? running this blog becomes a fulltime job ;-) but I'm not complaining LOL

Chris Evans Interview (videos)

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Source: http://moviesblog.mtv.com

Chris Evans filming scene in New York for Captain America

I want a shirt like that one!!!

Captain America filming in New York (video)

Chris Evans & Samuel L. Jackson filming Captain America scene in New York

Photos courtesy of www.comicbookmovie.com

Chris Evans and the Kassen Brothers Talk Puncture, Captain America and the Tribeca Film Festival

In a few short months, moviegoers will get to see Chris Evans fight the evil Red Skull in the big-budget franchise starter Captain America: First Avenger. Before he bursts into the superhero stratosphere, however, Evans has to fight some equally imposing foes in Puncture, a film about drug addiction and health care group purchasing organizations that premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival this week.

Based on a true story, Puncture stars Evans as Mike Weiss, a drug-addicted Houston personal injury lawyer, who — along with his partner Paul Danziger — fought to get safe syringes into all U.S. hospitals to prevent health care workers from being stuck with infected needles.

The feature directorial debut of Mark and his brother Adam (producers on HBO’s Bernard and Doris), Puncture is a hybrid film — at once a harrowing tale of addiction and the crippling grip it can have on those in its throes, and a David vs. Goliath legal battle reminiscent of Michael Clayton. At the center of the film is Evans, in a far departure from his comic book work in The Losers and Fantastic Four. He makes Mike both sympathetic and infuriating — the type of guy who has his heart in the right place, but sabotages himself with every popped pill and crack-smoke inhale.

As of this writing, Puncture doesn’t have distribution, but following a well-received Tribeca Film Festival premiere on Thursday night, a timely subject matter and the burgeoning star power of Evans, expect that to change relatively soon. Movieline caught up with Evans and the Kassen brothers in midtown on Friday just before lunch to discuss Puncture, the importance of debuting the film at Tribeca, and just how Evans wound up starring as Mike Weiss.

The one thing I was very surprised by was how recent the events Puncture is based on happened. You don’t really think of dirty needles in hospitals being a problem in the last 15 years — it’s shocking that the safety needles took so long to break through.

Mark Kassen: That’s the thing — the breakthrough in medical science already happened. It’s the mechanism that’s broken in a way that the breakthrough — or something similar — can’t get to people who need it. People say there is not enough electric technology or solar technology or wind technology because it’s not cost-effective. This is not that problem. This is just that mechanism of distribution is broken.

Was this something you were aware of before? How did you guys find this story — did Paul Danziger contact you?

Adam Kassen: Paul sent us the script — Paul sent us a version of the script. Like you, we were surprised by that story. We hadn’t heard this either. Also, at a time — as it continues to be — where health care is at the forefront of the political arena, this was an interesting window on that debate. In particular, our parents are both front-line health care professionals, and in all the debate about health care you don’t really hear too much about those people. So, that connected to us on a personal level. And then the character that Chris played, Mike, was this amazing, brilliant, tragic hero. And we thought if we got the right actor — which we were lucky enough to get — it could be a really special movie.

We got Chris Lopata, who is a friend of ours — a writer we’ve been working with for a bunch of years, who’s great; we worked with him for about a year. We got it to a place where we really loved the script, and we sent it to Chris, and Chris was nice enough to take a meeting. And as we keep saying, we got him drunk, and…

Chris Evans: I signed my life away! [Laughs]

You took Puncture before being cast in Captain America. At the time, were you specifically looking for something more character-driven like this?

CE: I think my team — my agents and managers — know the type of scripts that I like, the types of characters that I enjoy. My team sent me this and said, ‘You’re going to like this. We know you’re going to like this.’ I gave it a read, and I did. Within ten pages, I just loved the character — and then it turned out to be a great story. I was like, ‘This is awesome, I can’t believe this is in my ballpark. This is a possibility for me, no one is going to take this from me.’ I met with these guys, and at the end of the day you need good directors. If you don’t have good directors, it doesn’t matter how good the script or the character is. With them, I felt completely comfortable and confident, and I said, ‘This is great. I can’t believe these guys are foolish enough to just give me this movie.’

As a character, Mike is a departure for you. Are you going to try to do more of these types of roles going forward, perhaps to balance out being a major superhero like Captain America?

CE: Yeah, of course! You gotta. The Captain America stuff is great, it’s fun. I actually do connect to the character; I love that character. But for me, the thing I struggle with on those films is the process. The way the film is made. It’s a very big movie, there’s a lot of waiting around. This film, we shot… 25 days?

AK: 25 days.

CE: 25 filming days! That’s insane. It’s like 90-something with Captain America. We’re doing 7-to-8 pages a day on Puncture, and Captain America, we get — y’know, half a page. We’re lucky if we get a page.

AK: I know, you’re like: ‘We did 16 page days here, today we did 6/8th of a page.’

CE: 6/8ths of a page. I had one line today. I had one line!

MK: Throw a shield! Duck! Head down! [Laughs]

CE: And we do that a million times. This movie, you came home and you felt like you made a movie. You felt like an actor. You felt like, ‘I did my job today. I did what I love to do. I came to set and had to be ready on a bunch of different levels.’ And it’s rewarding. It’s satisfying. I certainly want to make sure that I keep doing these things.

The relationship Mike has with Paul in the film reminded me a little bit of the relationship the characters played by Matt Damon and Ed Norton had in Rounders. Did you guys do a lot of preparation beforehand to really hone the chemistry?

MK: We went on a retreat. [laughs] We went to Barbados. No, we didn’t really do that.

AK: No, but what they did do [was hang out]. Chris came down to Houston, and — besides us hanging out in LA beforehand — we spent some time just walking around the city. Meeting the actual real characters involved, together. The two of them, through rehearsal, talked through the script themselves, worked on material — things that worked, things that didn’t. That prep time kinda helped us get to know each other, and allowed all of us to feel comfortable. And the nice result of it was that Mark and Chris had a really great chemistry between them.

MK: Also, Chris and I — I think we all are people that… we do this for a living, because we like other things. We spent more time talking about other stuff in life — or in the world — while walking around Houston. Sorta doing that you get to know people on a real level, which was the hope. Also, as an actor, we really wanted to be a partner in something. We really wanted this to work. Otherwise, what we ask is too demanding.

You mentioned on Thursday night how you guys spent almost a year researching the film. Were you two doing investigative reporter-style work, trying to find out whatever you could about Mike’s story?

AK: More documentary-style. We were trying to get everybody’s side of the story. So we met with most of the players in the movie, who had a lot to say about it. And there’s stuff written about it — a lot of the information about the needle stuff. The actual footage in the movie of some of the stuff you saw in Africa was from a real documentary called Injection. It’s a really interesting documentary that talks about some of the real needle tragedies that happened overseas. So there’s information out there — and like you said, we were really surprised that this was actually happening.

MK: I’d say that’s one of the single biggest comments we get about the subject of the movie. People can’t believe they didn’t know about this.

So the goal is to get people to know about this. Puncture hasn’t been picked up for distribution yet, but with Chris’ Captain America star power and the health care peg, do you think it will?

AK: We’ve been producing films and television stuff. For us it’s like, we made it. We did our work. And we have people that will show it to the people and put it places. It will have a life somewhere.

MK: This will have a life somewhere. We’re proud of it. And people will decide where it goes.

You guys are from upstate New York — does debuting your first feature film at the 10th anniversary of the Tribeca Film Festival mean a lot?

AK: Yeah, because the city is our adoptive home. We’ve lived here all of our adult life, and even with this film: we started developing it here, we posted it here. We still consider this is our film community. So to have our directorial debut be at Tribeca Film Festival really means the world to us.

Source: http://www.movieline.com/

Marvel Confirms That Both Thor and Captain America Will Get Sequels

Even though Marvel Studios is two weeks away from releasing Thor and over three months away from dropping Captain America: The First Avenger into theaters, the comic company is so confident in its summer superheroes — played by Chris Hemsworth and Chris Evans respectively — that it is already planning blockbuster sequels for each.

In a new interview with Disney’s quarterly magazine D23: The Official Disney Fan Club, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige revealed his future plans for both Thor and Captain America:

“Thor will go off into a new adventure, and Captain America will continue to explore the modern world in another film of his own. We hope that holds true for the characters appearing in that film — Black Widow, Hawkeye, and the spy organization, S.H.I.E.L.D. —all of whom are more than worthy and capable of carrying their own films. And, we’ve got a lot of other characters we’re prepping and getting ready for film debuts: the world of martial arts, these great cosmic space fantasies, Dr. Strange, and the magic side of the Marvel Universe. There are many, many stories to be mined.”

Photo Credit: Timothy White / USA WEEKEND

Source: http://www.movieline.com/

Chris Evans on fighting to play the Marvel hero's wimpy kid alter-ego

by Jeff Jensen for Entertainment Weekly

The recently-released trailer for Captain America: The First Avenger is generating much buzz among comic book fanboys and less geeky civilians alike for showcasing one of the movie’s most impressive effects — and it isn’t the frightening spectacle of Hugo Weaving’s blood red skull or the stirring sight of the All-American hero hurling his vibranium shield at phalanx of Hydra baddies. (But for the record: Pretty cool, too.)

No, it’s the striking image of star Chris Evans looking distressingly gaunt as Captain America’s alter-ego, Steve Rogers. Credit special effects magic similar to what director David Fincher used to make the Winklevoss twins in The Social Network – and to Evans’ own lobbying. When he was cast as the shield baring WWII-era super-soldier of Marvel Comics legend, Evans sweated the prospect of toning and bulking up his body to fill out the hero’s physique flattering star-spangled threads. But he was even more concerned about how the filmmakers intended to deal with Rogers, the scrawny lad with a big heart who volunteers for a top secret experiment that turns 4H runts into Nazi-fighting studs.

“When I signed up, I thought they were going to use special effects to shrink me down,” Evans tells EW, perhaps best know for playing another Marvel hero, the Human Torch, in two Fantastic Four films. But when he heard the producers were considering using a skinny kid to double as Skinny Steve, Evans protested: “Not to be an annoying actor about this, but the skinny part of the performance is going to be when the audience decides if they care about Captain America, because Captain America is that little guy at heart. It had to be me. I had to make that guy.” In the end, Team (Captain) America employed a variety of techniques — body doubles, oversized clothing, head-replacement f/x and trick photography — to make Steve the valiant wimp that he is, and to keep as much of Evans’ performance in the picture as possible. “It’s a great story about a relatable guy,” says Evans. “He’s an underdog who despite shortcomings chooses the good instead of bitterness. I think anyone is capable of that.”

The Chris Evans & Chris Hemsworth photoshoot for USA Weekend

Photos by Timothy White, Stockland Martel, for USA WEEKEND

Source: USA Weekend

Hanging out with Chris Evans & Chris Hemsworth

by Brian Truitt for USA Weekend

Hanging out with Chris Evans and Chris Hemsworth at our exclusive duo superhero cover shoot in New York City, only one thought comes to mind: Man, I need to get to the gym.

But back to our superhero mash-up. Two of this summer's biggest guys (we mean that literally and figuratively) shared the love, just for USA WEEKEND's Summer Movie Preview. You may not know them yet — Evans burned up the big screen as the Human Torch in the Fantastic Four movies, and Hemsworth is an Aussie hunk in his first major starring movie role.

But you will soon, when the two actors duke it out at the box office for the season's hottest, or coolest, superhero: Hemsworth, 27, as the title thunder god of next month's Thor (May 6) and Evans, 29, star of Captain America: The First Avenger (July 22). Also sharing the credits: Oscar winners Natalie Portman and Anthony Hopkins in Thor and Tommy Lee Jones in Captain America.

And though we thought they were in the kind of shape that most mortal men envy, both Chrises were in the process of rebuilding into Marvel-ous, super-bod condition to film the reprise of their roles in the ultimate comic hero smackdown, the movie The Avengers. Meaning that unlike most celebrities at a photo shoot, who barely touch the elaborate spreads laid out for them, these guys couldn't get enough. They made several trips to the buffet table for presumably muscle-building chicken, fish and fruit.

Even more unusual about the occasion: the security guard. And he wasn't protecting our famed superheroes. He was guarding the comic characters' gear — Thor's hammer and Cap's shield — lest it be assaulted by the enemy (or overly eager fan).

Fortunately, we were able to get up close and personal with the stars themselves. After the shoot, we sat down for a man-to-man chat. Here are excerpts:

What went through your mind the first time you put on your colorful costumes? Hemsworth: Holy [expletive]. I walked onto set, and Anthony Hopkins and I were in our full get-up. We looked at each other and he said, “Well, there's no acting required here, is there?” It was like being a kid playing dress-up, but the costume's worth more than your house.

Evans: It's all still terrifying. It's a lot of responsibility and a little nerve-racking. As actors, you make movies for the audience — you really can't act without an audience, otherwise you'd be crazy. And this is such an important thing for the audience, you really want to make sure you get it right.

Who are your personal heroes? Evans: This sounds cliché, but it's so true: my parents. They've done everything right when it's really hard, and they've been very selfless. To me, there's something about a hero that should be selfless. It's a very tough thing to do, to put yourself last, and they've done that consistently.

Hemsworth: I grew up surfing, and I idolized Kelly Slater for years. As a young kid, I had a theater studies thing I had to do on a Sunday at school, which I wasn't happy about. That was my surfing day. [One Sunday,] my dad had come back from surfing, and he goes, “Guess who I surfed with today?” I was like, “Who?” “Kelly Slater.” I remember my eyes literally watering because this guy was a god to me. They couldn't have told me anything worse. That I missed that opportunity was heartbreaking.

Did you feel silly doing any of the superhero stunts? Hemsworth: Some of the wire gags and hanging upside down. I'm a pretty active person, but some of that stuff, I was like, “God, get me down from this thing.” It's hard work! It's like you're an actor one minute and an acrobat the next, spinning upside down backward for certain things and just wanting to throw up. But it all looks good once it's up there on the screen. We know you worked out hard, but did you enjoy getting out of shape, too?

Evans: As soon as we stopped shooting, I stopped going to the gym. Oh, my God, I never wanted to see another weight in my life! I completely just dove into a bowl of lazy for about two months. Hemsworth: It was really weird because you almost become addicted to it. Then all of a sudden the hand brake is pulled and you're allowed to relax. There's a part of you that doesn't really want to, because it's used to doing this, but you do need to rest.

How cool has your personal life been lately? Evans: Well, it's not not cool [laughs]. It's fun.

Chris Hemsworth, what did your new wife think of your physical transformation? Hemsworth: Some girls love more muscles, some girls less. She likes it if I'm sort of generally healthy. Physically for women, it's usually less of a concern than it is for men. We tend to be a bit more superficial.

What's your superhero workout tip for America? Evans: If you want to die, you're doing it right. I've always worked out my whole life. But I go to the gym and I'd leave feeling good. That's not a workout. You want to leave the gym contemplating killing yourself. If that's what you're thinking, then you're having a good workout.

Source: USA Weekend

Chris Evans on being the star-spangled superhero of ‘Captain America’

by Brian Truitt for USA Weekend

Our comic book superheroes are an all-American bunch, but a majority of them are played by actors not from around these parts. Green Lantern star Ryan Reynolds is from Canada, Christian Bale (aka Batman) and Henry Cavill (the new Superman) hail from Great Britain, and Aussies Hugh Jackman and Chris Hemsworth play Wolverine and Thor on the big screen, respectively. Fittingly, the one guy who is American is the man wearing the red, white and blue togs of Captain America. In Captain America: The First Avenger (directed by Joe Johnston and coming out in theaters July 22), Chris Evans — a native of one of the original 13 colonies, Massachusetts — stars as Steve Rogers, a scrawny weakling who’s rejected by the U.S. military in the 1940s but then signs up to be a test subject for a top-secret super-soldier serum. Now supersized, Rogers becomes an American hero during World War II, taking on Hydra and their evil Nazi leader, the Red Skull (Hugo Weaving). I ventured up to New York City for an exclusive cover shoot with Evans and Thor star Hemsworth, his on-screen pal in the upcoming superhero team-up The Avengers (co-starring the likes of Robert Downey Jr. and Scarlett Johansson), for this weekend’s summer movie preview. I’ll have more from my interview with Hemsworth tomorrow and Monday, but read below for what Evans had to say about being Captain America and check him out in action in this trailer.

One of the striking things in the movie is you coming out of the military pod and looking crazy buff post-serum. How much training did you endure to get into that condition? Ugh, so much training. It was tough. I’ve always been in the gym and worked out and things like that, and I’ve had to get big for other films, but nothing like this. They flew a trainer over from London – I was in Boston working on a film, and we did three months prior to shooting. We were working out every day for just about two hours, sometimes twice a day, and it was just grueling. I’ve never trained like that in my life. I’m just getting back into it now and gearing back up and trying to get big again.

So, lots of eating? Lots of eating. That’s the hardest part. You’d think that would be the fun part, but sometimes you’re full. You just don’t want to eat. I have to. I’m a naturally skinny guy, so to try and get mass like that, it’s not easy. I have to make sure I’m taking in a lot of protein.

In the Marvel comics, Cap is a guy who went from the 1940s to modern times when he’s found encased in ice by the Avengers. Assuming part of that will be in The Avengers movie, your Cap will have to live in a world that’s very different from what he’s used to. Yeah, at least there’s some meat on the bone. You want to play a character that has conflict – that’s what makes a character appealing to an actor, getting to find an arc and a reason, something to chew on. And that’s a lot. If you woke up one day and it was 50, 60 years in the future and everyone you knew had passed away and the entire world around you is different — you don’t have a friend, you don’t know anybody, you don’t know anything — that’d be a lot to take in. It’s exciting as an actor to try and tackle that.

What’s this I hear about a “Captain America song”? There is a Captain America song, but I don’t sing it. Initially in the film, when he becomes Captain America, long story short the serum is destroyed and they can’t reproduce the experiment so I’m the only super soldier there is. The U.S. government won’t allow me to go to war because it’s too risky and they can’t afford to lose me, but they use me as a propaganda tool and they send me on a USO Tour. So there’s a whole Captain America song, and they try to make him a little bit of a celebrity to try and sell bonds. There is a Captain America song, and there was a week of shooting, and I had that song in my head. I couldn’t stop humming it! It was so annoying. But it’s a funny sequence actually.

They Benjamin Buttoned you a little bit and digitally made you a 98-pound weakling at the beginning of the movie. What was it like seeing that part after you’ve just gone and worked out hard for three months? Well, it wasn’t that foreign to me because that’s what I looked like for a big chunk of my life. [Laughs] When I saw it, I was like, “My family is gonna die.” This is what I looked like for all of all middle school. Up until maybe sophomore year, I was a pretty skinny kid for a long time. It looks pretty normal. It was a crazy process doing that stuff. They went back and forth on the type of technology they were going to use. Initially, they were just going to do body shrinking, and then they thought, “Well, maybe we can get another skinny actor and put Chris’ head on it,” and I really, really was against that. I said to Joe, “Look, I know we want this to look good and this effect to not be distracting from the film, but it has to be my performance. I don’t want to share this. Your body is a huge piece of the acting puzzle, and I don’t want to have somebody else’s body tell the story that I’m trying to tell.” So they did some tweaking and they did a bunch of tests and we went back to the initial plan to shrink my body. Anytime my body’s completely still, if I’m lying on that bed or if I’m sitting in a chair not moving, it was easier for them to put my head on a smaller body. But anytime there was movement or action or acting involved, Joe and I were pretty adamant about saying, “Look, you’ve got to shrink me down.” And they did. I haven’t seen the film yet, but I’ve seen a couple different scenes of the shrunken stuff and it looks amazing.

And we’ve seen how the Red Skull looks now, too. Oh, that looks so badass. You’d be talking to Hugo on set and he’d be wearing that thing, and you kinda want to just touch it. It looked so good! It didn’t look fake — it looked like there is a man with a red skull standing next to me who is evil.

Did having two Fantastic Four movies under your belt help in knowing at least the fervent, comics-loving fanboys you’d have to deal with? Sure. It’s great to get an experience of the press tour and the craziness and the workload after filming. Filming is one thing, but all movies are relatively similar. The work comes in the form of press. You go all over the world and you don’t sleep and it’s just answering a lot of the same questions thousands of times and trying to promote this thing you’ve worked on so hard. But the good thing about Fantastic Four is everyone wanted to talk to Jessica [Alba]. No one wanted to talk to me! [Laugh] It was great! I got to sit in the background and be there, but not have to really carry the load. This is obviously different. It’s nice to have had a little taste but yeah, it’s gonna be nothing close to this.

Do you enjoy that extra responsibility? No! My God, I hate it! [Laughs] I almost didn’t do this movie because I hate that so much. It’s just not for me. I don’t know, it’s a strange thing to talk about yourself. You have to look at it as a job, you have to look at it as work. If all of a sudden you stop – at least if I stop — in the middle of an interview and look at myself, I become very uncomfortable, very nervous. It just feels strange. I feel false, it doesn’t feel right. This movie is a lot of that – it’s gonna be a lot of press. I have a little bit of an anxiety issue. I wasn’t making whatever movie I wanted to make – you still have to struggle — but I was very happy, very content, with what I was doing. I’d make a movie every now and then and I’ve made a good living and I got to do what I loved and I managed to stay out of the public eye, and I was very happy. This was one of those things where it was like, “Alright, if you do this, there’s really no off switch. There’s no rewind. You’ve got to make sure you’re ready and that you really, really want this.” A lot of times, people only see the good part and they forget how tricky it can be. For some reason, I only saw the bad. [Laughs] When I first got offered the movie, I just only saw the negatives and ran from it.

What changed your mind? The fact that I was scared. I said to someone close to me, “I was offered this movie and I think I’m going to say no.” And she said, “No, you’re not. You’re going to do this movie.” I said, “Why?” And she said, “Because you can’t live your life based on fear.” That’s a really good point: I think I’d end up having more regret if I didn’t do it because I was scared than if I did it, and whatever comes, comes. At least I wasn’t a coward.

So what happened in sophomore year that beefed you up? Did you get into sports? I did play sports, yeah. I think I just started caring a lot about girls and saying, “Alright, maybe I should try and work out, I guess.” I think that’s what you’re supposed to do. And I had a lot of buddies who played sports and everyone was always in the gym. So around 14, 15, I started working out a little bit. There was a summer when I was going into my senior year of high school, I lived in New York City and I interned at a casting office – that’s how I kind of jammed my foot in the door. But that summer, I had no friends, I was 17, I couldn’t go to a bar, I lived in a s***hole in Brooklyn, so I’d go to work and then I’d come home and sit in my room all night. I just did the prison workout — pushups, pull-ups, little dips on my chair — for the whole summer. At the end of that summer, I think that was when my body changed a little bit.

Between The Avengers and the Captain America sequel in the works, have you figured out what else you’ll be doing not involving a costume or a shield? I have a movie [Puncture] that’s coming and will go to the Tribeca Film Festival. It’s a little indie. It’s nice to get independent films in there. It’s a completely different feel. Sometimes in movies like [Captain America], there’s a lot of money involved, and as a result, everyone is paid a lot of money to make everything look perfect. You’ve seen these movies – it’s art, it’s gorgeous. But as a result, it’s very tedious. Some days, you really sit around, and you go home and you’re like, “Man, I spent maybe 60 percent of my day sitting on my ass.” A little indie movie, you go go go. You’ll burn through seven or eight pages in a day. On a film like Captain America, you might get a page. With the indies, you come home and you really feel like, “I made a movie today. I went to work and I worked and I was an actor for a living and I was told I had to be ready all day. There was no rest. I had to be there.” You really feel like you got your hands dirty. Sometimes this just feels a little slow, so it’s nice to get back to some indies.

With Cap, you are in the spotlight and the star. In The Avengers, there are at least seven A-listers involved. Do you feel a little more comfortable with that situation? Oh, I can’t wait. [Laughs] I’m hoping they only want to talk to Robert and Scarlett. Please! That’s all I was thinking about with The Avengers: Just get through Captain America and then I can disappear into the background come press time. The movie’s one thing – obviously you want to act and it’s fun to make a film and play a role, but come press and interviews, I have no problem being way in the back seat and trying to let everyone else take the heat.

Source: USA Weekend

Second preview of Chris Evans & Chris Hemsworth for USA weekend

Chris Evans & Chris Hemsworth on the cover of USA Weekend

Captain America’ star Chris Evans on submarine sequences and his uncomfy costume

The first full Captain America trailer arrived some weeks ago and it featured Chris Evans’ Cap getting super-sized with super-soldier serum, slinging shields, beating up Nazis and Hydra agents, facing off with the Red Skull (Hugo Weaving), being shot at, and jumping in the water to stop an escaping enemy (played by Richard Armitage) in a submarine. That last part was one of the zaniest sequences Evans had to do, the actor told me last month when he was in New York for our upcoming summer movie photo shoot with fellow superhero actor, Chris Hemsworth of Thor.

“It’s a pretty cool-looking thing actually,” Evans says of the scene. “He takes off and my character runs and dives in and swims after him and grabs the submarine and punches it. It’s this whole underwater thing, and as I was reading it, I was like, ‘Oh my God, I’ve never done a scene underwater. This is crazy!’ And it was. It was like five days in this giant tank underwater. They yell ‘Cut!,’ you swim over to a guy with a respirator and a tank, and you breathe. Then you take it out and he yells again. It was just a crazy thing but it was fun.”

We’ll have more from Evans closer to the April 15-17 issue featuring the pair of Marvel Comics heroes, but read below for what the former Fantastic Four star thought of the 1940s aesthetic of Captain America (in theaters July 22) and his superheroic threads.

Captain America director Joe Johnston is no stranger to action-packed period pieces — he helmed The Rocketeer, of which Evans is a big fan, as well as October Sky and Jumanji, which had old-school scenes in the beginning. “That’s one of the appeals to me,” Evans says of the ‘40s-era sets, music, garb and environment. “I think that’s going to be a good selling point for the film. Joe is so good at creatig that world. You’d walk on set and you’re like, ‘Man, I can’t believe where I am right now. This is wild.’ ”

Evans wasn’t as psyched about Cap’s costume, which to an untrained eye looks leathery and uncomfortable. “It didn’t breathe, no,” Evans deadpans. “I don’t know if they washed it. It was this type of canvas – there were leather straps. It was a lot of layers and pieces and very cumbersome. Every morning you’d put it on and you’d have a little conniption fit in your trailer where you were just like, ‘Arrrgh!’ and then you’d just surrender and say, ‘OK, let’s go make a [freakin’] movie.’ ”

Of course, he did not actually say “freakin’ ” — instead he used a four-letter word not suitable for a family blog, or a superhero for that matter. Evans paused after saying it and laughed. “I shouldn’t be swearing. Captain America shouldn’t swear. But I get caught with these interviews and I start dropping f-bombs! This is why I can’t do interviews!”

Source: USA weekend

New behind the scenes Captain America pic

A behind the scenes photo of Captain America. I'm not convinced it's Chris Evans in the pic though, but his skinny body double. What do you think?

Chris Evans & Producer On Steve Rogers' Morals in Captain America: The First Avenger!

Chatting with USA Today from the set in England, while filming for Marvel & Joe Johnston's much-anticipated Captain America: The First Avenger movie was underway, the star Chris Evans and Producer Stephen Broussard subtly elaborates on what makes Steve Rogers paramount and more.

"Steve has been dealt kind of a lousy hand in life," Evans says. "He's 5-foot-nothing. He's 110 pounds. He's got a lot of ailments, but it hasn't made him bitter or jaded or anything. Even after he's given this great gift, he still continues to do the right thing, not to prove anything to anyone other than himself. He just has this great moral code."

"The first cover issue of Cap punching Hitler was definitely a political statement," says producer Stephen Broussard. "Like today, the country was divided and there were people who thought we should go over there and do the right thing, and there were others who said it was Europe's war and to stay out of it."

"Captain America was invented essentially for American propaganda. I mean, who was going to be like, 'Nah, the Nazis, they were OK. They had a few (good ideas)!'" Evans jokes. "It's safe to say we can all agree it's pure evil, right there. So it's fantastic to create a character of pure good, pure honesty and true morality, and say this is ultimate bad against ultimate good."

Captain America Trailer screencaps