MANILA, Philippines – Zac Efron embraced a sexy, romantic lead role in the “The Lucky One” where he falls for Taylor Schilling’s character. In the plot, the former “High School Musical” star is all grown up as US Marine Sergeant Logan Thibaul.
In yet another film adaptation of a Nicholas Sparks novel, Efron’s character “returns from his third tour of duty in Iraq, with the one thing he credits with keeping him alive – a photograph he found of a woman he doesn’t even know. Discovering her name is Beth (Schilling) and where she lives, he shows up at her door, and ends up taking a job at her family-run local kennel. A romance develops between them, giving Logan hope that Beth could be much more than his good luck charm.”
Efron said both Logan and Beth had romance thrown over the back burner for some time. So when they sparks started to fly between them, getting physical was a comfortable comedy.
“I mean, in the scene, they are out of practice. And they’re totally in love and having fun and sort of doing it again for the first time. And I think that was easy to do. That’s sort of how we were in the moment anyway. So, a lot of that fit,” said Efron.
Schilling pondered more over scenes that exposed her character to her feelings. “I spent a little bit more time in preparation for her emotional journey and the experiences that Beth was having with Logan and how that was relating to the rest of her life. It’s interesting. It really did take more space for me to kind of uncover where she was coming from and where she was going and how this man was opening her up to true love finally after being so guarded for so long and having given up.
“The love scenes were a really natural outgrowth of where she was at that point in her story. And the physicality of it was pretty simple. Zac and I were really close at that point. We’d been working together and I really trusted him. And he’s a class act. So, it was really fun and comfortable.”
Efron had the most difficult filming time while shooting in Afghanistan. The intimate scenes seemed like a walk in the park compared to the battle-geared takes.
“I think the hardest scenes stuff to film, by far, were all the scenes in Afghanistan at the very beginning. Just wearing that equipment, all the tactical stuff, and clearing that room was really challenging. And it was the middle of the night. It was like 3:00 in the morning. It was freezing. There was rubble everywhere, people screaming. Really, really talented actors all around us, and I was controlling a whole unit of Marines, real Marines. And my stress was through the roof. I really wanted this part to be authentic. So, that was the hardest part for me,” said Efron.
The 24-year-old actor felt that bringing out a character from a book does not fully help an actor to essay the part into reality. “I think it’s somewhere in between. There are specific moments that come out of the book and out of the writing that are really an examination into a character’s thought process and what’s going on that are very fun to read, and offer all kinds of different explanations and little things that you can think about during the scene. But, also, you have to look in the context of the script. You can’t have all kinds of wild other things coming in.”
Schilling, 27, echoed, “Yeah, I agree with that. I think for me it’s a little bit more based on the script and just what’s happening and gathering all the information you can, and then kind of letting it go and just being present.”
(“The Lucky One” opens April 19.)
source: mb.com.ph