Sam Worthington stars in Man on a Ledge, in UAE cinemas today. Kristian Dowling / AP Photo
Sam Worthington stars in Man on a Ledge, in UAE cinemas today. Kristian Dowling / AP Photo
Sam Worthington stars in Man on a Ledge, in UAE cinemas today. Kristian Dowling / AP Photo
Sam Worthington stars in Man on a Ledge, in UAE cinemas today. Kristian Dowling / AP Photo

Sam Worthington: a man on a mission


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James Mottram talks to Sam Worthington about his latest film Man on a Ledge and reprising his role as Perseus in Wrath of the Titans

In these days of sensitive "new men", Sam Worthington is that rare Hollywood commodity. Like Russell Crowe and Mel Gibson, the star of Avatar and Terminator: Salvation oozes Aussie machismo. Even his endorsements suggest he's a man's man. You won't find Worthington advertising skin creams, designer suits or aftershave, living the GQ lifestyle. No. His major commercial outing was in the (admittedly brilliant) ad for the computer game sensation Call of Duty, in which he played a soldier tutoring Jonah Hill in combat manoeuvres.

Famously, he spent time living in a beat-up old Toyota Corona car when he was broke. Now, since Avatar became the biggest film of all time, he can afford a life of luxury - although you sense it doesn't impress him. "Well, I like living in hotels because they make your bed, they put a chocolate on your pillow and you can phone them up and get food anytime." he grins. "But you try to keep yourself rooted and down to earth. I'm Australian - that kinda helps." Born in Surrey in England, before his family emigrated, there's evidently very little Briton left in him.

With his weathered features, the 35 year old is not the most handsome devil (even if he did convince in the romantic drama Last Night, with Keira Knightley and Eva Mendes) and knows it could all end tomorrow. "My mate said a really cool thing to me once. He said, 'You can always go back to your own country'." Having started his career there in "intimate kitchen sink dramas", they'd gladly have him back if he flopped in Hollywood. "At the moment I can take a few hits. So I'll give it a crack. That's how Harrison [Ford] and Mel [Gibson] did it."

His latest film, Man on a Ledge, puts a new spin on that old Hollywood sell, the "high-concept" movie. "It's about a dude on a ledge," laughs Worthington, who plays Nick Cassidy. A disgraced cop, on the run after a hair-raising jailbreak, his venture to the 21st-floor ledge of a plush Manhattan hotel is no suicide bid. Rather, he's a decoy, so his brother (Jamie Bell) can pull off a heist nearby and gather evidence to prove his innocence. "It's like Phone Booth meets The Negotiator," notes Worthington, who clearly has the movie's pitch down pat.

While the negotiating is left to Elizabeth Banks, who plays the cop entrusted with the job of safely talking Cassidy down, the comparisons to Joel Schumacher's Phone Booth make complete sense, too. Like that thriller, which saw Colin Farrell at the mercy of a sniper, similarly the character is confined to a small, but very exposed, public space. Still, Farrell was just left to sweat it out in a phone box; Worthington actually stepped on to that ledge for real.

Shot at New York's Roosevelt Hotel, he spent three weeks standing on a 14-inch ledge more than 200 feet above Madison Avenue. So does he have an insane head for heights? "I do now. I didn't back then." he grunts. "It's a different kind of vertigo. It's just different. It's unbelievable. What's harder is that you get used to it, so acting nervous is a lot harder than actually running around. Your brain can't comprehend it. And the director is in your ear, [talking over an earpiece], so he can give you the directions. He's not going to come out on the ledge with you."

Such bravado is typical of Worthington, though it seems there's no harsher critic of his work than himself. Take Clash of the Titans. Never mind that the 2010 remake took almost half a billion dollars. "I wasn't happy with what I delivered, personally," he says. "It wasn't the movie that I would have liked it to be." Certainly, this offers explanation for why he wanted to reprise his troubled demigod Perseus for the forthcoming sequel Wrath of the Titans. "There were mistakes that I wanted to rectify. Basically, we just wanted to make something a bit bigger and bolder, and hopefully better."

He certainly left his co-star Rosamund Pike, who plays Andromeda in Wrath, impressed. "Sam is not a 'yes man'. He's inquisitive, and interrogative and challenging," she says. "I think he cares very deeply." Worthington nods in agreement. "I [do] care about it, man. I spend five months of my life filming it, I spend another two months promoting it, then the rest of my life living with it. So you better give the audience what they deserve. I'm only here because some dude wants to pay $12 to go and see me in a film. And if I'm not up to the calibre he expects … I should be working a lot harder for him."

There's a rough-hewn work ethic to Worthington, doubtless stemming from his Perth upbringing. Living in Warnbro, a suburb of Rockingham, just south of the city, near to where his father worked in a power plant, Worthington dropped out of school when he was 17 and took a job in construction. "I was never really trying to get into the [film] industry. I was a bricklayer. I wanted to build houses. That was my job." He only "fell" into it after he started dating a girl who was trying out for the Sydney-based drama school, NIDA (National Institute of Dramatic Art).

Auditioning alongside her "out of moral support", he got in - and she didn't. Graduating in 1998, he immediately found work, initially in a production of David Hare's play The Judas Kiss. Australian films and TV shows followed - most notably, 2004's romantic drama Somersault, which won him the Australian Film Institute award for Best Actor. He likens it to his own builder's apprenticeship. "One brick at a time is the cliché. But that's exactly what it is. One brick at a time builds a house. One movie at a time builds a career, whether by chance or design."

A surfer in Drift (a low-budget Aussie movie made by his mates), a soldier in the Iraq war drama Thunder Run and, of course, that much-anticipated return to Pandora in Avatar 2, his next roles look set to continue this winning formula. Yet there's no cool-headed career calculation here. "You can't really plan it," he says. "I pick a movie that I would like to go and see, whether it's a $200 million epic or a $20 million Australian movie." If he sticks with this, he'll have - as they say in his nation - no worries.

Man on a Ledge opens in UAE cinemas on Thursday

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Specs

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What is graphene?

Graphene is a single layer of carbon atoms arranged like honeycomb.

It was discovered in 2004, when Russian-born Manchester scientists Andrei Geim and Kostya Novoselov were "playing about" with sticky tape and graphite - the material used as "lead" in pencils.

Placing the tape on the graphite and peeling it, they managed to rip off thin flakes of carbon. In the beginning they got flakes consisting of many layers of graphene. But as they repeated the process many times, the flakes got thinner.

By separating the graphite fragments repeatedly, they managed to create flakes that were just one atom thick. Their experiment had led to graphene being isolated for the very first time.

At the time, many believed it was impossible for such thin crystalline materials to be stable. But examined under a microscope, the material remained stable, and when tested was found to have incredible properties.

It is many times times stronger than steel, yet incredibly lightweight and flexible. It is electrically and thermally conductive but also transparent. The world's first 2D material, it is one million times thinner than the diameter of a single human hair.

But the 'sticky tape' method would not work on an industrial scale. Since then, scientists have been working on manufacturing graphene, to make use of its incredible properties.

In 2010, Geim and Novoselov were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics. Their discovery meant physicists could study a new class of two-dimensional materials with unique properties. 

 

UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Conflict, drought, famine

Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.

Band Aid

Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.

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Major honours

ARSENAL

  • FA Cup - 2005

BARCELONA

  • La Liga - 2013
  • Copa del Rey - 2012
  • Fifa Club World Cup - 2011

CHELSEA

  • Premier League - 2015, 2017
  • FA Cup - 2018
  • League Cup - 2015

SPAIN

  • World Cup - 2010
  • European Championship - 2008, 2012
ONCE UPON A TIME IN GAZA

Starring: Nader Abd Alhay, Majd Eid, Ramzi Maqdisi

Directors: Tarzan and Arab Nasser

Rating: 4.5/5

Global state-owned investor ranking by size

1.

United States

2.

China

3.

UAE

4.

Japan

5

Norway

6.

Canada

7.

Singapore

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Australia

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Saudi Arabia

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South Korea

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