21 Star Jim Sturgess Goes for Broke in Sin City Tale of Innocence Lost, Lessons Learned

It’s rare that a young actor can enthrall us as Jim Sturgess did in Julie Taymor’s visionary Beatles extravaganza Across the Universe. As Jude, the Liverpool lad caught up in American anti-war protests circa late 60s Greenwich Village, Sturgess was a real discovery—a talented musician and actor in both nostalgic good voice and warm heart.

Currently onscreen in the period potboiler The Other Boleyn Girl as the tragic brother of Natalie Portman’s scheming sister Anne Boleyn, Sturgess is poised to become a big American movie star with his latest role, a confident lead performance in director Robert Luketic’s entertaining 21, the true tale of MIT whiz kids counting cards and beating the blackjack odds in Sin City to the tune of millions. Need 300 grand for tuition? No worries. All in a weekend’s work for nice guy Ben Campbell (Sturgess), who will learn a thing or two about values and money by the film’s surprising final scenes.

Jet-setting from underprivileged undergrads to lifestyles of the rich and aided by a high-rolling professor (Kevin Spacey), 21 is a fast and funny collegiate reversal of fortune and vicariously entertaining get-rich story about the life experience gained by selling your soul—or maybe just your smarts—to the pursuit of wealth in America.

In caught up with Jim Sturgess recently to talk about 21 and his own fast-rising story of success across the movie universe as well as the parallels with his onscreen counterpart, and found a quietly unassuming young guy far removed from the bravado that emerges in the film, for which he sports a confident American accent, transforming from reluctant techno-geek to hustling card shark.

Lee Shoquist: I imagine this is a great time and place for you right now.

Jim Sturgess: Very exciting. Great.

LS: Ben Campbell, your character in 21, experiences quite a transition in this film. He really gets seduced by wealth and excitement.

JS: I think it’s really being a product of the environment more than anything. Sin City, Vegas has the power to do that to people. I grew to understand that the more time I spent out there. We were there for a month and a half, which is a long time to spend in Las Vegas!

LS: Four days max is about all I can handle.

JS: Yeah. That’s what everyone says. A weekend is all you can really do. But we spent way too long out there. Ben experiences the whole nature of greed and gambling and losing money and aggression and how angry that can make you when you lose, and how exciting it can be when you win it all back it again. All of these extremities. It is an extreme place in every sense of the word.

LS: But he certainly gets the life experience he is looking for, doesn’t he?

JS: Certainly does, yes.

LS: The film is based on the experiences of Jeffrey Ma, which were documented in the book Bringing Down the House. You worked with Ma on the film, and he even had a small role as a dealer. He approved of you playing him, and the two of you got along great.

JS: Very much so. When I first flew to Vegas Jeff was great enough to come and meet me and speak with me. We spent a lot of time together. He was back and forth through the whole shoot. So he took me out for dinner with some of his friends. There was a whole group of people. Then we went out drinking and gambling. I had just been in Cuba, so I brought these Cuban cigars back with me, which I didn’t realize was illegal.

LS: What were you doing in Cuba?

JS: I was just hanging out. It was cool. And I thought it would be cool for me and Jeff to go and puff on a cigar and have a chat, and talk about whatever we needed to talk about. So we were out drinking and Jeff said, "Come on, let’s go smoke those cigars." So he took me onto The Palms casino balcony, which has the most incredible view of the Vegas lights. I pulled out these cigars, trying to be the cool, young actor, while he was trying to be the real deal, and we both are sizing each other up! Neither of us could get these cigars lit so we were just kind of puffing away. It was hilarious that we were reduced to the fools that we really are, I guess. At that moment, we became very good friends.

LS: 21 is a very entertaining film that speaks to a young man’s desire to make his mark in the world, and without means as it were. Do you feel the pressure to make a similar mark in your movie career?

JS: I kind of live my life not thinking too much in the sense of a career. I just enjoy doing it. I think if I was thinking too much about becoming a professional actor, I don’t know if I would have made it. What I did think of is that I really enjoy acting, and I’m just going start being creative, enjoy putting on plays and working with my friends, making silly short films and not really thinking anything other than what you were doing at the moment. I understand the story of Ben Campbell in that I did look into going to drama school as a possibility, but wrote it off completely when I realized how expensive it is. So I didn’t think anything of it.

LS: Is it necessary? If you want to make films, just pick up a camera and learn to make them. Is it the same with drama school?

JS: I think that is the point. I could have gone. There is no right or wrong way to do it. But certainly from Ben Campbell’s and my own points of view, it was something I just couldn’t afford. But all the experiences I’ve been having throughout my life and the work I have put in creatively has gotten me to a place where I would not have gotten maybe just through drama school. But the two stories are kind of similar.

LS: When did it become clear that you wanted to be an actor?

JS: When I as younger. I used to really just enjoy doing it, and then as I got older I wasn’t interested in it at all. I started playing music. Girls thought that was much cooler. We were just kids playing in a friend’s garage. It wasn’t until the band split up and everyone was going off to university that I was like, "Sh*t, what am I going to do?"

I found this course that was everything—editing, scriptwriting, boom operating—all these kinds of things. So I guess it was at that point that I started looking at it from a more adult, intelligent perspective as an art form or whatever it is. But I never had much concept of as making it as professional actor. I just enjoyed making short films and putting on plays. I did a one-person show. An actor just happened to see me in that play and recommended me to this agent in London. Then that went on the backseat as I joined another band. It was mishmash.

LS: Your 21 director Robert Luketic calls you passionate. What do you think he means?

JS: Just that I care about the work. Nothing else makes any sense to me other than just really getting my head into the world that I am trying to create and doing anything possible to make it believable for me, and hopefully that will help the audience believe in the story too.

LS: And how does that feel?

JS: It feels correct. Everything about it feels right. I don’t feel nervous, shy or intimidated. As an actor, I get to do all of these things I would never do in real life. I can be doing a scene wearing nothing but a pair of underpants, doing intense dialogue, and I’ll be more nervous about lunch and whom I’m going to sit next to than doing that.

LS: Are you a more private person then? Does the idea of being on this press tour make you self-conscious?

JS: Doing a press tour is something very new for me. I feel exposed and out of my comfort zone. I can enjoy it and accept it for what it is. Sometimes I feel very shy. Sometimes very outgoing. It depends on whom I’m with and the situation.

LS: Did you ever play blackjack before you stepped onto this set?

JS: Never!

LS: 21 makes card-counting look thrilling. Do you understand how it works? If you and I went to Vegas right now, could pull it off?

JS: I get it as far as I can understand it into theory. As far as putting it into practice not a chance in hell! No way, which is why I think it is such a specific story for these particular students at MIT and these card-counting organizations that go on there. You need to have a very quick mathematical mind to pull it off or otherwise no way.

LS: It is really a distinctly American film in its perception of what is possible, and impossible in a capitalist society based on what you have or have not.

JS: Absolutely. If there is anywhere that kind of represents that it is Las Vegas, and it is a grotesque place. I guess a person’s obsession with money as well.

LS: Let’s talk for a moment about Across the Universe. That was a major break, and performance, for you.

JS: Yes. I really owe Julie Taymor everything. She is such a good friend and I really look up to her in every way possible. She changed my life. She didn’t have to do that, and she did. She took a chance. She doesn’t make any compromises, ever—hence the reason I got the part. There were other, better known actors and I was completely unknown at that point, and she took a huge gamble casting the lead in her film with a guy no one had ever even heard of. She stands by what she- she only thinks creatively. She doesn’t have a concept of anything else. She is so childlike in that way. Her imagination is completely childlike and her approach. And it’s amazing that she has this intelligence and great wisdom that comes on top of this childlike imagination. It’s a powerful force.

LS: The set must have been magical.

JS: I can only describe it that I think it is so rare when you realize you are having the best time of your life. Sometimes you can only see that in hindsight or when the experience is over. For me, I just knew that it was as fun as life could get. I couldn’t look at life after that into the future, but I knew that I had been given a gift to be in this film, and I lived each day to the absolute fullest. I hardly got any sleep the whole time. The minute my alarm went off, I could not wait to get up. I could not wait to see Julie on the set. I could not wait to start working out what we were going to do. Even when we finished filming, I would just stay. There was too much excitement, certainly when compared to what I was doing before. I had been stuck in some dreary basement trying to make it as a musician. Then suddenly all of this was a whole new place for me. It was mind-expanding.

LS: Do you get a lot of requests to sing?

JS: Jeff Ma keeps asking me to sing for him. We were in Boston in a bar, and there were these country musicians playing Beatles songs. And Jeff said, "I’ll give you a thousand dollars if you if you go up there and sing ‘Girl.’" And he didn’t expect me to do it. He put a thousand dollars on the table! I just picked it up, walked up there and asked if they knew how to play it, and sang it. I then had to give it back, because it was too easy.

LS: What is the best part about your job?

JS: It is never safe. It is difficult. You are always put in crazy environments with different people, and you learn to deal with it. Just the fact that you get to earn your money through your imagination.

- Lee Shoquist