There are three criteria to being the next big male pin-up teen idol, you have to be cute, you have to have a sensitive side, and if you really want to go for broke, you have got to be British. Twilight turned the virtually unknown Robert Pattinson into an international teen idol overnight and there are plenty of other British actors that are looking to use that criteria to break themselves into the Hollywood mainstream.

One such actor is Stevenage-bred Alex Pettyfer, whose previous films include Alex Rider: Operation Stormbreaker, Wild Child, and Tormented. The 20 year-old hopes to make a further Hollywood splash with the teen drama Beastly.

The film is a modern-day retelling of Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve’s Beauty And The Beast, based on a teen novel by Alex Flinn. In it, Pettyfer plays Kyle Kingson, a good-looking, but vicious high school student who becomes cursed by a spell that makes him ugly looking, but soon develops feelings for a classmate, played by High School Musical star Vanessa Hudgens. The actor talks about the emotions that go with being a self-conscious teen, a consistent theme in Beastly.

“I think we’re all self-conscious at some point or another,” Alex believes, “I think it’s about growing up and becoming secure in yourself, and kind of pushing forward. I still am growing up.”

Alex talks about what was the biggest challenge of being a “beastly” character.

“I think the final half hour of sitting in a chair every day,” he says, “I find it hard enough to sit down for 20 minutes, let alone that amount of time. So yeah, the makeup. With fur, it gets hot, but you still have your skin. Whereas, I had this rubber mask, literally, there was about 75 pieces that were put on, and then they had to spray-paint it, and then they had to paint over it.”

“I shaved my head for the movie, so you basically have a whole layer of glue over your head,” Pettyfer adds, “And it gets very claustrophobic. You touch yourself, and you’re touching, essentially, silicone, so you can’t feel your face. When you need to itch, you can’t itch. It’s a very disturbing feeling. I know it doesn’t sound great or that bad now, but when you have an itch underneath, and you can’t scratch and [you scratch] and you can’t feel anything, it’s weird.”
However, like the more traditional “Beast”, his more brutal form, Hunter, has no fur. Pettyfer gave us the reasons behind the difference.

“[Writer/director] Daniel [Barnz] and me always said, ‘No fur,’” he says, “We kind of went into [makeup artist] Tony Gardner’s shop, and I sat there for what must have been 16 hours. And went through it all. We decided, ‘Oh, we should have more tattoos, more this, more that.’”

“And we basically came up with this concept that everything that [my character] thought was ugly on a person would come out in him,” Alex continues, “In the beginning of the movie, he sees that Kendra (played by Mary-Kate Olsen) has this tattoo on her face, and he says like, ‘Oh, you’re ugly. You have this tattoo.’ And the pieces of glass in his cuts, because he’s a vain guy, all the shards of mirror that he smashes when he’s angry would essentially be put into his scar. I found it very fascinating that design of him.”

Alex was asked whether it was harder to play his character when he’s a jerk or when he’s more vulnerable.

“I think it was harder to play vulnerable,” Pettyfer believes, “I think anyone can act like a jerk easy. I think to undergo that, I call it a surgery, because it was practically a surgery every day and become someone else and look different, and feel the eyes are on you, it was a very hard process.”

Pettyfer was also asked whether he had to work even harder as a performer, because his face was covered in makeup and prosthetics.
“No,” he replies, “You know what was great was that all the prosthetics that were attached to my face all move with my face and like it’s still me. I guess there were certain scenes where I had teeth in that would restrain me from talking.”

“I remember Heath Ledger said when he did Brokeback Mountain that he said that he wanted to close his mouth,” Alex adds, “His mouth was like a fist, because he had been through so much hurt. There’s little stuff, like my mouth doesn’t open as much because he’s pained by how he looks.”

Alex was then asked if he read any past versions of Beauty And The Beast.

“I read the [original Beastly book] by Alex Flinn,” Pettyfer answers, “But obviously, everybody’s seen Beauty and the Beast, the tale, the musical. I actually saw the TV show with Linda Hamilton and Ron Perlman. And he has a lot of fur on him! That guy goes through prosthetics more than anyone.”

In Beastly, playing the girl who transforms Alex Pettyfer’s character into his “beastly” self is Mary-Kate Olsen, who is herself, along with her twin sister, Ashley, a former teen idol. Pettyfer talked about the experience of working with and meeting Olsen.

“I remember being like 11 years of age or 12 years of age,” Alex says, “And you go like, ‘Who’s your crush?’ ‘The Olsen twins!’ And then you grow up, and you’re 18, 19. And you have this petite little lady come up. She’s so wise beyond her years. And she is a presence. It was a great experience to work with her. [I confessed my crush to her] everyday. She wasn’t having any of it.”

Beastly is not the only role Pettyfer has done as of late as he previously played the title character in the teen science-fiction film I Am Number Four, which came out this past February and did decently at the box office. Alex was asked how it felt to be Hollywood’s latest “man of the hour”.
“Am I man of the hour?,” Pettyfer says, “I don’t feel like man of the hour. I feel like I had just done two films that I’m very proud of. I’m just excited for people to see both of them. They have great messages and this is a movie that I’ve been waiting to come out for a long time. I’m a very lucky boy to be in the position that I’m in.”

Finally, Pettyfer was asked whether he enjoyed doing action films like I Am Number Four or more emotional, dramatic roles like this film.

“I think you just look to be challenged as an actor,” Alex replies, “I think that’s the most important thing. I guess I had fun doing both. It’s fun to run around and blow up shit, as they say. But it was so great to have this intimacy.”

Source: The Cinema Source

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