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Interview With John
Corbett
October 06, 2004
- Raise Your Voice may be a
star vehicle for fledgling teen
singing sensation Hilary Duff, but
it's actor John Corbett who steals
the show. In the film, Duff plays a
midwestern girl who loses her
passion for music after experiencing
a family tragedy, and Corbett is the
eccentric teacher who inspires her;
ironically, the actor recently told
IGN FilmForce that he himself is
anything but inspired about
his future prospects in Hollywood.
"I'm getting
out of acting," Corbett said to a
roomful of disappointed female
journalists a few weeks ago. "I'm
bored. I've been doing this for so
long and I can't do this anymore.
I've got one more movie to promote
after this one and then it's 'Thank
you, Jesus, I don't have to do this
anymore.'" Corbett's departure from
acting couldn't come as more of a
surprise to most followers of
Tinseltown's ebb-and-flow barometer
of success and failure; after
(temporarily) stealing Sarah Jessica
Parker's Carrie Bradshaw away from
Chris Noth's Mr. Big for a few
seasons of Sex and the City,
Corbett found time to pop up in a
number of enormously successful
romantic comedies, including
Serendipity and the runaway hit
My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Part
of the problem, he insists, is that
he can't seem to escape playing
somebody's beau. "I'm sick of
playing romantic leads," he says.
"I don't want to slam the cute and fun movies out there, but it gets old," he
confesses. "I would love to be a movie with some guys, man. I mean, f***, I've
been doing this for twenty years and I've never done a movie with dudes. Never.
I've never done a picture with guys." When asked what kind of movies he had in
mind, he replies, "Anything! Just some men. I don't care, man, just something
with some guys, man. I want to work with some dudes." Postulating possible
alternatives to his premature retirement, a few of the female journalists
suggest that one of those 'dude' movies might be the antidote for his
ambivalence to acting. "Unless that happens, man, I'm not ever working again.
I'm just tired of it. I'm too old."I'm 43,
I've been doing it for twenty years.
I can't f***ing be in a hotel in
Toronto for seven weeks any more,
staring at the f***ing ceiling, and
then leaving the hotel room to be on
a set for like fifteen hours."
Suggesting further why
he's ready to hang up the grease paint, he says that due to the poor quality of
scripts that come his way, he was even initially reticent to take on Ms. Duff
for Raise Your Voice. "I get offered movies probably twice a month and
they are just generally bad," he explains. "I say no more times than I say yes
because there's just a lot of s**t and I have to pick the best of what I'm
offered. [When] my agent said 'it's a Hilary Duff movie' I was like 'Oh, that's
great,'" he says with a laugh. "'We've got good news and bad news. The good news
is you've got a movie. The bad news is it's a Hilary Duff movie.'"
Despite his initial hesitations, Corbett says he's satisfied with the end
result. "I'm happy I'm in it," he says. "What changed my mind was I read five
pages of it and just kept reading it and reading it and couldn't put it down. I
thought, 'Wow, this is a great little movie.' And that was it."
Throughout the interview, Corbett colors his comments with enough expletives to
make a sailor blush. When asked whether his penchant for profanity proved to be
a problem on the set of Raise Your Voice, he said, "I got kicked out of
school for saying 'f***' when I was in the fifth grade." Corbett goes on to
indicate that any incidents where he made too-liberal use of the f-word did not
involve the preternaturally mature Ms. Duff. "Not Hilary as much as some of the
other kids. Hilary's pretty cool – she's a 40-year-old 16 year old. She's been
around, and when I get hyped up, I do say 'f***' a lot.
"Yeah, they asked me to watch it, and I did," he finally confesses. "I'd forget
some times. Around kids, you know, I got a ten-year-old god-kid, godson, and I'm
always saying f*** and his dad's giving me the elbow. I'm like, 'Sorry, sorry.'"
Corbett says that
Duff was a delight to work with.
"She was great," he says. "I went
and knocked on her door the first
day I was working and she was
sitting there with her mom. I went
and hung out with her for like half
an hour, and we became buddies." He
admits that her performance in the
film truly overpowers him – so much,
in fact, that he begins to cry while
he's remembering watching them. "She
moved me in this movie. Even though
I really don't want to be on sets
any more, I still cried when I saw
this movie because she has become a
friend of mine. When I saw her being
so raw and open – they got really
good stuff on her – and when she
started crying in this movie, I
started crying. I feel like crying
right now.
"The scene where she's with Rita, and Rita's folding those clothes – I'm crying
right now thinking about it – you know, that just made me cry, man, you know
when they were both so emotional and just f***ing out there for everybody out
there to see. It didn't feel fake at all, like most scenes when somebody's
crying."
For his own scenes, Corbett had a few unconventional demands for the filmmakers.
The first request was for a particular prop that would signpost his character's
eccentricities. He explains, "I asked Sean if I could have a bass that I could
drop." Additionally, a previous experience juggling hairstyles unexpectedly
provided a window of opportunity for him once the filmmakers asked him to don an
unkempt rather than urbane appearance. "I said, 'I just want to wear leather
pants,' and I actually wear a wig in the movie too," he reveals. "That's a wig –
my hair was about an inch short."Explains Corbett: "I was on My Big Fat Greek Wedding, and when I finished
it, I went to do my second season of Sex and the City and I cut my hair
really short. [Later], and we had to do some re-shoots, so they had to make an
$8,000 lace-front wig to match the hair in Big Fat Greek Wedding so I
stole the wig when I was done. I still have it and I wore it in this movie."
Despite his trepidations working in Hollywood and tackling Hilary Duff, Corbett
says that Raise Your Voice did ultimately raise his spirits, even if his
future plans involve music more than acting. "It was a nice experience, don't
get me wrong," he says. "When I'm there, and I'm working with nice people, it's
a really nice experience. It was a really fun set. I think I've probably had two
bad experiences ever where I couldn't wait to get off the set because I didn't
like the people I was working with, but I've had really kind of great
experiences doing it. I was a little rejuvenated working with these guys because
my trailer was sort of far away from the set, so it wasn't easy to after a take
sort of go back to my trailer and walk all of the way back.
"I just would hang out with these guys and there was a lot of instruments on the
set so we would sit around and play. They were cool. |
