“I’m a hardcore geek.”
-Emile Hirsch
Kurt Vonnegut once said, ”I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can’t see from the center.” A seductive statement, especially for an actor
The last time audiences saw actor Emile Hirsch, hed abandoned all his material possessions and went by the name Alexander Supertramp. He was stubborn, deathly emaciated, living alone on an broken down bus, in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness, seeking lifes truths. His portrayal of real-life adventurer Christopher McCandless in Sean Penn’s Into the Wild scored the young actor a hell of a lot of attention, and more so, Oscar buzz.
For his current role, Hirsch decided to forgo a life of reckless abandon and instead, transformed himself into a character that, while still an adrenaline junkie, remains loyal to his loved ones. He plays the title role in Speed Racer, the first writing and directing collaboration from the Wachowski brothers since The Matrix trilogy, based off the hugely successful, 1960s Japanese anime series.
Despite the obvious differences between Into the Wild and Speed Racer, their one commonality is Hirsch’s attraction to outsider roles, particularly the outsider with a heart of gold. ”There’s just something about the good-hearted guy fighting the system that I just love,” Hirsch told SuicideGirls during our recent roundtable interview. Read on for more about the film, geeking-out hardcore with the Wachowskis, and Hirsch’s thoughts on having an action figure that resembles Dennis Quaid…
