Editorial Staff
With “Edge of Tomorrow” now out on DVD, we had the chance to wax it with supporting thesp Bill Paxton (“Big Love”) about his role in the Tom Cruise blockbuster.
You famously played a Marine in the classic sci-fi film Aliens. Do you think playing Hudson came into play when Doug Liman cast you as Master Sergeant Farell in Edge of Tomorrow?
BILL PAXTON: I don’t think it hurt me having that Aliens cachet to get cast in this part. This movie definitely has some DNA from Aliens.
At the time I was cast for Edge of Tomorrow, I was out in the desert of New Mexico filming 2 Guns. They’d set up an iPod with Skype in my trailer so that the director, Doug Liman, could see me and I could do a conference call with him and Erwin Stoff, the producer. It was the strangest meeting I’ve ever had with a director in my life, meeting him on Skype. I’d read the script the night before and picked up on a few key things—the idea of honor with this character was paramount. Here was a guy who really believed in the sanctity of battle in terms of a proving ground of true character.
When you got into the Exo-suit, what was it like to wear?
BILL PAXTON: When I arrived to Leavesden Studios in England, I was taken over in a golf cart to say hello to Tom Cruise. He was standing in the middle of this empty sound stage trying out the latest version of the Exo-suit. He was doing a show-and-tell to see how mobile and durable it was. There he is in this thing, and he turns to me and says, ‘Paxton, I hope you’ve been working out, these suits weigh 75 pounds.’ I remember thinking, ‘Am I ready for this?’ You didn’t wear the Exo-suit—it wore you. They would have to hang us up in these iron frame cages between shots just to take the pressure off our shoulders. But Tom being Tom—he loves a challenge. With him, the more challenging, the better.
In your scenes with Tom, because of the film’s structure and the time loop aspect, you basically do a lot of versions of the same scene. Did you have fun with that?
BILL PAXTON: Yes, it gave me a chance to be a reactive character. As Tom’s character starts to be able to anticipate what’s going to happen with each reset of the day, it becomes disconcerting as hell to my character, Sergeant Farell.
One of my favorite moments in the movie is when Tom’s character rolls under a truck to make an escape and I look over just in time to see him get flattened. Doug Liman came to me and said, ‘Would you really recoil like that? Your character is used to seeing death in battle.’ I said, ‘I don’t care how much you’ve seen, if somebody gets crushed right in front of you, you’re going to have a kneejerk reaction to that.’ We had a lot of fun with that.
Did you have to train for your part?
BILL PAXTON: Yes. I did some training. You had to learn how to walk in these Exo-suits and all of that. We had to do some stunt training for some specific moments in the film. They had guys there putting us through certain calisthenics that strengthen certain muscles for the suits.
It is quite an international cast playing the members of J Squad, your military unit in the film. What were they like to work with?
BILL PAXTON: They were all terrific and great actors. Dragomir Mrsic, from Easy Money, is Swedish by way of Serbia. Kick Gurry is from Australia. Franz Drameh, Charlotte Riley, Jonas Armstrong and Tony Way were a lot of fun and we all became good friends. The military aspect of J Squad reminded me of my experience with the Aliens cast as colonial marines.
There will be a lot of visual effects elements in the film, with the aliens and the landscapes. Did you have an idea of what it would look like during production?
BILL PAXTON: Yes, production showed us previs [previsualization] of some of the action sequences and the prototypes of what the aliens would look like. There were also extensive models that the art department had built, so it gave me a visual cue and an idea as to the huge scale of the movie.
Can you elaborate on the experience of working with Doug Liman as he’s orchestrating this giant epic. Did you find that he welcomed collaboration with the actors?
I found him to be very collaborative and very supportive. I had a lot of fun building my character with him. Considering the scale of this motion picture, I admired how he kept his patience throughout.
He never lost his cool. You can’t really rattle the guy. He has a very good head for logic and ideas about how to pull off different shots. We became good friends through the experience and I look forward to working with him again.
Can you talk a little more about working with Tom, and what he brought to the film?
BILL PAXTON: I really enjoyed acting with Tom Cruise. He was very supportive and enjoyed what I was bringing to the party. I’m glad he was in the No. 1 position because he understands just how painstaking and physically challenging these movies are because he’s done them.
Looking back on the experience, is there anything from the production that is particularly memorable for you or that you take away from this?
BILL PAXTON: I made some great friendships. I reignited a friendship with producer Erwin Stoff. I made a friend with Doug Liman and definitely with Tom, Emily and the rest of the cast. It was a very bonding experience.
