Caffeinated Clint
Just had a chat to actor Aaron Johnson, in town to promote his new film “Angus, Thongs & Snogging” – lovely guy, good head on his shoulders – about that film and of course, the highly-anticipated “Kick-Ass”, which he starts filming shortly. We’ll run the full interview shortly. For the meantime, here’s what he had to say about the big Hollywood action movie he’s about to start.
Johnson says he would never have gotten the lead role in “Kick-Ass” if it weren’t for his role in Gurinder Chadha’s coming-of-age comedy.
“It really helped”, he says on the line from Sydney. “It’ll be very nice. It’s a bit of a different role.”
As soon as he leaves Australia, Johnson heads to Canada for filming.
“Next week I’ll be in Toronto. I’m still trying to get my head around it. I just came back from New York actually where I was doing an independent film. I’ve gone from one side of the world to the other. My head is going crazy. I woke up this morning and said ‘Where am I?’ I looked out the window and saw the Sydney Opera House and the Harbour Bridge and I’m like ‘Wow! How did I end up in Australia?’. Have you ever seen that film Jumper? It’s like I’m in Jumper.”
Johnson says all this has happened rather quickly. “At the beginning of the year you have like five bucks on you, or you’re waiting for something to come out. It’s really nice that things have picked up a bit. And it’s really nice to travel with your work”.
Johnson says he just happened to be in L.A when they were “recasting” the lead role in “Kick-Ass”.
“It was real good timing. They were just doing the final recast for the lead and I got it. I don’t quite know what happened – it’s all a bit of a blur to me”.
He gets to meet co-star Nicolas Cage in a couple of days.
“In two days I see him. I hope I’m going to be awake through the rehearsal”, he laughs. Â “Or I’ll probably be just watching him in awe – – and nod off”.
Johnson says his character doesn’t do a lot of stunts in the film, but most of his co-stars have been doing fight training.
“There’s a younger girl in it. Her and Nicolas Cage do a lot of the fighting. I don’t do much fighting – I get my faced kicked in a lot though. She goes around with a samurai sword cutting people’s heads off. It’s very violent obviously. It’s going to be quite a crazy one. I play an American comic book nerd so it’s very different from the sex god roles”.
After that, Johnson may return to play Robbie in a sequel to “Angus, Thongs & Snogging”.
“This film is based on the first two books, so if they did a sequel it’ll be based on the third and fourth. There’s ideas for the sequel. They’re thinking of doing one. We’ll see how [this one] goes”.
