We were whisked off to Las Vegas for the premiere of the adventure-in-Sin-City film 21. Staying at the hotel where some of the film was shot (the Red Rock) and going to the premiere and afterparty at Planet Hollywood was a great experience. We realized that there is a whole new Vegas, aimed at a younger crowd who enjoys clubbing and playing blackjack and poker. The film is based on the true story of a group of brainy M.I.T. students who invented a card counting system and took the town for big bucks playing 21.

Co-stars Kate Bosworth, looking smashing in a short, gray/silver sparkly Lagerfeld dress and Jim Sturgess [Across the Universe] in a dapper black suit, took the stage before the premiere after being introduced by co-star and producer Kevin Spacey. We got the idea that the cast had a blast making the film. For our interviews the next morning, everyone was a little worse for wear after a glamorous nite but Jim was very cute in black, long-sleeved sweater and jeans and Kate looked casual chic in a ’60’s retro batik-patterned sundress by Catherine Miran over a black blouse accessorized with copper necklace and bangle bracelets.

So, did these two, who play lovers in the film, hit it off from the beginning? Their director Robert Luketic says Kate was really happy that Jim was going to be her significant other in the movie “I think she secretly had a bit of a crush on him”. The two were exchanging smiles throughout our interview at the Red Rock.

TeenHollywood: Kate, your director said that you were really glad when you heard that Jim was playing the guy. Had you seen Across the Universe? Kate: Across the Universe hadn’t come out yet but I did see this tiny, two minute blurb..[looking at Jim] I told you this was going to embarrass you, but, all of a sudden, you just went with him. He had such openness and just some extraordinary quality about him and I just thought ‘oh, he’s gonna be one to watch’ [Jim flashes a big grin].

TeenHollywood: Your characters wear various disguises in Vegas. Which of your crazy disguises did you enjoy the most? Jim, you had the college look and then the Armani suit or the white outfit. Kevin Spacey said you looked like Don Johnson in “Miami Vice”!

Jim: [laughs] Yeah. That got a big laugh. I thought at the time, ‘this is the most ridiculous thing I could possibly wear and yet when I saw it on screen, I was like….

Kate: I remember, you called me and said ‘I think I might have just completely wrecked everything by wearing this outfit’.

Jim: That was [me as] Luca, our Italian. It was fabulous. I keep getting told I look like a guy called Jeff Foxworthy. I don’t know who he is. [laughter]. They kept telling me that.

Kate: I had a lot of fun with the Southern Belle [disguise]. She was just funny to me and I think my favorite look would be the last one, the [dark, straight short hair] Louise Brooks. Honestly my hair would never do that so it’s fun to be able to plop on a wig and look different.TeenHollywood: Your director said you wanted to color your hair?

Kate: Jill Taylor [her character] is already labeled as the fantasy girl [at college] and I just didn’t want to be a blonde for it. I just wanted to go a bit darker and be a little bit more low key with her looks. They did let me do that. Obviously, I’m usually more of a brighter blonde but they let me go a little darker for it. I think it’s important to find the physicality, the look, whether it’s hair color or costume or makeup, whatever it is. It really does help create that character and that’s just how I saw her, just a little darker.

TeenHollywood: How do you approach playing everybody’s fantasy girl?

Kate: It depends on whose fantasy it is. Originally, on the page, she was a little different. I wanted her to be more of a tomboy. That’s kind of my fantasy girl. Playing a girl who can box and also be a mathematical genius is pretty fun considering math is my worst subject. And I liked the fact that she had her inner struggle with her father being a gambling addict and having that pain and that loss and seeing a similar experience with the person that she had found new love with. So I enjoyed playing this character.

TeenHollywood: So you enjoyed playing a girl who was also wearing disguises and pretending to be someone else?

Kate: I went to town with that one. That was one of my favorite things. When I did a little bit of research into what these kids went through and started learning that they were beginning to be recognized by the eye in the sky and having to put on disguises, that’s such a great element. So I sort of made that my character’s thing more than anyone else.

TeenHollywood: Jim, how did you play your guy as he gets excited about winning and almost blows his concentration?

Jim: Yeah. It’s the thrill of winning the money, isn’t it? It’s the thrill of actually creating that huge amount of cash on the table. You don’t know exactly when that card’s going to come out. You never can. You just work out the probability. So, it’s a completely new experience for him and he sits down and gets his first blackjack and this shit-load of money so it’s a huge thrill. I unfortunately never got to experience that. But I certainly know what it felt to lose a lot of money.

TeenHollywood: Whoops! Tell us about that.

Jim: I had one experience with winning a lot of money and I lost a lot of money. I was maybe like $2000 down and that for me was a huge kind of deal. I remember just before I went to bed, I found a chip in my pocket and I threw it down, thought I might as well rinse myself dry. And started coming on a kind of winning streak and pretty much won all the money I’d lost back again. So it was kind of in that one sitting I experienced just the absolute disgrace of losing all that money and how detached you feel from it. It’s not money at that point, it’s just chips and colors. It’s suddenly like, ‘Shit, that is actually $2000!’ and I just sat there. And then I got the feeling of like ‘wow, this is so great, I’m winning it all back again’! I had the whole Vegas experience in that one sitting.

TeenHollywood: So you didn’t have a gambling experience before this?

Jim: I’d never played Blackjack. I’d never been in Vegas. We don’t have anywhere like that in England. Blackpool doesn’t quite qualify. But yeah, gambling for me is basically throwing money on the horses or the dog tracks. It’s just not the same kind of culture back in England. I knew about Vegas obviously. It’s such an iconic kind of city. Yeah, we came here, I think I was here two weeks before we started shooting to just indulge in the kind of laziness that Vegas offers you as much as possible.

TeenHollywood: Did Vegas match your expectations?

Jim: Actually, the two films I watched before I came to Vegas were the two most depressing films. I watched The Cooler and I watched Leaving Las Vegas and I was like, ‘Great, this is going to be fun.’ I mean, from a distance, when I was coming up on the plane, yes, it sort of looked like this glamorous kind of flashing lights thing which is how you see it.

TeenHollywood: Did you two have a college experience like your characters?

Kate: I worked very hard in high school and I put acting on the back burner for that. My first acting job was when I was 14 and it was kind of a fluke to be honest because I’d been an equestrian my whole life. I was a show jumper, randomly heard that Robert Redford was casting a film out of New York and looking for authentic horseback riders. So on a whim I just went and was given some lines, read some lines, had never done it before in my life, was put on tape and kept getting called back and called back and called back and got the part [in The Horse Whisperer]. Subsequently, I fell in love with acting, but I was very aware at that point that I wanted to go to my prom. I wanted to graduate. I wanted to get my diploma. I wanted to have a first heartbreak. I wanted to do all those things that I think would have been entirely different if I had focused on acting completely at that age. So I devoted my life to school at that point and I was accepted into university.

TeenHollywood: But you didn’t end up going?

Kate: Funny enough, part of my essay for getting into that school was about my acting experience. I got a letter back from the dean saying, ‘I highly recommend you defer for a year and just go and have this life experience and see what happens for you.’ So I deferred for a year and moved out to LA on my own, in this tiny studio apartment, went on six auditions a day and in that first year I ended up getting Blue Crush. I just was very fortunate that films started falling together and I kept deferring until finally I said, ‘All right, I’m actually loving what I’m doing.’ Perhaps one day I’ll go back but I think right now I want to focus on this. I love it.

Jim: I was certainly never a math geek. I remember kind of looking at going to drama school or something like that. I remember it was just way too expensive for me to even think about something like that. I kind of can relate to it on that level but then I just thought about it and it’s just amazing now all the experiences that I’ve had through my life that got me to places I could never even dream of even if I’d gone to drama school. I feel the sort of connection on that level with the character; the fact that he took it out of the college and it was his experiences that didn’t happen in the classroom that effectively led him to be a more well-rounded interesting person.

TeenHollywood: So who is the better card player, you or Kate?

Jim: Me. Oh, I dunno…

Kate: Probably, it’s true.

Jim: Did you leave up or down?

Kate: I left up when we shot but, I’m obviously down this trip [laughs].

Jim: You can call me a good or bad card player. As far as I’m concerned, unless you’re counting cards, it’s just luck. You kind of learn a basic strategy which we all were kind of able to do. But, you win and you lose and there is no good or bad at it.

Kate: No. You have to get into it.

TeenHollywood: Which of you can actually count cards?

Jim: [laughs] None of us. It’s tricky. It’s a little bit hard.

TeenHollywood: Jim, you are a singer. Did you pop into any lounges here in Vegas and give them a little taste?

Jim: I didn’t. We had a guitar on set. Jacob [Pitts] who plays Fisher, is a big guitar player so we would howl down the corridors of Boston University [the college part of the film was shot in Boston].

TeenHollywood: So are you going to be working with your Across the Universe director Julie [Taymor, the director] again in Spider-Man the Musical?

Jim: I wish it was Batman: The Musical but it’s not. He’s my favorite of the superheroes. We did a workshop. She just phoned me up and she said ‘will you and Evan [Rachel Wood] come down and kind of help out with this Spider-Man musical that I’m making?’ I love Julie. She’s a kind of mentor for me. Evan is kind of one of my best friends so it was a chance to all get together and we just saw it as a fun thing to do for two weeks in New York City, writing songs with Bono and The Edge about Spider-Man.

TeenHollywood: Awesome!

Jim: By the end of the two weeks we’d performed an entire structure of what the play is gonna be to like Marvel Comics and people from Sony and like that. So it’s there and Julie is definitely gonna make it. Whether I’ll be in it or not, I don’t know yet.

TeenHollywood: Kate are you coming back for the Superman sequel? Did you sign a contract?

Kate: [nods, yes].

TeenHollywood: Kate, you and Kevin have been together in three films now. Was Kevin one of the reasons you took this part?

Kate: I was just intrigued with the story. Dana [Brunetti, Kevin's business partner] mentioned this to me on Beyond the Sea and then again on Superman. I was just intrigued with the story and I grew up in Boston as well so hearing the extraordinary tale of this group of kids coming together, and sort of being underdogs to taking millions of dollars from large corporations…everyone roots for the underdog and, for me, when I first heard the story, I thought ‘God, this is something that you generally make up in a movie or a book’ and the fact that is was based on a true story was, for me, incredibly intriguing.

Source: Teen Hollywood