The Arcade recently had the opportunity to interview Jim Sturgess, the 26-year-old star of the upcoming movie 21. Based on the successful novel Bringing Down The House, 21 recounts the journey of five MIT students and a professor beating the casino blackjack odds through card counting.

After being accepted into Harvard Medical School, Jim Sturgess’s character Ben Campbell finds himself unable to pay for the expensive tuition. One of his professors (Kevin Spacey) discovers Ben’s brilliance and invites his to a secret card counting club. Ben thinks that joining the club will curb his anxiety about paying for school, so he decides to stay in the club until he reaches his goal of $300,000. The team members study during the week at MIT, then fly to Las Vegas on weekends to test their gambling abilities. Within all this excitement, however, Ben finds himself becoming greedier and more eager to lead the team. We first asked Sturgess about playing the lead role.

arcade: Did you enjoy your role as Ben Campbell?

Jim Sturgess: Yeah, I enjoyed the role very much. It was an experience for me to go to Las Vegas, which is a place I’d never kind of been before. It was amazing having to take on what those people really took on, and then to find out later that it was all based on true fact and that there was a real person and that that actually happened to him. It was great meeting Jeff, who was the person that Ben Campbell is based on in the book, “Bringing Down The House.” I got to meet Jeff when I first arrived in Vegas, and we became really good friends. We spent a lot of time together and hung out in Vegas and gambled and went out drinking and did all the crazy stuff that Vegas offers you. I couldn’t have had a better time, really.

a: What did you think of the director Robert Luketic? I think he did a great job mixing the scenes from Boston to Las Vegas.

JS: He made Vegas just look unbelievable. He made it look beautiful. When you’re flying in to Vegas, you see the bright lights, and I think he really captured that. He gave the film a real kind of pace to it, too. You know, watching a game of cards isn’t the most exciting thing in the world, so the way he filmed it and the way he used certain camera techniques and speeding things up and slowing things down made, I think, the game look watchable.

a: Especially with the hand gestures the characters make in the casino.

JS: Yeah, I mean, we spent hours pushing chips and turning cards over, and we were like, “What are we doing?” He was like, “Trust me, trust me. It will be worth it.” Then when I saw the film, it made perfect sense.

a: How was working with Kevin Spacey?

JS: Just amazing! He’s somebody that I think we all, and certainly I, have watched in all of his films and been terrified by some of the characters he’s played, so suddenly being in a room with him and acting opposite him, and having to scream at him and having him scream at me and all that kind of stuff was just a thrill.

a: What about Kate Bosworth?

JS: Well, Kevin and Kate know each other really well. They’ve done a few films together (Beyond The Sea, Superman Returns), and Robert and Kate had done a film together (Win a Date with Tad Hamilton!), so I was really the new kid and they made me feel very welcome. The minute Kate and I met, after the read-through [of the script], she came up to me and we hit it off straight away. We then went off to Vegas and went gambling and drinking, and we’ve been friends ever since.

a: How did you start out?

JS: I went to Salford University [in Manchester], which was really were I got started getting a proper taste of filmmaking and acting. The course was amazing. It was just two years [and wasn't a full-degree course] but it did everything: editing, camera operating, a bit of acting, boom operating and theater production, so you really got a taste for all the angles thrown at you.

a: Did you concentrate in one area?

JS: No, I had no clue what I wanted to do at all, so I was there to try anything. I enjoyed all the aspects, and there was a time where you got to direct your own film, act in somebody else’s short film, and we put on our own plays. I didn’t have any concept of taking it any further, really. I just enjoyed doing it. It was through that I wrote a one person show, like a one-act play, and I put that on in a small studio. Out of pure luck, an actor was in the crowd and recommended me to his agent back in London. At that point, I didn’t know what an agent was or what he did or if I needed one, so it was a very circumstantial kind of situation.

a: So you were basically discovered, and that’s how your acting career began.

JS: Pretty much, yeah.

a: Do you feel like acting is your passion now?

JS: Yeah. I was always into it, even as a little kid. I even did some plays when I was younger. Then I kind of gave that up and I was more interested in music and being in a band, and I fancied myself as a bit of a rock star, as a lead singer or whatever. But I always kind of did both [music and acting], [and both are major passions of mine].

a: So, I guess Across the Universe was awesome for you because it mixed both of those.

JS: Yeah, that’s where it all started. Julie [Taymor, director of Across the Universe] saw that I had this musical background and that I came from sort of a band mentality, rather than kind of musical theater. She was interested that I used to be in a band and that I had acting experience. It really felt like everything that I had done for my whole life kind of led up to that point when I met Julie Taymor.

a: I loved the movie, and I thought your renditions of “Girl” and “Something” were great.

JS: It was such an amazing experience. Everyone was just so creative, you know, the musical team, the choreographing team, the art production - it was like a massive melting pot of all these incredible minds, even down to the guy who was just teaching me to draw. It was just a huge kind of creative, fun workshop of every art. There was painting, there was dancing, there was music, there was acting, there was filmmaking, there was theater, puppetry; it was a dream come true.

a: How has your role in Across the Universe treated you so far?

JS: It changed my life in such a major way. It was one of those experiences where you kind of know, you felt that it was a life-changing experience. Sometimes, you know, you don’t know until in hindsight, but I was kind of able to know that it would be a life-changing experience while I was making it. So I knew I was having some of the best days of my life while I was still having them. I met all these incredible people, and I was living in New York City. I’d never been in America really. I was just kind of plucked out of my little life in London and dumped in this madhouse inside of Julie Taymor’s mind, which is a pretty crazy place to be.

Source: Tulane Hullabaloo