From: Canada.com

Recently, I was talking about Kate Winslet with Russell Carpenter, one of the world’s finest cinematographers. He won an Oscar for his work on Titanic. Russell said that while making Titanic he’d seen in Kate screen magic and he knew she would become a big star. He said he had the same feeling while shooting 21 with Jim Sturgess. Carpenter says Sturgess is remarkable.

Winslet and Sturgess are alike off camera in that neither seems too preoccupied with fame. They don’t put up a movie star wall when they speak to you. British actors and musicians are great that way. In Britain you are an actor not an icon. Their sports figures are far more revered.

In 21 Sturgess plays a shy MIT student whose part-time job is to beat the system in Vegas. Sturgess says he wishes he could play cards like his character, Ben Campbell.

“I can play basic strategy blackjack as good as the next man really,” he says.

“We all learn when to split, when to double down, you know the basic rules on how to play the game. But taking it to the level that these guys took it, they were counting the cards and they were able to work out when a deck has a lot of face cards and 10 cards, when it’s clean of those cards and when it is heavy and when it’s light and all that kind of stuff.

“They had the best job in college. Anyone else is working in McDonald’s. There was a benefactor giving them the money, they were paid a wage and they would just gamble all day just playing out the system of a structured routine and earning millions of dollars.”

Sturgess says it’s neither illegal nor immoral, and hopes the movie inspires.

“I think more people should try and do it, they are using their minds mathematically to take back money. Vegas is immoral, Vegas is completely immoral. The whole structure of it, the fact that they know exactly what they’re doing and they are taking your money. So if you can find a way to get it back, hats off to it, I think.”

While he was shooting in Vegas Sturgess lost his shirt.

“It was close to $2,000, which is a lot for me. When I left the table I was just so disheartened, I was disgraced. I was just like, ‘That is real money and I just blew $2,000 on this stupid game.’

“And then I found a chip in my pocket as I was leaving and I thought, ‘Oh well, I might as well lose it all.’ And I threw it down, and literally won it all back again. So I got the pain of losing and then the joy of winning all in one go.”