From: Boston Now

Jim Sturgess was on the set of the Elizabethan drama, The Other Boleyn Girl, in which he played the Boleyn brother George, when he was first pitched the idea of playing Ben Campbell in the card counting movie, 21.

“I knew nothing about the book or the story,” he said, “but they told me it was inspired by true story which always makes my ears prick up a bit more. There’s just an extra sprinkle of interest for me when the story is based on real life.”

Sturgess read the script for 21, which tells the story of a group of MIT math whiz kids who use a card counting system to bust a Las Vegas casino, and immediately liked the ‘roller coaster’ nature of the story. He met with the director, Robert Luketic, and soon found himself trading in his tights for a sharp suit and sunglasses.

“I’ve never been to Vegas before. I only knew about it from films and most of them, like Leaving Las Vegas and The Cooler, are fairly depressing. “It was as crazy as I imagined it to be. People told me that you should only go to Vegas only go for three or four days. I was there for a month and a half,” he said. “At one point during filming I realized I had not even been outside - I mean outdoors — for five days straight. We filmed in the casino, we stayed in the casino, and we just never left. It was manic.”

Sturgess added that it was a relief when the cast and crew finally got to Boston to shoot the scenes at MIT.

“We were all desperate to get out of there and get to Boston,” he said. “It’s nice at the end of the day to go finding a good Irish bar - which is not hard to do in Boston - and settle in for a while.”

21 starring Jim Sturgess, Kevin Spacey and Kate Bosworth is in theaters now.