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Jim Sturgess has become a hot commodity in Hollywood these days. After the big musical hit Across the Universe, he’s joined up with Kevin Spacey and Kate Bosworth in Columbia Pictures’ 21!
Next, he’s rumored to be reuniting with Universe director Julie Taymor for a turn on Broadway in Spider-man the Musical.
At the 21 junket this week in Las Vegas, Sturgess talked about the project a bit to the IESB during an interview that included 21 co-stars Kevin Spacey and Kate Bosworth.
IESB: Jim, rumors are rampant that you will be working with Julie Taymor again in Spider-man the Musical…
Ben Campbell in the new movie 21 is just a quiet MIT undergraduate until Las Vegas flash and the adrenaline rush of high-stakes betting ignite his fast-living alter-ego.
To make the character work, “he just had to be completely mild in every kind of way,” said Jim Sturgess, the 26-year-old British actor who plays the part. The challenge was to portray Ben as “straight-down-the line” yet definitely “not a nerd.”
“If it was going to be some Revenge of the Nerd kind of movie, it wasn’t going to interest me,” Sturgess explained while in Boston for the movie’s local premiere. “But it’s about a real kid and a real situation.”
A few weeks ago, I sat down with the charming Jim Sturgess, the up and coming 26 year old British actor best know for his role as Jude in the Beatles musical, Across the Universe. In the upcoming film 21, (based on the book Bringing Down the House by Ben Mezrich) Mr. Sturgess plays Ben Campbell, an MIT student who uses his math acumen to win millions playing blackjack in Vegas. During our conversation, Mr. Sturgess talked about what it was like playing a character who is based on a real life MIT alum, Jeffrey Ma ’94, filming in Las Vegas, and working with Kevin Spacey. Below is an excerpt:
The Tech: Are you happy with the final results of the film?
Jim Sturgess: Yeah, definitely. I saw it a while ago. When you’re making the film you have no concept of how kind of visual it’s going to look. Especially in the scenes when we’re playing cards and all that kind of stuff. While we were shooting those scenes it was fairly kind of tedious kind of work; pushing chips and flipping cards and all that kind of stuff. And then when you see the film you see how dramatic it looks. It was a shock to all of us, I think. The director [Robert Luketic] kept saying just trust me, trust me, it’s going to look great … stuff that you kind of don’t like doing as much. Actually you want to do the kind of big shouting scenes or all the meaty scenes or whatever. But we kind of stuck with it and I think it paid off.
21 (2008) 
