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Jim Sturgess is well-aware he’s having an incredibly fortunate year. He is, after all, the unknown actor plucked from a worldwide casting call by director Julie Taymor to star as love-struck dockworker Jude in last year’s Beatles-inspired musical Across the Universe.
He followed that up with his recent turn in The Other Boleyn Girl as the loyal brother to a scheming Anne Boleyn. Now the 26-year-old Brit is headlining another impressive roster: 21, in which he stars alongside Kevin Spacey and Laurence Fishburne. The film features Sturgess as an MIT student who takes his card-counting skills to Las Vegas, with dire consequences.
Baby-faced British actor and musician Jim Sturgess had been making the rounds of small film and TV work for the past eight or nine years, when director Julie Taymor decided he would be just right for a lead in her Beatles musical Across the Universe.
Since that film knocked him up a few rungs on the recognition ladder, he’s been busier than ever — with a feature part in The Other Boleyn Girl and a lead in 21, the based-on-fact story of the MIT blackjack team that cheated a couple of million dollars out of Las Vegas in a card-counting scheme.
What are your thoughts on so many things happening at once in your career?
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.
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.
There he was, Jim Sturgess, a real live movie star, at a shopping mall in suburban New Orleans. The occasion was a preview screening of his new film, 21, at the AMC Palace Clearview 12.
The 26-year-old British actor, previously seen in the Beatles-based musical, Across the Universe, and the historical-costume drama, The Other Boleyn Girl, plays a super-bright MIT student in 21. His character, Ben Campbell, joins a group of fellow card sharks from MIT for hugely profitable weekend treks to gambling mecca Las Vegas.
21 (2008) 
