1 of 5 | Aaron Eckhart battles sharks in “Deep Water,” in theaters Friday. Photo courtesy of Magenta Light Studios
LOS ANGELES, May 1 (UPI) — Aaron Eckhart said he used his real fears for his role in Deep Water, in theaters Friday. Eckhart plays a pilot who must keep his passengers safe in shark-infested waters after a crash.
In a recent Zoom interview with UPI, Eckhart, 58, said he thinks about such scenarios whenever he travels. He traveled to New Zealand to film Deep Water and has more airline trips in the future.
“When I’m in an airport, I look at people and say am I going to be a hero for that person?” Eckhart said. “Would I save their life? Would I fight for them? What would I do in this situation? I’m constantly asking myself how would I do it?”
Eckhart only plays pilots in movies like Deep Water and Sully. Still, he wonders if he could figure it out in an emergency.
“What happens if this plane goes down? Can I fly this plane,” he laughed. “Maybe I’m deluded but I ask myself that all the time.”
Deep Water filmed in the safety of a water tank and the sharks were all CGI. Still, it was not difficult for Eckhart to imagine the perils of the open ocean.
“I grew up surfing so I’m familiar with sharks,” Eckhart said. “I’ve been around seals that pop up and kelp and all this sort of stuff. It’s very spooky. How do you manage that fear? What would you do? I used all that, I guess, to try and make it look real.”
The pilot becomes the leader of the survivors in the water, too. These include a child who lost her parents, and an antagonistic passenger (Angus Sampson).
Eckhart said he thought about motivating scared people and de-escalating the hostile ones.
“How do you bring people up when they feel down?” Eckhart said. “Who’s going to help you do that and can I do it myself? Those were the questions that I was asking myself in terms of the other characters and how you relate to them and who surprises you?”
His breakthrough role was in the 1997 drama In the Company of Men. Since then, he has appeared in dramas like Erin Brockovich and comedies like Thank You For Smoking.
Eckhart has enjoyed action movies like Battle: Los Angeles, Olympus/London Has Fallen as the President under siege and The Bricklayer with Deep Water director Renny Harlin.
“I just do movies that I have fun doing,” he said. “I like to run around and throw punches and that sort of stuff. I don’t like big monologues and all that anymore. I just like to go have fun so it’s really just a recipe for me. I’m not trying to go win any awards or anything like that.”
In between movies, Eckhart keeps in shape anyway, but it primes him for these roles.
“I work out every day,” he said. “I train in fighting every day so these movies are kind of a natural extension of my daily life.”
One of his earliest experiences with action was the 2003 film Paycheck with director John Woo. Eckhart played a villain who hired Ben Affleck for a top secret job, then erased his memory.
“You’d see the camera all the way across the studio,” he said. “It would be all the way out there on a stilt about 30 yards away. Then by the time he called action, you would see that camera come zooming in on a cable or on a crane. It would literally end up three inches from your face. That’s John Woo.”
Eckhart said Woo did not say much to the actors, although neither did Clint Eastwood directing Sully.
“You look at John and he’d go, ‘Uh,'” Eckhart said. “I said, ‘John, does uh mean good or does it mean bad?’ Then Clint Eastwood doesn’t say too much.”
Should a less physical role come his way, Eckhart is open to returning to drama. He joked he is filming all the movies he can while human actors are still required.
“Of course, I’m going to be replaced by AI next year so it doesn’t really matter,” he said.
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