I was so disappointed when I went through these photos of the London premiere of Clash of the Titans. Liam Neeson didn’t show up! Liam plays Zeus. Ralph Fiennes didn’t come either – he plays Hades, God of the Underworld. The Kraken didn’t come either! DAMN. You know who we got? Sam Worthington and a parade of people who I neither know or care about. I mean, sure, Mads Mikkelsen and Gemma Arterton were both in Bond films, so I vaguely know who they are. And I adore little Nicholas Hoult, but it’s not like he’s some huge, established hottie. I wonder why Liam and Ralph didn’t come? Did they not want to overshadow Worthington? Figuratively, because they’re so wonderful, and literally, because Worthington is a tiny man. But he’s still hardcore, right? Sam gave a recent “hardcore” interview to Collider about his role in Titans (full piece here):

Question: With all these big projects you’ve already been a part of, are you working hard to keep a personal life separate from your work?
Sam: I’m not out here to be a star. I’m out here to help tell stories. If you want to be a star, go on “Big Brother.” I came out here to help the director facilitate his vision, which is to tell these escape stories. You can write whatever you want about me in websites and newspapers, but no one really knows me. They get the idea that I’m a tough, heroic figure, but I’m a sensitive pussycat. When I do my job, I dive into these characters and try to flush something out of myself into these characters, and hopefully that translates well. But, I don’t look at any disassociation. I do movies that I would like to go and see. I think that’s a good barometer of how I choose films. I like going to these movies. Our job is to make sure the audience gets their $16 worth. That’s my job.

What were some of the physical challenges of being in this film and fighting in sandals and a dress?
Sam: I didn’t wear sandals. I wore Nikes, and I painted toes on my Nikes. I was sprinting off and doing a lot bigger stunts while they had dirt getting in their sandals and they were tripping all over the place. I was the smart one that thought ahead. We were above the clouds as well. The altitude was ridiculous. I don’t know exactly how high up we were. And, the terrain of Wales sucked. That was the worst place I’ve ever filmed. I love the Welsh and Wales is a beautiful place, but not a f-cking slate mine with the rain going up. That was tough. That is the entrance to the Underworld. You know you’re in trouble when everyone around you on set is wearing a hard hat and things are falling off while you’re just standing there in your dress. And, shooting underwater was harder than I thought. Underwater is tough. I thought it would be easy. It slows everything done. It times everything by two. It’s weird. Screw doing The Abyss. I don’t know how Jim Cameron did it ’cause underwater is a hard place to film. That’s only 20 or 35 seconds of film, but that took us at least four days.

Were you familiar with the stories of Greek mythology before making this film?
Sam: I don’t know about in America or anywhere else, but in Australia we grow up learning the myths, like the Minotaur and the maze, and things like that. But, I didn’t really study Greek mythology for this film. This is a fun ride. It’s me in a dress with a couple of guys in dresses, with rubber swords, fighting monsters. It’s not a history lesson. I’m a big believer in that, so I didn’t really look deep into the old Perseus because he wore no clothes. I think that would have been quite horrific for young kids. We were well aware of them, but ours isn’t a history lesson.

What is your definition of a hero?
Sam: Heroic is not fighting. It’s actually getting back up off the canvas. Or, if someone else gets knocked down, you help them up. That’s how I look at it. That’s my definition of a hero. I wanted Perseus to be like a troubled adolescent. The whole movie is about family, in my book. He loses his adopted family, and he is a boisterous teen. I didn’t want him to listen to anybody. Out of that, he finds a heroic quality through finding another family, and learns to calm down and become an adult. Every movie I do has a lot of similarities. There’s a duality of man, whether it’s half-man/half-God for Clash, half-man/half-robot for Terminator or half-man/half-big blue alien for Avatar. I’m either screwed up, searching for something within myself, or I like those characters. If you have a character that has an inner conflict, like that duality can give you, and you put him in other conflicts, than you’re either a villain or a hero. Heroism doesn’t come out of what you believe you can do, but it’s how other people endow you with it. I think, by him learning to calm down and embrace this family, they then can claim that he’s a hero. That’s how I look at heroism.

How was it to work opposite Liam Neeson?
Sam: It was intimidating and I shat myself. He’s the big boy. When you’re playing with the big boys, you man up and shut up and you listen. Liam acts with such grace. He’s a gentle man and he’s an imposing force on screen. You literally go in there and it’s a learning experience. You observe what he can do on set, and he gives you advice on how to handle all this and the outside world with hopefully some sensitivity. Same with Ralph Fiennes. You just listen. These guys did Schindler’s List, and Liam did Rob Roy and Taken. Collectively, there’s 100-odd movies between them, so as far as an infant like me is concerned, you listen.

[From Collider]

Okay, so I might have to revise my opinion of Sam – he didn’t come across as dumb – like he has in other interviews. He actually seems like a halfway decent guy! Unfortunately for CB’s crush on Sam, it looks like he’s pretty attached to his girlfriend, Whats-Her-Guts McBANGS. Too bad! CB would have let Sam do some really dirty stuff “accidentally”.

Damn, Nicholas Hoult really has grown up to be very pretty, hasn’t he? Look at those eyes!

‘Clash of the Titans’ premiere in London on March 29, 2010. Credit: WENN.

I’ve never really been a fan of Sam Worthington. There was like a split second last year when I thought he could be a Gerard Butler-esque contender on my top ten “Hot Man Buffet For the Ages” but it died a swift death when I actually read a few interviews with him. The man is dumb as a box of hair. And as for his looks… well, he’s attractive in some ways (CB certainly thinks so), but he’s a lot smaller than you realize. He’s, like, barely taller than Ryan Seacrest. But CB thinks he’s hot and Lainey thinks he’s hot, so maybe there’s something wrong with me.

Anyway, Sam is the cover boy for the April Details Magazine (full piece here), all to promote his role in the upcoming Clash of the Titans. Now, maybe it’s because I’m so jaded about this dude that I can actually see through the exceptionally bad writing over at Details, but this is not a dude with anything of significance to say. And hand him off to a bad interviewer, and you have to slog through 1000 words before you even get to one full quote from Worthington. Here are some of the highlights, from what I could understand of this drivel and assorted grunts:

On why he comes across like an idiot: Talking about himself, laying himself bare for some notepad-wielding stranger, speaking his mind only to see “the stupid things I say” come boomeranging back at him in 12-point type—he hates it. “I’m still a very boisterous young man,” he says, in his bristly Aussie accent. “And I swear a bit more than I should. So I’m learning to temper it, you know?”

He likes to work: “I hate downtime. This is the first time I’ve had time off. I hate it.”

His childhood: “I’m not a great fan of people who say they put a sheet up in the backyard when they were 7 and entertained all the neighbors,” he says. “When I was 7, I thought I was a f-cking fire truck. Growing up, you tended to just go through school to get out… then figure out what you want to do in this big ball of mud.”

So how did the Fire Truck grow up to be an actor? A dreadlocked Worthington tagged along with a girlfriend, an aspiring actress, to her audition at the National Institute of Dramatic Art. For “moral support,” he says, he auditioned alongside her. He got in; she didn’t—and promptly dumped him.

James Cameron on Worthington: “It’s hard to find a guy who works for women and for men,” Cameron says. “With a lot of actors, women love them, but they don’t inspire men. I needed someone who could lead men into battle.” Worthington, he says, “was the one who went full Shakespeare.” They met, they clicked. “He impressed me as a tough guy,” Cameron says. “He had a flintiness about him.”

Why Sam doesn‘t like the word “art”: “Artistry has a kind of weird connotation,” he says, “because you can sound like you’re going straight up your f-cking ass if you say that.”

Living in hotels: “I like room service,” he admits. “They put a chocolate on my pillow. It’s kinda cool.”

What? “Most people could say, ‘I want to be on magazine covers. I want to have enough money to buy a house,’” he says. For Worthington, however, the goal isn’t nearly so tangible. “If it was tangible,” he says, “hopefully I wouldn’t be doing it, to be honest.”

On fame: “If you start walking around in a red chinchilla, thinking you’re better than everybody,” Worthington says, “you’re going to look like a dickhead.”

Is he a diva? “Well, I demand a lot,” he says, then backtracks, not wanting to position himself as some kind of diva. “I demand excellence in myself. I’m up front and quite outspoken, but I’ll give you everything.”

[From Details]

Ugh. I mean, I get it. The guy doesn’t want to wax on and on about “the craft” or his “method”. And I applaud that, truly. I get tired of reading interviews with actors when they won’t shut up about their craft. But, it just seems like Sam doesn’t have much to say beyond that. He’s just a working actor, happy to have a job, but not really experiencing anything beyond the work. He just doesn’t have anything to say. The majority of the article is quotes from other people talking about his “simplicity” (which is code for “stupid”) and his rugged-ness (which is code for “he’s straight”).

Details photos of Sam courtesy of Details online.

Several weeks ago, it was announced that Charlize Theron had dropped out of a film called The Tourist. Within days, Angelina Jolie was mentioned heavily as Charlize’s replacement. Not only that, the studio seemed to be wooing Angelina with promises of a script rewrite to make her character better, and her choice of directors. It’s now pretty certain that Angelina did sign on, with The Lives of Others’ director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck stepping in to helm the project.

Throughout all of the casting whispers, Angelina’s would-be costar seemed pretty certain. Sam Worthington had been attached to the project for months, and it was reported that Angelina was looking forward to working with him (despite the fact that he doesn’t seem that bright). Now it looks like Worthington is out… leaving a casting hole that needs to be filled. Who has the balls to take on Angelina? Reportedly, Johnny Depp is considering it:

The Tourist is quickly shaping up to be the best movie ever. Shortly after it was announced that Angelina Jolie was stepping in to a role vacated by Charlize Theron, talks have begun with Johnny Depp to play her fellow lead.

Depp would play an American tourist who gets wrapped in Jolie’s interpol agent’s web of intrigue and danger as she tries to locate a criminal who is also her former lover.

The actor was pulled in for the role by Graham King whose company GK Films is financing and distributing the film through a deal with Sony Pictures Entertainment. Depp and King have a close relationship and collaborated on The Rum Diary and the animated film Rango.

[From Radar]

I’ve always wanted Angelina and Johnny to work together, but I hoped they would go a more unconventional route and maybe play brother and sister (and yes, I do casting sessions for imaginary films in my mind). I think Johnny and Angelina would be naturals at playing members of the same family, honestly – they’re features are similar enough to make it work physically. But, in The Tourist, they would be playing former (and current?) lovers.

The Hollywood Reporter had a synopsis of The Tourist: “A remake of the French thriller Anthony Zimmer from 2005, Tourist centers on an American tourist who, on behalf of Interpol, goes undercover to entrap a former lover who’s a suspected global criminal. It follows in the long tradition of innocents caught up in shady activities abroad that dates back to Hitchcock (”The Man Who Knew Too Much”), Polanski (”Frantic”) and beyond, and a theme that also has contemporary echoes with “Taken” this past year.” I think Angelina would be playing the lover working with Interpol, while Johnny would be playing the global criminal. Or maybe reverse it. It would work either way, honestly.

People Magazine is pretty good at choosing and promoting the up-and-coming stars of television and film, and this week’s choice is Australian actor Sam Worthington, who stars with Christian Bale in Terminator: Salvation. Worthington will also be the lead in James Cameron’s latest sci-fi extravaganza, Avatar, coming out later this year. People has one of those “Five things you didn’t know about…” lists, and Worthington comes across as a pretty nice (somewhat boring) guy. It’s like, stop the presses, he’s near-sighted! Breaking news, he says nice things about Arnold Schwarzenegger! But that’s not the point, is it? Because Sam Worthington is the next big guy – the next Russell Crowe, the next Hugh Jackman. He’s got that same sexy, naughty look. What is it with Australian men and that look, like they’re just about to do something wonderfully filthy?

He may be new to moviegoers in this country, but the 32-year-old Australian hunk who plays opposite Christian Bale’s in Terminator Salvation has been a mainstay in movies and TV in his home country for the last decade.

Now, Worthington is following in the footsteps of Mel Gibson, Hugh Jackman, and Russell Crowe (“My favorite actor, no question,” he says) as the latest hottie from Down Under to become an American action hero. So, is he ready for it? “I don’t think that anyone can really be prepared,” Worthington tells PEOPLE. “I think you’d be silly.”

Here are five things to know about Hollywood’s hottest cyborg.

Before he was an action star, he was a bricklayer: “I built houses,” says Worthington, whose life changed course when he followed a girl to the same drama school that Mel Gibson and Cate Blanchett attended. “I never had any intention of being an actor,” he says.

He’s not mad at you – he’s just extremely nearsighted: “People think that I squint because I’m angry all the time,” he says. “It’s just that I can’t f—— see.”

He is an Arnold Schwarzenegger fan: “I’m hoping to meet him,” he says of the Terminator actor-turned-politician. “Is that going to be possible? I watched Pumping Iron a couple of weeks ago and loved it. He’s extremely charismatic.”

Terminator Salvation is not the biggest movie he has this year: Worthington also stars in Avatar, a special-effects extravaganza from original Terminator director James Cameron, who cast the relatively unknown Aussie to star in his estimated $190 million opus. “He kept pushing back like you wouldn’t believe against a studio who didn’t know who the hell I was and thought that he was crazy,” says Worthington. “That guy changed my life. It’s simple as that.”

His newfound success hasn’t gone to his head – or his closet: “I still have the same clothes I had from way back when,” he says. “My mates go, ‘Don’t you buy clothes, you bum?’ ”

[From People]

The only reason I will rent Terminator is to see this guy – he’s the best part of the trailer. But I am looking forward to Avatar, which sounds incredible. It’s 3-D, and Worthington is playing “paralyzed retired Marine who undergoes an experiment to exist as an avatar, another version of himself . . . an alien – 10 feet (three meters) tall and blue.” The film also stars Michelle Rodriguez, Sigourney Weaver, Zoe Saldana, and Giovanni Ribisi. It’s due out in December.

Sam Worthington is shown with his girlfriend, Natalie Mark, at the premiere of Terminator: Salvation on 5/14/09. Credit: WENN.com and Juan Rico/Fame Pictures