STACK NZ Summer #70

NEWS EXTRAS

SMELLS LIKE TEEN SPIRIT The Diary of a Teenage Girl is a brutally honest and often funny story about a 15-year-old growing up in the ‘70s. By Gill Pringle

A lexander Skarsgård fully understood the risk involved with playing the kind of bloke who would sleep with his girlfriend’s teenage daughter. “It could easily have been too predatory, where you just hate him from the first scene to the last,” explains the 39-year-old actor. Skarsgård plays Monroe, the slacker boyfriend of Kristen Wiig’s Charlotte, whose attention turns to the easy availability of her 15-year-old daughter Minnie. “I don’t think I could have done it if we hadn’t found the right young actress to play Minnie,” adds the True Blood star, who immediately shared chemistry with Brit actress Bel Powley, now 23, in The Diary of a Teenage Girl . “Bel was amazing. Without her, it would have been too easy for the audience to just sit back and go ‘Creep! Get away from him’, and that wouldn’t be interesting.” Set in San Francisco in the mid-70s, straddling the dying days of the hippy movement and the birth of punk rock, Powley relished her costumes, despite her severe bangs, high-waisted flares and turtleneck sweaters. “I couldn’t wait. I remember

going to some disco and then trying on the costume and starting to feel a bit more like Minnie,” says Powley. “Then sitting in a kitchen in the production office with a hairdresser and she hacked off my hair into a fringe. As soon as it happened, everyone was like ‘Oh, Minnie’s here’.” Meanwhile, Skarsgård grew a moustache. “I’d seen lots of photos of my dad during the ‘70s when he had a moustache, so that was my inspiration,” says the son of veteran Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgård. Despite the movie’s decidedly adult theme, Powley encourages teenage girls to sneak in to cinemas anyway. “I think it’s healthy for young women to see a normal young woman’s body on screen, a body that isn’t airbrushed, that isn’t tanned, that isn’t too skinny, and that makes them love themselves and their bodies. “Also I don’t want teenage girls to feel alone anymore in their sexual development. I feel like it’s such a taboo subject. Hopefully our film will open a conversation about it.”

EXTRAS

The Diary of a Teenage Girl is out now.

CLARKE’S KIWI EXPERIENCE Everest tells the harrowing true story of one of the worst ever disasters on Mt Everest, which

nervousness to begin with on their part.” Clarke also spent time climbing with Guy Cotter (played in the film by fellow Australian actor Sam Worthington), who survived the disaster and took over the running of Hall’s business Adventure Consultant after his death. “Guy was one of Rob’s best friends, and he’d known him and climbed with him for a long time,” says Clarke. “Finding a friendship with Guy, and finding a way to understand that New Zealand sense of humor, which is very different to Australia, really helped inform me.” For his part, Cotter was impressed by Clarke’s portrayal of his old friend. “Jason was very protective of Rob’s credibility and

saw eight die during a blizzard in 1996. Australian actor Jason Clarke plays the lead role of pioneering Kiwi mountaineer Rob Hall and he was determined to be as true as possible to the real-life character. First off, he traveled to New Zealand to meet Hall’s widow Jan – played in the movie by Keira Knightley – and their daughter Sarah. “It was quite extraordinary,” says Clarke. “We had two or three days together, and I’d never heard their side of the experience – and this was 17 years later. During those couple of days, we shared a lot, even though there was a lot of

Vinyl , which premieres later this month on Sky, is shaping up to be one of the HBO events of the years: the showrunner is Boardwalk Empire ’s Terence Winter, while the executive producers are Mick Jagger and Martin Scorseses; the latter, who worked with Winter on Boardwalk Empire , also directed the pilot episode and is keen to take a more hands-on approach with this television project. Bobby Cannavale ( Ant-Man ) heads the cast as Richie Finestra, a record company executive hustling to make a living in the diverse New York music scene of the ‘70s, while Olivia Wilde ( Love The Coopers ) plays his wife Devon. The ensemble also includes comedian Ray Romano, Juno Temple and Mick Jagger’s son James. Keep an eye out for it on DVD later this year.

his reputation,” Cotter says. “He wanted to make sure the film didn’t try and simplify the story for dramatic effect, and steer away from the real truth, because Jason felt particularly close to the character and did a great job of portraying Rob’s strengths and his approach to doing things.”

Everest is out now

on DVD and Blu-ray

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