In the wake of Eclipse fever, I guess I am on Team Jacob. Not for the usual reasons, more by default – I have no idea what’s going on with the other guy whereas I occasionally follow Taylor Lautner interviews. At 18 years, Taylor is n-ot exactly a child (and if you saw him shirtless in New Moon you would think I’m completely insane for suggesting it) – but he was when he first started acting. And watching B-roll of him doing flips on the red carpet at the The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl premier was how I first noticed him (he was about 13 then). This was a child whose family moved so he could pursue an acting career at the age of 10.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzioEaJ_HPs]
Don’t get me wrong – this isn’t going to be some puritanical rant about the double standards of Taylor posing shirtless in mags when people usually freak about teenage girls being objectified and bla-bla. Even journalists who interview him have said he is the perfect addition to the trio because his other two co-stars are actually shy by nature (where he is not). From what I can tell, Taylor was hungry for showbiz from a very early age. And a teenager who wants so badly to keep his part he trains with such dedication that he manages to pack on the extra 30lbs of muscle deserves at least grudging respect. That, and co-star Kristen Stewart mentioning in her own interview that he’d said he better calm down just so he wouldn’t burn calories and lose bulk he’d built up for the movie was what sold me.
But it’s a big step for me – aside from giant spiders, nothing scares me like child actors. Children. Acting. Am I the only nut to be constantly freaked by this? You are basically asking someone’s child to understand a certain concept that may be beyond the child’s grasp, in order to portray this on film for general public entertainment of all. Oh, and they’ll get money and possibly fame for doing it. Think Kirsten Dunst in Interview With A Vampire. She was 10 when she did her kissing scene* with Brad Pitt. Her role required her to be a full grown woman in a child’s body (because she had been turned into a vampire as a child and matured into a full grown woman trapped within the same body – which is when she has her kissing scene with Mr Pitt.) Oh, and the novel (which is after all a horror story) includes the hatred she feels towards the person who does this to her. To be given eternal life, forever in a child’s body. Lovely – and how did you explain that hatred to the child who had to portray it?
Taylor is just like any child who has realized what he really wants to do in life and then goes after it. I’d like to find out how his parents found and nurtured that spark. It’s why I keep watching/ reading his interviews. I just have to remember that and not dwell too much on the showbiz…
*Interestingly, Dunst later turned down a role in American Beauty because she didn’t want to do suggestive scenes or kiss Kevin Spacey, saying “When I read (the script), I was 15 and I don’t think I was mature enough to understand the script’s material.”
