Chris Hayes is an actor whose star is most certainly on the rise. He recently returned from Cannes, where two of his films, “Black Gold” and “Shooting for Something Else” were screened and received accolades. On June 10th, Chris took the time to sit down with me at his apartment in Santa Monica, where he answered some of my questions.
AB: So you recently went to the Cannes Film Festival for the first time!
CH: Yeah. I had never been to France before. It was absolutely incredible. My mom and my brother got to come out there with me. One of my best friends from college, who’s teaching English out in a small town about two hours away from Paris, came down as well. I love her to death for that. We were in this tiny French hotel and the energy was just electric. There’s something going on at all hours of the night. I’ve never seen more gorgeous people and they’re dressed immaculately. The guys have their tuxes on and the girls have these glittery dresses and they’re just walking down the street as though it’s completely normal. It’s really surreal.
AB: You have a pretty extensive resume. Is there a production you could say was your favorite to work on?
CH: I’ve been so lucky. The most recent project I worked on, the one that was in the Cannes Film Festival, was a short and it was basically an homage to a bunch of different movies. The film took iconic scenes from movies like “Deerhunter”, “Pulp Fiction”, “Fight Club”, and “American Psycho”, which is one of my favorite movies of all time. It was a 48-hour, “Go Green” film festival, so we took these iconic scenes and applied them to the theme of sustainability and development. We each had all these ways to go green, ways to be more environmentally conscious, and we worked them into these iconic scenes. I was working with directors Scott Michael Campbell and Hunter G. Williams, phenomenal actors, great producers. They were doing this festival because it meant a lot to them and we did it all in 48 hours!
AB: That must have been exhausting…
CH: We worked heavy into the night the first night. We had to decide on a topic. We didn’t know what we were going to do. We had no idea. Hunter knew that he wanted to do a scene from “Deerhunter” –that famous scene where they’re playing Russian Roulette. He told us, “I don’t care what we do, as long as we go in there, and we do the “Deerhunter” scene. That’s all I know.” And we thought, “Okay, but what does that have to do with anything green?” So we tried some other things first, and then we ended up coming back and deciding to just film it. We did it and were like, “Well, wait a minute! What if we were to do a bunch of famous movies, and tie the green theme into all of them? That could work!” So that’s what it ended up being.
AB: You’ve been able to travel for some of your film projects. What are your favorite places that you’ve been to?
CH: The first film I did out here, “The Loneliest Road in America”, was created by this amazing writer/director, Mardana Mayginnes. He’s an awesome guy and a very good friend of mine. He wanted to shoot this movie about the famous Highway 50, which is this desolate strip of road that goes through Nevada and all the way to California. It’s called the Loneliest Road in America. Along the route, there are all these isolated, old towns that were built up around the mining industry. After the mining corporations left them, only small numbers of people stayed. Mardana was fascinated by the stories of those people, so he made a movie about these two best friends, traveling. They start out in Colorado and go all the way to California along Highway 50. During filming, we literally did the trip, chronologically. I’ve traveled all around the world. I got to study abroad twice in college. I’ve been to places like Thailand, Spain, and South of France, but some of the most beautiful scenery I’ve ever seen in my entire life was traveling on a quiet strip of road through Nevada.
AB: When you are selecting roles, are you drawn to specific types of characters?
CH: I like people I can empathize with. I like characters that operate in shades of grey, people that aren’t necessarily good or bad. I don’t think that people are all good or all evil, so I like playing a character with meat on their bones, someone that’s a full character, that’s got elements of both. I think those characters are the most interesting. I also like the reluctant hero a lot. I like the person that didn’t expect to have to save the day, and, all of a sudden, they’re thrown into circumstances where they have to—like Luke Skywalker. He never expected to have to go and save a galaxy but that’s what he had to do. He had to rise to that challenge. I like those characters.
AB: Speaking of rising to a challenge, what is the most challenging thing you’ve had to do for a role?
CH: When I was in college I did a play where I had to kiss another guy on stage. The play was called “Psycho Beach Party”. It’s written by Charles Busch and it’s a really funny play. It’s a play on “Gidget” and the 60s surf movies. In the play, the lead has multiple personalities and is schizophrenic. She thinks that she’s six different characters throughout the entire story, and it was played by a guy. We had all kinds of cross-gender casting and my character was in love with his best friend, the male lead. So, when it came to doing the actual kiss itself, you know, you can’t half-ass something like that. You go up on stage, you’re in front of everybody and you don’t just go give a little peck on the cheek and walk off stage. That doesn’t do justice to the character, the writer, or to yourself as an actor. So, you go for it. I had to decide, “Are you an actor or are you not?” That’s what it comes down to, but committing to that in a way that made the performance feel honest was definitely challenging for me.
AB: Are there any actors in particular that you’d like to have the chance to work with?
CH: It’s so hard to say this without sounding pretentious. Al Pacino would be incredible. I think Al Pacino’s amazing. I think Ryan Gosling is fantastic. Ryan Reynolds. I think he’s a terrific actor. There are so many actors that I admire. Annette Benning, I love. Julianne Moore—if I got to be in a scene with Julianne Moore I could die. I would just absolutely die. I find her intoxicating.
AB: What about filmmakers?
CH: I think Clint Eastwood would be an incredible person to work with. I’ve heard that the way he runs his sets, he doesn’t actually say anything, because he’s worked with the same people for so long; they just work. It’s almost like they have telepathy, because they’re so on top of it and so in synch with each other.
AB: If you weren’t acting, what would you be doing?
CH: I’d be unhappy. I’d probably own a business by now. The entrepreneurial spirit has always been my main goal, to be able to work for yourself. I was an economics major in school and the traditional path for an economics major is something in finance. So, I could have gone to New York and worked for a financial institution, probably trading. I would have done investment banking or something like that.
AB: Such a different world!
CH: It couldn’t be more different, but investment has always been a really big part of my life. I started investing in stocks when I was ten years old. I used to ask for stocks for Christmas.
AB: That’s not normal…
CH: It’s not normal, I know. I used to read NYSE every morning and see how my stocks were doing. I bought Wal-Mart at 23 dollars a share, and it went up and split. The positive aspect of that was that my investments helped me live out here while I was first getting set up. Plus, I’ve got an unbelievable family that I owe everything to.
AB: It sounds like regardless of what you’d be doing, you need something with a lot of intensity.
CH: That’s definitely a key characteristic of me. There needs to be passion in everything that I do. Why do anything half-ass? I want to do something and bring my everything to it. I think that you’re doing yourself a disservice if you’re not giving your everything to whatever is asked of you. It could be the simplest thing, but how you do anything is how you do everything. If you treat cleaning your house like it’s just a meaningless job, then you’re going treat everything like that. I am always bringing that element into the things I do, but it can be too intense sometimes. I’ve most certainly been accused of being too intense.
AB: Well, I think, I have one last question.
CH: One more?
AB: Yeah–favorite movies?
CH: Favorite movies? Why did you save the hardest one for last? Like I said, I love “American Psycho”. The “Back to the Future” movies. Again, the reluctant hero, Michael J. Fox in that. I would love to work with that guy. That guy’s on another level! “Star Wars”. “Indiana Jones”. “Tombstone”. “Jurassic Park”—“Jurassic Park” has got to be in the top three, if not number one. And “Shawshank Redemption”. I could list a hundred more. At the end of the day, I’m just a movie lover.
To learn more about Chris Hayes, visit the following links:
IMDB page for Chris Hayes
Great idea for Milk & Honey. Ever think about posting the audio?
ReplyDeleteNice article...seems like a cool guy
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