Let’s talk about Fight or Flight. I found this list on the other day titled “josh hartnett movies ranked by his haircut”. It made me think about how you’re not an actor who does super drastic physical transformations in your movies, but your hair does often say a lot about your character. So with that in mind, what does this bleached look in Fight or Flight say about what you’re bringing to the role?
Well, I mean you brought up Slevin and I thought Slevin, his entire persona, his entire look was there to dupe people into a feeling of him being non-threatening.
Right, I mean, you’re in nothing but a towel for the first 30, 40 minutes of that movie.
The littlest towel we could find. And the most lavender towel. And the hair, everything, the broken nose, everything about it is just meant to scream, “I’m not a threat.” And that’s how he’s getting in there, right? That’s how he’s getting to these bosses.
With Fight or Flight, it felt like the reality of a situation, spending two years in Bangkok trying to hide from killers the whole time, he must’ve gone through a lot of different guises. He’s had to fight a lot of people, but he’s also tried to change where he is at and how he looks in order to survive. What I wanted to capture was that he got to the point where he’s dying his hair different colors or whatever, but then when we find him at this point, it’s been a while since he’s tried his last disguise, and he’s like, “I’m done. If they find me, they find me, and that’s the end of my life. This is it. I can’t do it anymore.”
So that makes the whole plot necessary in my opinion. It’s like we find him on the day that he’s given up entirely. He’s been found for the last time and he’s done. There’s no way that this is going to end. He’s a rat in a cage, he’s being chased, it’s over. There’s no maze left to hide in. He’s just there. He’s dead. But out of the frying pan into the fire, the fire may hold a little bit of redemption. Who knows? That was where I wanted to start the character from—the lowest point, and then potentially have him go lower or maybe higher. We’ll see.
Well, physically higher for sure.
Right, physically higher, of course. [Laughs]
