Interview: Anthony Mackie
In The Hurt Locker, a move to the Spotlight
2009-07-09
By Sergio Mims

Everything seems to be going right for New Orleans native Anthony Mackie. After impressive performances in recent films such as Notorious, Million Dollar Baby and Half Nelson with another 6 films coming up including films about Olympian Jesse Owens, jazz musician Buddy Bolden and the just announced period love story Stringbean and Marcus in which Mackie and co-star Kerry Washington play two former Black Panthers, Mackie is currently getting raves for his co-starring role in director Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker, a brilliant and taut action suspense thriller about an Army bomb disposal unit on duty in Iraq. The film and Mackie are already getting the best reviews for any film this year and the buzz is that both the film and Mackie are definite shoo-ins for Oscar nominations next year.

Just recently EbonyJet.com had an opportunity to talk to Mackie about The Hurt Locker, what he’s learned in the business so far and the one role he wants to play more than any other.

MACKIE: First of all before we begin can I give a shout out to the Jet Beauty of the Week? (laughs)

MIMS: But of course. I don’t want to give anything away but I can I tell you how grateful I am that your character reaches the end of The Hurt Locker. You know how in movies like this a brother always gets killed usually saving the life of the white guy.

MACKIE: (Laughs a long time) Man, I would have these conversations with Kathryn (Bigelow, the director of The Hurt Locker) all the time: “I got to live, I’ve got to.”I mean he doesn’t get killed in the script, but we always had that joke. It’s usually  the black guy who dies first and I said I’ll be damned if I die this time. (laughs)

MIMS: No doubt The Hurt Locker had to be the most physically changing film you’ve made so far. 

MACKIE: No doubt. The hardest thing about making that movie was shooting in Jordan in the middle of summer, it was 110 degrees, lying out in the hot sand, no trailers, wearing 25 pounds of gear and firing off these sniper rifles that shoot 50 caliber shells, so that every time you pulled the trigger it was like being kicked in the neck.

MIMS: Because in that stand off scene, your character is forced to stay there for hours in broiling heat in the middle of the desert I didn’t get the feeling that you were acting at all.

MACKIE: Not at all! That was the hardest scene we had toshoot and it took about a week and half to shoot and once you get down to that heat, believe me there was no acting at all. I mean Kathryn is great because she would constantly put us in a position where we could go as far as we could go.

MIMS: Did you meet with real Army snipers and guys who have worked on bomb disposal units in Iraq or train with them? 

MACKIE: No, because just before I started on Locker I was shooting a film in North Carolina about the musician Buddy Bolden so I wasn’t able to do the special type of training I usually do. So I did a lot of reading and research about how they do their job and what they experience.

MIMS: So how do you get into the mindset of your characters? 

MACKIE: Well when you’re in a disadvantage because of the lack of time to prepare, a lot of the stuff I was doing was coming from Jeremy Rimmer and Brian Geraghty (co-stars of Hurt Locker). A lot of action comes from reaction, and they did all their research too so if they came to the set  100% ready then all I had to do was to play in the world they were creating and I knew I would be fine.

MIMS: So I must ask you what was it like working with Bigelow. She makes the toughest movies (Near Dark, Point Break, k-19 The Widowmaker, Strange Days) and there’s no other female director out there who specializes in making high testosterone real guy’s movies. 

MACKIE: Well most of her job with actors was done in casting so she would always give us the freedom to go far as we could and as far as we wanted and allowed us to experiment work with each other. The interesting thing too is that she’s a very visual director. She started out as an abstract impressionist painter and she has a process.  She works through her process and she always used to tell us if you’re not doing your job as an actor then I cast the wrong person.

MIMS: That’s the same approach to dealing with actors like those great Hollywood directors of the past like John Huston. 

MACKIE: Or Clint Eastwood, he would tell us the same exact thing, if you’re not doing your job then I cast the wrong person.

MIMS: Well that leads to me next question. You’ve worked so far in your career with some pretty great directors, Eastwood, Jonathan Demme, Spike Lee and now Bigelow. What makes these directors so great in your view? What separates them from other directors? 

MACKIE: Vision, truly their vision. I think a lot of times younger directors don’t understand all the work it takes to become truly good at what they’re doing. Spike was hardest working director I’ve worked with. Spike was the the first person the set and the last to leave. Demme was probably the smartest director I’ve ever worked with, Clint was probably the most well prepared director I’ve ever worked with. Kathryn was the most visual director I’ve ever worked with and all that stuff they would think of even before they came to the set.

MIMS: Let’s go back to the beginning, why did you get interested in acting in the first place? 

MACKIE: Girls. That was it! (laughs) I was a bad kid and instead of putting me on Ritalin my fourth grade teacher made me audition for this acting class and I got it and  it was great!

I got to live vicariously though other people. When I was in the fifth grade I was learning about 400 year old white men in different countries and how their lives related to mine. So I wanted to become an actor just because I always wanted to learn something new about myself and the world around me. Not many people can say that they’ve lived as a solider in Iraq (The Hurt Locker) or they lived as prize boxer (Million Dollar Baby) or they’ve lived as an impregnator of lesbians (She Hate Me)  (laughs) You know that’s true. I love being able to live vicariously through other people.

MIMS: So working on all these films and playing all these characters what has been the biggest lesson you’re learned in your career so far?

MACKIE: Sam Jackson taught me humility. And I don’t think that’s something I’ll ever be able to replace. He an amazing man and he’s had a amazing career that’s afforded him a modicum of luxury. He broke me off a piece of that  and gave me the law about the business and gave the law about where I was in the business and then we go back to the set and I realize that this dude knows everybody’s name, he’s paying for coffee for the entire crew, he’s letting people crack jokes on him. And I think that’s very important. If you were the set production assistant to the director, he treated everyone with respect as a person and that  would has been the biggest lesson I’ve learned so far in this business.

MIMS: Now you’re played Tupac Shakur in George Tillman’s film Notorious, you just finished playing the role of the legendary jazz musician Buddy Bolden in another film and you’re about to play Jesse Owens in another. Is there, for lack of another word, an intimidation factor playing such famous people since there are people who think they’re experts and will say you got him wrong? 

MACKIE: Well I think that some of the best roles for black actors are those roles. Tupac was, or is, one of the greatest figures of our generation. He is a literary figure and the only person who I felt I owned anything to was his mother. And for people such as Buddy Bolden and Jesse Owens I feel that these people deserve to have their stories told and I can’t think of anyone who can do it better than me. (laughs) I mean I got to step up and do it for my country.

MIMS: But lest anyone misunderstand what you’re talking about,  it’s confidence not arrogance. 

MACKIE: Exactly! There’s a huge difference.

MIMS: One last thing is there one role that you want more than anything want to play, your crowning achievement? 

MACKIE: The main one that I want to get old enough to play is King Lear. I didn’t understand my dad, I didn’t understand a whole lot of things about life until I read King Lear. It made me realize the importance of becoming a man. There’s that scene in the second act of the play when Lear is with his daughters and their husbands and he says: “O Reason, not the need” When I read that scene my jaw dropped. He’s saying I’ve lived 70 years and I don’t give thanks because I’m supposed to but I give thanks because I want to. You’ve earned that right. So I can’t wait until I’m 60 to try it. Well… 55 (laughs)

Film critic, lecturer and festival consultant Sergio Mims covers all things film from the city that works, Chicago. He is a regular contributor to EbonyJet.com.