Aaron Eckhart

Interview By: Michael Dance
MichaelDance@TheCinemaSource.com

For how long has Aaron Eckhart been on the cusp of stardom' It was about to happen when he came out of nowhere to star in the vicious comedy In the Company of Men back in 1997. Then again when he played Julia Roberts's love interest in Erin Brockovich. Then finally when he starred in the one-two-three punch of The Core, Paycheck, and Suspect Zero -- except that all three of those movies flopped.

Eckhart went back to his indie roots in Thank You for Smoking, a satire on spin and the nicotine industry that landed him some terrific reviews that all agreed the same thing: this time, finally, Eckhart would be a star.

True to form, his next movie, The Black Dahlia, flopped.

Luckily, from the strength of Smoking, director Christopher Nolan cast him in the pivotal role of Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight -- a little movie you may know is the sequel to another little movie, 2005's Batman Begins. So the question remains: will it happen this time'

"I love Harvey Dent," Eckhart says about his character, who Batman fans know is destined to become the villainous Two-Face before the end of the film. "When I read the script I was amazed at the transformation that Harvey has. And given that the Joker is the engine that propels the movie and transforms the action, I was surprised how much Harvey had to do. And what a light he is in the movie. It's interesting to get to know Harvey as an altruistic leader of Gotham City, trying to clean up the city and confront the issues that no one wants to confront -- and then to see his transformation into Two-Face. I think the audience is going to have a little more empathy and understanding of Two-Face since they got to know him as Harvey Dent."

The character is one of the Batman mythos's classics, right up there with Jim Gordon (played once again by Gary Oldman) or Batman's butler Alfred (played once again by Michael Caine. "I was familiar with Dent inasmuch as he was an iconic Batman character," Eckhart says. I didn't know his ins and outs, and when I got the part -- thank goodness, thank you Chris -- Chris sent me the comic books, and I started to do research.

Eckhart soon realized that the character had a farther reach than he realized. "You know it's funny, when people knew I was going to be Harvey/Two-Face, they came out of the woodwork, and the most unlikely people were throwing me facts about him. It was like baseball statistics, like, how do you know this stuff' I used [some of it], but we had such a beautiful, complex structure in the script, we didn't have to do much besides say our lines and have the emotional intensity. I'm not an aficionado of Harvey/Two-Face, and I'm sure once the movie comes out fans will approach me and ask me if I know everything, and I won't, but I do have a great love for him now."

What makes the story of The Dark Knight so interesting is the way that Batman sees Dent as the great hope for Gotham in his fight against crime. "Batman has an admiration for Harvey because Harvey's doing things that Batman can't do, or doesn't do, and maybe doesn't have the courage to do, which is come out in his everyday clothes and say, 'I'm going to do what I'm doing for Gotham City in the open.' That's what Harvey's doing, and he's doing it at his own peril."

The question of what's right, and how best to accomplish what you believe is right, is central to The Dark Knight.

"Bruce Wayne being the carefree billionaire, debonair playboy, everybody can wish and hope that they were that person," Eckhart says. "But also having a more serious profound side -- saving the city, using your money for good, that whole side -- I think that people on a daily basis struggle with those two sides of the coin. You know: should I buy a boat or should I give my money to the Salvation Army or the Red Cross' I mean, every single day we're battling with issues: what is our responsibility in society'"

Eckhart even found a morality in the anarchic Joker: "The Joker has his objections to money: what he thinks about money, and what he thinks about modern crime; he has objections about the modern criminal as well. On one side he's the stylistic anarchist, on the other side he's being a responsible criminal." Eckhart chuckles. "And look at Maggie: she has her questions and issues too. Lt. Gordon: his responsibility between his police friends and Batman. I don't even understand half this stuff. There's so much that Chris has jammed in there."

Ironically, the actual filming of The Dark Knight was not difficult thanks to the heady themes but rather because of some much more practical problems: maintaining secrecy on a film of this scale.

"The secrecy issues involved with a movie like this are intense," Eckhart says. "The whole time I'm living in fear of the script getting released, and the responsibility and pressure of not being the one responsible for that leak, and I ended up having to do some extraordinary things. Obviously people have seen Batman's costume before, but Heath and I had to wear hoods over our heads, and go into public looking like friars. That was interesting. Heath's picture, the Joker, got out, but Two-Face never did. So I was happy about that."

In matters of secrecy, the internet -- populated by nosy photographers and rabid fanboys who want as much information as possible -- presented a problem that Eckhart still sounds disappointed about. "The internet, it does suck when people reveal things," he says. "It really takes a lot of steam out of the director, who spends so much time crafting the material. For somebody to give that material up, like a crew member, it just -- I can't tell you how it hurts in the sense of betrayal. People on the set have to be a family. Wally, the DP, has done four or five movies with Chris. You want to be able to trust the people you work with. If I were to say something about the process right now that I shouldn't, I would feel terrible. And I would feel a personal responsibility to Chris, and I would go to Chris and say, 'Chris, I'm so sorry I revealed this, I didn't mean to,' but you'd be able to see [the dismay] on his face."

With that attitude, Eckhart refuses to elaborate on how much of his Two-Face face was makeup and how much was CGI. Or what the makeup process entailed. Or anything, really. "I'm reluctant to talk about that, actually," he says. "I really would like the audience to come to the movie and experience the revelation [of my face] as something really fresh, and not have the burden or baggage of having too much information. I think just seeing it for the first time, fresh, is going to be a great experience for them." He'll admit only that he spent "less than five years and more than a day" wearing the Two-Face makeup.

Finally, talk of Eckhart's career comes around. He's asked if he'd do anything differently on his long, extremely bumpy road to the (almost) top. "I have to say that I'm satisfied with my career in that I'm here, and I'm still working, and I like that," he finally answers. "I don't think that in my early career, although I was offered that road, that I was ready for big romantic comedies: I think my sensibilities are darker, and I don't think I was in the right frame of mind to do those. I don't know that I trusted that road as much as going and working on smaller movies with people that I admired. Even having a small role in The Pledge, with Sean Penn and Jack Nicholson, meant more to me than taking on a big studio film."

This isn't a guy blowing smoke: who else would follow up The Dark Knight with a movie called Towelhead, in which he plays a would-be pedophile' Perhaps Eckhart hasn't reached true stardom yet because -- gasp -- he doesn't consider it the most important goal. As clich'd as it sounds, he just wants to work with good people. And with that in mind, The Dark Knight turned out to be a great project.

"This movie," Eckhart says, "if you took the actual Dark Knight and all the toys out, would be an independent movie. You've got Chris Nolan, you've got Gary Oldman, who's the king of dark independent human drama, you've got Christian, who goes to the limit with his characters -- really it's a bunch of independent filmmakers."

And don't forget Heath Ledger, of course. The late actor's shadow unavoidably hangs over the film thanks to the indelible impression he leaves onscreen as the Joker; Eckhart had one major scene with Ledger that comes late in the film.

"That was a fun day for me. Heath and I hadn't rehearsed that scene in character, so I didn't really know what to expect that day, but I knew he was doing some great work. I had seen him a little bit, worked with him a little bit, but I knew through Chris that he was raising the bar and doing some exciting stuff. So I came in that day and Heath, he was just out of the box, doing his thing. So I was like, okay, here we go. As an actor, you can't ask for anything more. That's why we do what we do. For Heath to give completely, to open himself up, to be so vulnerable and take such risks with the character, just frees everybody in the room, from the crew to me to the director. So we really played a lot and most of it ended up on the screen. I felt like Heath was so into his character that I could say anything in character and he would come right back with something funny or better. At the end of that day we were both very tired, and I remember patting Heath on the back and saying, 'That's why we act.'"