While some people have spent their lifetimes achieving lifelong dreams of becoming actors, for Australian native Sam Worthington, an acting career was the farthest thing from his mind.

“I was a brick layer,” Worthington claims, “I built houses and I never wanted to act. When I was 19, I met a girl who auditioned for the premier drama school. I auditioned with her, for moral support, to cheer her along. I got in, she didn’t. She dumped me a week later. We didn’t see eye-to-eye. I didn’t know what wings on a stage was. I thought Chekov was on the Starship Enterprise. So I was a sponge that took everything in, then you finish your sentence after three years, they release you for good behavior if you’re lucky, and you go and work, and you learn how to act.”

“And that’s basically…I’m still an infant in this, but after ten years, I always thought, you do as much as you can in your own country, so you can sit in a room with Jim or McG and offer something,” he adds, “That’s my bannership. You don’t say you want to build a house and go, I want to do the fucking Twin Towers project. No one’s going to give you the job. So my belief was you do as much as you can and I looked at other actors in Australia who had done the same thing.”

It’s because of these humble Perth beginnings for Worthington that he says make him feel little discomfort with his new surroundings in a room full of journalists that come with doing press for his first major role in a Hollywood film, Terminator: Salvation.

“I started out in 2006, I think,” he states, “So I’ve been working non-stop. No, it’s the next part of your job. You know it’s coming. You do it. It’s to sell the movie you spend four months toiling over and in that period, you spend the last year toiling over. So, hopefully, we can sell it correctly and people go and see it.”

We asked the 32 year-old Sam if he had been a fan of the original Terminator films.

“I kind of reacquainted myself with it, obviously before we shot it,” Worthington replies, “I think I was about 14 or 15 when the second one came out, so I remember the liquid man and things like that, because it was pretty revolutionary, but seeing them again, you realized just how talented Jim [Cameron] is as a storyteller.”

In the film, Worthington plays Marcus Wright, a resistance soldier reformatted as a Terminator. He described for us the rather unique way in which he interpreted the character.

“To be honest, I looked at him as Dorothy in The Wizard Of Oz,” Sam claims, “That was what was always stuck in my head about this person waking up in another world and finds himself going on this yellow brick road. And they find the heart, the brain, the fucking…sensitivity, or whatever, from the tin man, and all these characters that you meet along. And he’s getting into Skynet, which is Oz, to ask the question, why fucking the hell am I not fucking dead, you know?”

“So that’s how I looked at it. This is one where I’m wearing a blue coat and Dorothy wears a blue dress,” he continues, “There’s just things like that stuck into it, Alice In Wonderland, same thing, so that’s how I approached the character. And I also wanted to be a robot that felt pain, not only physical and emotional and mental. But here’s a guy that he wanted to die for his sins and the irony is that he can’t die. So he’s stuck in this constant penance. It’s to suffer till he transforms and becomes a better human being.”

He was equally as blunt about director McG’s reaction to his interpretation of Marcus.

“He thinks I’m as mad as a hatter,” he says.

One thing we wanted Sam to interpret for us is Marcus’s mysterious past, which is shrouded in dark mystery for the film.

“We all come up with our own backstories, to be honest,” he reveals, “He now says it was he killed a brother and two cops. That was McG’s idea. I have my own backstory. To be honest, I don’t want you to ever know what he did personally. I think we ADR’d (Additional Dialogue Recording) that line, because the audiences were coming back going, what did he do? What did he do?”

“So the AD (Assistant Director) put it in, but I personally never wanted you to know,” Worthington continues, “The guy’s obviously done something wrong, he’s on death row. But if you say he’s a pedophile, you say he’s a psychopath, you say that he accidentally killed someone, we already have a preconception of him and I didn’t want that. But as it stands, I think it’s OK, still a bit ambiguous. Did he kill his brother, you know?”

He says though that his working relationship with McG was as harmonious as one could manage to ever get.

“He’s a good director,” Sam says, “He lets you come in, do your job, and gives you little subtle hints along the way until you’re on the right path. That’s what any good director does. They don’t treat you like a monkey or a puppet. They tell you, they implore you to bring in whatever you can bring in and my job is to bring him as much as I can and then he goes and puts it together, but that’s my job.”

Another person Sam says he had a harmonious working relationship with is co-star Christian Bale, who plays John Connor in the film.

“I find Christian extremely passionate and dedicated,” Worthington believes, “People call him intense, so I hate that fucking word now, I hate it. He turns up, does his job, and he tries to make it…it’s all about the story and the character and to work with a guy like that is an absolute privilege.”

Particularly noteworthy scenes involving Worthington are some rather tender scenes with actress Moon Bloodgood, who plays resistance ally Blair Williams in the film. The actor explained for us the process he took to make those scenes work so well on screen.

“Like any scene, you dive in on the day and you kind of have an idea of what you want to do and you see where it goes,” Sam explains, “But we didn’t really talk about things obviously, but I’m not finally about making any movie, it’s about exploration and nutting out any bit of friction. And if you get a bit of friction, you produce a pearl. Some of those scenes, he’s like that.”

One thing Worthington shed some light on for us regarding the making the film was the reported injuries that occurred during the film’s stuntwork.

“Well, you get beaten up, man.” Sam points out, “It’s Terminator. It’s not fucking Pride & Prejudice, isn’t it? You know what you’re stepping into. So you take a few hits, you take a few knocks. I just think putting an actor in those situations.”

“The audience is seeing the character getting blown up, running through minefields and getting shot at, it draws them in a bit more,” he continues, “We’re not busting them out going, it’s a stunt man, is it? I think it kind of keeps them involved in the story, so I think all of us tried as much as we could to do with the insurance going off.”

Sam also recalled what he felt was the most dangerous stunt he performed in the film.

“Being strung up wasn’t a very good day,” Worthington claims, “But it helps the scene, because you don’t want to be strung up and neither does the character. So that helps, but yeah, jumping off and the truck blows up, that was difficult because, yeah, you’re doing things that a stuntman can do. I’m not a trained stuntman, but I’ll give anything a go and some of that wire stuff is a little more difficult than it works, you know.”

A noteworthy aspect we touched on about Terminator: Salvation is the fact is how there is actually not nearly as much green or blue screen technology used for the visual effects, something Worthington believes gives this action film in the crowded summer busy season an edge.

“Yeah, McG is very smart,” Sam remarks, “Instead of looking at the tennis ball with John Rosengrant and the guys and Stan Winston, he would build an actual robot as a point of reference. I think, in this day and age, that’s the smart thing to do with a lot of blue screen and green screen kind of technology. Audiences won’t tune in if you always have that movie, if you just fix them one thing, because if you look at other things, it’s good to have a point to look at. So I like the work.”

We wondered whether Sam also liked the final cut of Terminator: Salvation.

“I think it is fast,” he replies, “It’s the movie McG told me he wanted to make and that’s good and I get excited. But it’s hard for me to be too objective, because you’re in it, so you can’t, because I can’t.”

The film is not the only arsenal in Worthington’s cannon for his bid for mainstream Hollywood recognition. He also stars in the highest-anticipated Hollywood film of the past several years, Avatar, directed by James Cameron, who also did the first two Terminator films. Sam shared with us how Cameron reacted to being chosen for the latest sequel of the franchise the filmmaker himself had started.

“I told him that, look, they wanted me to do it,” Sam recalls, “And I said here’s my take on the character and here’s what they want to do it and he just told me don’t fuck it up. That was about it and we went back to filming Avatar. Jim says he wants to look at it as a fan.”

Sam talks about how Cameron plans to add greater nuance to the world of special effects in his first Hollywood film in 12 years since his Earth-shattering box office bonanza Titanic (If one, of course, does not count his fictitious credit as director of the film adaptation of the comic book Aquaman during his memorable appearance as himself on the HBO hit Entourage).

“Jim is very clever in that you try to make it as real as possible,” Worthington says, “So even if you’re in a big gray soundstage, for one of the better words, with nothing there, he will try to give you as much as possible to make the terrain, the place real.”

“So there would be plants to walk through, there’s an explosion there, frogs shoot at you, there’s things like that, so you are reacting. Because acting is reacting, so you can’t just react to nothing. That’s too hard a task to ask any actor, so you always need something tangible.”

Worthington also deconstructs some of the myth that has long surrounded James Cameron of his filmmaking being primarily centered on bombast and special effects with some of what he has in store for Avatar, tentatively set to come out December 18 of this year.

“There’s kind of physical precision in the sets sometimes,” Sam says, “You’re never dictated about the technology with you, Jimmy is paramount to the actors. Everyone thinks that he’s technology-driven. He is the best fucking acting director I’ve ever worked with. He picks up on details and subtleties that you wouldn’t believe. He’s implored me to come and do my job and then we use the technology and I work with him.”

“It’s give and take,” he adds, “Jim isn’t a dictator. He wants it fucking high, but so I, you know? And I’m not there to get pushed around. I’m there to work with the man. And that’s why I got the job because I don’t get pushed around. I come in and go, I’ve done ten years in Australia. I didn’t do that for nothing, you know what I mean? We work together. It’s a privilege to work with directors who like pushing the boundaries, like taking risks, like McG, who is taking a hell of a risk on this movie, risking at his own career and that’s why I like to be part of that.”

Sam also delights in the notion that despite being one of the most highly-anticipated films of the year, there is still little official word put out in the film media world on Avatar at this time.

“Yeah, it’s amazing,” he says, “Jim said the hype is going to kill it. He’s not nervous. He doesn’t get nervous, but it’s not a thing of it’s the big all, end all, but hopefully, what this does is open up the possibilities of what a motion-capture world can do, the possibilities of what this 3D technology can do, what it can achieve, and hopefully, it starts that revolution. I think it will.”

Even beyond Avatar, Worthington also revealed for us that he plans to star in an upcoming remake of the 1981 cult classic Clash Of The Titans, tentatively set for release March 26, 2010.

“Filming it at the moment,” Sam reveals, “Who wouldn’t want to run around in a dress and kill the cracker? That’s the appeal. I read the script and was jumping around the bedroom with a ruler and went, God! My girlfriend’s looking at me like I’m nuts and she says, this is the one you’re going to do? And I’m like, it’s deep, trust me. You know I had to take on that I gave [director] Louis [Leterrier] in the studio and they’re mad enough to let me loose and see if it can work.”

We asked Sam if he could share with us what will be different in this new one from the original film.

“We’ve been filming it for two weeks now,” he discloses, “I’m more bruised and battered than I was on Terminator. We took on Medusa, we took on the witches, I go back, take on the Scorpioks, and then, we just kill everything else, I think. It’s a bit more brutal.”

“There’s no togas,” Worthington adds, “There’s very little togas. I’m not saying I’m not wearing a toga, but I say mug it up. You can’t look manly in a toga, so I can’t do it, so we’re just making it. Louis’s a very good action director, so it’s going to be exciting and big and my job is to bring the heart.”

Worthington also reveals that the role he plays is Perseus. We asked him how different he will play the role from actor Harry Hamlin in the original film.

“I don’t play it exactly the same,” Sam replies, “It’s hard for me to discuss that because I’m in the middle of it. It’s somewhat that I can tell you when we are going to promote that movie whether it worked or not, you know what I’m saying? So I’m in the middle of discovering whether the take is going to work.”

Another film Sam reveals he is considering is a film adaptation of the superhero comic The Green Lantern

“I think they’ve been talking to people,” he says, “I’ve been talking to Martin [Campbell] about it. It’s one of those things, they’re still doing a script. I says give me a script. Let me have a look at it. I like Martin a lot. I met him on the Bond set and I like his work, but the second step is is it a movie I’d go and see?”

We inquired Worthington on whether he has high expectations choosing roles.

“No, no, I pick because of the director,” Sam says, “I pick because I’m working with them and my job is to facilitate his vision and the second thing is would I go and see the movie, because there’s no point in doing something for four months or thirteen months that you wouldn’t go and see, that seems ridiculous.”

Finally, we asked Sam whether he’s any bit concern about the fame distracting his career as an actor.

“That’s just part of the fun,” he says, “TMZ would seem to be going a bit far, don’t it My mates are ready to take my head off. They’re sick of seeing my head. That’s the thing. They’ve known me since I was 22, so it can be overwhelming. I’m 32, so they kind of know who I am.”

“I’m OK with it as long as I can go enjoy the ride, as long as it doesn’t affect my work,” Worthington continues, “And as long as I keep producing work of a certain quality that keeps me in the game, then I’m OK. As soon as it starts affecting what I can achieve, I feel that I’ve got nothing to offer, I’ll go back to brick-laying.”