Michael Eklund (The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus, Fringe) and Amanda Crew (Sex Drive, Charlie St Cloud) talk about their experience performing with the Saskatoon Soaps! Can’t say enough nice stuff, they were all fantastic! Hope to do it again soon!

It’s been a homecoming for two Saskatoon-born actors currently shooting Ferocious in the alleys of Saskatoon.

The feature length thriller stars Amanda Crew, Kim Coates, Michael Eklund and Katie Boland.

Coates, a University of Saskatchewan alumnus now living in Los Angeles, has built a successful career, starring in films such as Sons of Anarchy and Black Hawk Down. Eklund graduated from Mount Royal in 1993 and made his way to Vancouver to begin his acting career. Eklund says that growing up, he admired Coates.

“Kim was one of the guys who got out and made a name for himself. He was an inspiration for any actor that was coming through it in Saskatoon,” he says. Laughing, he adds “I told (Coates) that today and I think it touched him.”

The premise of Ferocious is a homecoming for a successful film actress. She’s promoting her film and coming home to a city much like Saskatoon. Director Robert Cuffley says Ferocious is about how dangerous people can become when they have nothing to lose.

Amanda Crew plays the female lead Leigh, a charming and determined actress who left her hometown to make it big in Hollywood. Leigh dumped then-boyfriend and bar manager Eric (Eklund) to make her career move. For five years he’s been heartbroken over the loss. After Leigh returns to her hometown, a plot to retrieve a sexually incriminating videotape from Eric’s bar unfolds as she encounters the ruthless and intimidating Sal (Coates).

The homecoming theme transcends Ferocious. Both Coates and Eklund are returning home after making it big in show business. They’re living the life they’re portraying on screen. The first two weeks of filming have been at night in the Glengarry building and the alley behind it. Dark and edgy, Ferocious can be labelled as film noir for its sexual motivations. Next up, the crew will move to the former Viper Room nightclub to shoot the shady bar scenes before filming wraps up in mid-December.

Playing the bad guy comes easily for Coates. While he loves comedy, he often chooses darker roles and says everyone is typecast at some level.

“My guy (Sal) is someone, that when I read it, right away I wanted to play him. I describe him as a king snake.”

Coates describes Sal as quiet and dark, with a funny side. He can be very violent when needed and something happens in the script to send him over the edge.

“I love being a character actor but I’m very careful with my bad guys. There are certain ones I will not play. Like pedophiles and rapists – I just won’t go there.”

Nearly all of the Ferocious crew members are from the province but most key technical positions had to be brought in from Regina. Producer Carolyn McMaster, of CHAOS, a film company, says this is a problem.

“My hope for the future of film in Saskatoon is that they develop more of an infrastructure moving forward. I hope the province is behind filmmaking.”

She says that while Saskatoon is a good training ground, more needs to be done to encourage highly qualified people to stay.

“I would encourage the students in filmmaking to stay in Saskatchewan and make this a viable film centre.”

One person who has done that is Daniel Ford Beavis. The owner of O’Shea’s Irish Pub and fight director for Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan is also a stunt performer in the Saskatchewan film industry. He says he doesn’t blame talented people for moving to larger centres to pursue their careers.

“I’ve decided I’ll stay here. The U of S drama department turned out much of our talent for (Ferocious).”

Coates agrees. He studied drama at the U of S from 1978 to 1982 and says he loves to watch the current graduates and what they do with their talent.

That talent has been ramping up production for the Saskatchewan film industry. Several feature length films have recently been made in the province. Anand Ramayya began the production company Karma Film in Saskatoon in 2002 and is one of the producers of Ferocious. He has watched the industry in Saskatchewan steadily grow over the past decade. Ramayya feels the province has much to offer filmmakers in the way of locations and artists, but that the film industry needs support.

“We have to get the community behind us (and) keep supporting the arts. We need to make Saskatoon an affordable and attractive place to shoot,” he says.

Cuffley says Saskatoon was his top choice for Ferocious and after scouting locations this summer, had to make a tough decision between the Bridge and Queen cities.

“I’m not trying to create a rivalry of course, but Saskatoon seemed to have a little more colour.”

Source

Amanda Crew and Dustin Milligan discuss working on Repeaters. A gritty mind-bending thriller about three twenty-somethings who find themselves in an impossible time labyrinth, where each day they awaken to the same terrifying day as the preceding one.

The cast of “Repeaters” (Amanda Crew, Dustin Milligan & Richard de Klerk) will be doing a live web chat on September 12 at dustinmilligan.com/interact!

This will be an opportunity for anybody to have a chance to submit questions for the three of them to answer the day before “Repeaters” premiers at the Toronto International Film Festival.

People can sign up now at the above URL for a reminder e-mail of the chat.

Thanks to Andre for the heads up!

Amanda Crew (Repeaters, Charlie St. Cloud) interview at Zooey Magazine launch event benefiting Farm Sanctuary at Warner Studios in Culver City,CA USA August 15, 2010 – Interview by Arista Ilona – Farm Sanctuary, an organization that seeks to protect and protect farm animals in North America. The Farm Sanctuary has two shelters, one in Northern California and one in New York. California’s shelter is 300 acres big, providing care and rehabilitation to farm animals who are rescued from cruelty and neglect. Fact: each year, about 900,000 pigs are beaten, injured, violently dragged, and shocked for slaughter. For info on Zooey Magazine visit http://zooeymagazine.com/ and for Farm Sanctuary http://www.farmsanctuary.org/

Amanda Crew on Kissing Zac Efron at ZOOEY MAGAZINE Launch Event August 15, 2010

Let me introduce you to someone you’ll be seeing a lot of in the future: Amanda Crew. Amanda’s a Canadian hottie who stars in “Charlie St. Cloud” with none other than Zac Efron this month (and is from the hometown of another Canadian hottie, Mr. Jesse Giddings).

Jesse chatted with Amanda recently via Skype and asked her the question we all want to know: what is it like to kiss Zac Efron? Watch the video below to hear her answer!

From MuchMusic

If we were a young actress and had landed the starring role opposite heartthrob Zac Efron in his new movie “Charlie St. Cloud,” we imagine we’d shout the news to all our friends and family and brag to anyone within hearing range. And then we’d likely regret it, because everyone and our mom would beg us to come to set and meet Zac.

Not the case with “St. Cloud” co-star Amanda Crew (who we hope you recognize from her scene-stealing role in “She’s the Man” with the Amanda Bynes). When asked if she had any friends or family members begging to for a Zac introduction, Amanda said her people were all cool as cucumbers.

“Obviously my friends and family were extremely happy for me,” Amanda said of their reaction on hearing her casting news. “But they have always been really respectful of my job and my work place and so I didn’t have any friends trying to suddenly take interest in my job and trying to come on set.”

The 24-year-old added that a few of her friends did get to meet Zac, but not because of any special fangirl request, just because he’s “a really cool guy.”

“He is very down to earth and approachable,” Amanda said of her co-star. “I had really good time working with him.”

She also revealed that Zac has an additional talent that he shared with her while making the film.

“He can rap,” Amanda said. “He can free-style like crazy, he can lay it down. He is actually really really good at rapping.”

There you have it, Crush-ers. You really do learn something new every day.

From MTV

Amanda Crew (Sex Drive) stars as Tess, a dedicated sailor set to embark on a solo journey around the world, in Universal Pictures’ Charlie St. Cloud, based on the popular book by Ben Sherwood and starring Zac Efron (High School Musical). Only home for a short visit before setting off on her voyage, Tess makes a connection with her high school classmate, Charlie (Efron). Meanwhile Charlie has issues of his own to deal with, including the appearance every afternoon of his younger brother Sam’s ghost. Just before Sam (Charlie Tahan) passed away, Charlie made him a promise that they’d always be together. To Charlie, falling for Tess would mean breaking the vow he made to his brother in his dying moments.

Crew said part of the reason she was drawn to the character was because it’s difficult to find strong roles for actresses her age. “A lot of the time, it’s just the pretty girl who serves as the love interest and that’s it. What I loved about this character was that she’s such a strong, independent woman who knows what she wants in life. She’s unapologetic about it. She has these goals and she’s going to go for it. I think that’s a great role model for girls. Even myself, I admired this character. She’s going to sail around the world by herself. She’s brave and ambitious. Burr [Steers the director] and I did a lot of rehearsals and worked on that before we started shooting. I do come across as very similar to the character, in that I know what I want in life. But the part about the character I struggled with the most was the unapologetic part. I’m Canadian and Burr was like, ‘Stop apologizing!,’ and I was like, ‘I’m sorry! Okay, I’ll do it!’ But, I came out of the film and carried some of the character with me from this experience, in a positive way. I’m just trying to carry that strength with me, for the rest of my life,” said Crew.

Crew’s co-star Efron had worked with director Steers before on 17 Again, and the 24 year old Canadian actress can see why Efron would be so eager to team up again with Steers. “I can’t speak any more highly of Burr. He’s an amazing director, and I’m glad I had the experience that I did because he pushed me so far out of my comfort zone in a positive and loving way. He could see what I was capable of and could tell if I wasn’t living up to my full potential. He’d push me to this really uncomfortable place, but you know that it’s out of love and it’s something positive. You just feel really safe with him,” explained Crew.

Getting out of her comfortable zone included learning how to sail. “The sailing stuff was always a disaster with me. Zac picked it up really quickly, but I”m not very athletic. We did a lot of sailing training and we had personal trainers to do a lot of weight training in the gym, but I’m a klutz. I had bruises all over my body through the entire shoot, just from falling over. Before the screen test, a friend of mine who’s a professional sailor was like, ‘Come up to San Francisco. We’ve got this amazing boat and we’re doing a practice run.’ So I was like, ‘Sweet! Bikinis and champagne!’ That’s what I pictured sailing to be – but it’s not. It’s a sport.”

Crew can’t even remember exactly how much training she had before taking to the water, but it definitely paid off in the long run. “We were on the water every day for at least three hours, then in the gym every day,” recalled Crew. “I’m so glad that we did that because I never felt so physically strong. I was not just mentally connected to the character, but also physically connected, just because we had been doing all that work. Burr was always like, ‘When you’re doing your sailing training, don’t be Amanda sailing, be Tess sailing.’ Amanda sailing is, ‘Oops, sorry!,’ and Tess sailing is like, ‘Yeah, this is what I’m doing, and I’m doing it wrong, but I’m doing it.’ He was always just getting us to be in character.”

From About

Amanda Crew is the lucky lady who scored the coveted role of Zac Efron’s love interest in Charlie St. Cloud, which hits theaters today — check out BuzzSugar’s review here. In the movie, Amanda plays a world-class sailor who’s about to set out on the voyage of her life when fate brings her together with Zac’s character, Charlie. The actress told us that her leading man was not only great to work with, but was also more than gracious to his fans while on location in Vancouver. She also insisted there were no nerves when they filmed their steamy love scene! At the junket, Zac played coy about his sailing skills when we sat down with him, while Amanda revealed his secret rapping skills. Here’s more from our interview:

PopSugar: Did you have any sailing experience before the film?
Amanda Crew: No, none. We worked with personal trainers before the movie, but I’m not very athletic by nature. I definitely had some bruises.

PS: Did you and Zac train together?
AC: We trained in the harbor together but we weren’t on the same boats. He picked it up really fast and I . . . didn’t. [Laughs]

PS: So there was some healthy competition?
AC: Yes, there was.

To read the rest of Amanda’s interview, just read more.

PS: Were you a fan of Zac’s before working with him? What do you think will surprise people about his performance?
AC: I hadn’t seen High School Musical. I think what will surprise people is this vulnerability and rawness he has to him. He wasn’t afraid [to show that].

PS: There’s a pretty intense love scene in this movie. Did you two get a chance to know each other before shooting it?
AC: Yes, we had a few weeks. So we did get to know each other and build [a relationship]. Plus, there are lights and lots of people around, so . . .

PS: So there were no nerves?
AC: No nerves.

PS: The movie has a lot of surprises. Did you see them coming when you read the script?
AC: No, I didn’t. There are a lot of twists and turns and I liked that. I liked that it wasn’t just your typical love story.

PS: Charlie makes some pretty big sacrifices for Tess in the movie. What’s the most romantic thing anyone’s ever done for you?
AC: Nothing [extreme]. I think it’s the little things, the thought behind it. If you want to spend time with me, that’s enough!

PS: Did you have any crazy experiences with fans during the shoot?
AC: Zac’s fans would wait hours to just get a glimpse at him . . . and he would sign every autograph and take every picture. When you do that, you’re giving so much of yourself, and he’d do it after a full day of shooting. I don’t know if I’d have the energy!

From Pop Sugar