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- I don't know if I would say I'm a thrill seeker.
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I'm always down to do some thrills.
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I don't think I'm seeking it. [laughs]
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I'm not actively getting up in the morning, cup of coffee,
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"Let's go find some [beep] to jump off of."
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[crew laughing]
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That make sense?
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I like challenges, that's for sure.
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I'd definitely be more of a challenge seeker.
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I love problems to overcome.
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[cheerful music]
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Hi, I'm Jeremy Renner and this is the timeline of my career.
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For me, it's sort of dumb luck.
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It was in college and took an acting class as an elective,
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and that's when everything kind of shifted for me.
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But once I started acting in L.A., I was like 23 or 24,
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on the side was as a makeup artist.
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I was a makeup artist while I was in L.A.
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for a good eight years, and that was my job on the weekends
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to kind of keep me afloat so I can go audition.
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[cheerful music]
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- Lisa.
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Lisa, Lisa, Lisa, Lisa.
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- What?
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- Wanna cut and go to a party?
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Come on. I know you like me.
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- Would you leave me alone?
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- Actually booking was like, you know,
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winning the lottery type of feeling.
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I remember jumping up and down and I called my mom
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and I said, "I'm going to Toronto. I got this movie."
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And I didn't know where the hell fucken Toronto was.
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But I'm like, I was so excited.
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I remember kissing the dirty old carpet
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at the crappy apartment I was living in.
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It was a big, big milestone for me to know that like, hey,
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I can actually work in this city.
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[cheerful music]
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- I buy you these shoes,
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you just gotta take a couple of pictures.
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- Well, what kind of pictures?
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- Just a couple of pictures of you, you know,
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making a muscle, sitting in a chair,
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you know, looking tough.
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- That movie has a lot of value to me in my life.
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This is probably around 2000.
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So some good seven years have been gone by
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since "Senior Trip."
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I think there was like an actors strike
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I believe around that time,
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so I remember, you know, a lot of struggles
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'cause I was doing a lot of commercials at the time
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to help keep working as an actor and help pay the bills.
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But I remember being very, very poor
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in the sense of that I had no electricity, no running water,
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and that kind of stuff happening.
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My manager at the time said,
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"Hey, there's this thing with Dahmer."
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I'm like, "That sounds interesting."
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So then I went and read this monologue for the director,
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got cast that day,
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and then three days later we started shooting,
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and then 14 days after that moment we were done shooting.
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So it happened very, very, very quickly.
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It was a whirlwind of an experience
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and the movie did well for me in the sense
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of a lot of people within the industry
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saw it and noticed it,
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and how people perceived me shifted in a positive way,
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as far as like creative opportunities for me in the future.
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Kathryn Bigelow saw "Dahmer"
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and this is the guy to play Will James
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for "The Hurt Locker."
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- That wasn't so bad our first time working together.
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What do you think?
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- Huh.
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I think us working together means I talk to you
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and you talk to me.
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- We going on a date, Sanborn?
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- No. We're going on a mission.
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- Kathryn was in L.A.,
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so I flew from London for a dinner to meet her in person
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and she shows me a lookbook, which is just images,
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and talk more about the character.
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I was more just sort of like agreeing like,
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"Yeah, we're gonna go do this."
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After getting the role it was probably a good year,
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year and a half before we started actually filming,
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so I'd read other actors.
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I would go to Fort Irwin and train with EOD,
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which is part of just understanding the role.
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And then we started our production
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and went to Middle East and started filming.
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As like a kid from Modesto, California,
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it's strange going over to the Middle East, you know.
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Everything was just different.
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It's 130 degrees.
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You got a 100-pound bomb suit on,
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but, like, heat, it doesn't become heat anymore.
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Like, pain is more of a spiritual pain
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than it is like a physical sort of pain.
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The location was a huge character in that film in particular
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where it only informs you of truths.
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You know, if we were supposed to be freezing,
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it would have been awful, you know, 'cause it's 130 degrees.
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But everything that we were doing,
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everywhere we were, made it easier, realistic to us.
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The shooting experience is one thing,
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but then as it all came together,
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it took about two years before it to actually be released.
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So we were going around to every military base
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and showing the film and talking about it,
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and that's not even something on my filmography.
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This is more of a life experience
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that I was blessed to be a part of.
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You know, it became a wonderful tool to communicate
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between civilian life and soldier life.
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And then the kind of the payoff with Kathryn
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becoming the first woman director to win an Oscar.
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I survived all the way through until,
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until, yeah, one day.
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We wrapped and then the boys,
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we all went over to Beirut and had fun,
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and then my buddy got drunk and he ordered a sandwich
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to the room and I ate a sandwich for him
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'cause he passed out and it had lettuce on it,
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and I was done.
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I lost 30 pounds in four days.
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Got heli lifted back to Jordan.
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I'm like, "I'm wrapped.
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"I'm on my own free time,
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"and I'm sicker than I've ever been sick in my life."
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[laughs] Yeah, those memories.
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- There's too many locks.
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There's too many. I can't do it.
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- Undo. - I can't get it off.
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I'm sorry, okay?
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You understand? I'm sorry.
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- Help me.
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- You hear me? I'm sorry.
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I'm sorry!
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- [Sanborn] Get down now!
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[soldiers yelling]
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[car horns honking]
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- Did you say your name was Jim or Jem?
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- Ah, it's J-Jem. Well, it's both, actually.
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Um, teachers when we were growing up, you know,
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used to always say, "Hey, you can have this one.
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"He's a real gem."
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So I guess it kinda stuck.
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- Yeah, that was just as foreign to me
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as being in the Middle East.
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You know, I didn't know really much about Boston.
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Ben's said like, "We're not gonna do any dialect coaches."
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So he just put me with a bunch of people in a bar,
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ex-cons just got out of a 20-year bit.
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These are all dudes that were in prison,
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all guys that did bank robberies and armored car heists
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and that kind of stuff.
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It couldn't be funnier and cooler and the whole thing,
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but I just hung out with them for, like, two weeks.
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Ben is a wonderful, super, super smart guy.
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It was a great journey to work with him,
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and Boston has a really, really cool, beautiful community.
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I really enjoyed shooting there.
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- About six foot, 180 pounds, blue eyes. Who is he?
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- Crude drawing, but by your description,
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that could be Kurt Hendricks.
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190 IQ, served in Swedish special forces,
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professor of physics.
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- I was meeting with J.J. Abrams
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about the movie "Super 8," I believe.
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I think I was sitting in this room and he says,
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"Hey, I wanna hear all your thoughts,
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"but what do you think about 'Mission Impossible'?"
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I'm like, "Yeah, they're great movies. I love them.
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"So anyway, 'Super 8'--"
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"No, hold on.
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"Would you like to go meet Tom?
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"'Cause they're having a whole kind of show-and-tell
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"right now over at Paramount."
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I'm like, "Uh, okay. Like, right now?"
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He's like, "Yeah, yeah, let me call him."
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So I'm driving across from Santa Monica now
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all the way back into Hollywood
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and I go sit in his room and talking to Tom Cruise
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and all the people kind of involved in that and the director
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and we start talking and they say,
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"Hey, we really want you in this movie."
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I'm like, "Okay, that's great."
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They're saying this and talking about this,
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and I'm like, "Well, all this sounds really amazing,
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"you guys, but like, why me?"
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And they're like, "Well, because we look at you
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"and you can be a good guy or a bad guy.
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"People might be on the fence.
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"You're like a coiled spring."
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I'm like, "Great, I understand that.
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"I get why you say that."
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I didn't say yes or no.
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I just gave them all a hug and I went home.
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And I got a phone call from Tom.
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First of all, how does Tom Cruise have my home line?
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[laughs] I'm like, "Hello." "Hey, it's Tom."
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"Hey, what's up, man?"
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And he said, "Do you wanna do it or not?"
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I'm like, "Yeah, of course I'll do it.
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"I'll do it. Yeah, sure." And I hung up.
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So that's how I got the role.
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And still, I didn't know what the script was
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or the character was, and I mean how could I say no.
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It was just a strange, odd thing.
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I went in for one movie with J.J.
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and then come home for now ultimately a trilogy
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with "Mission Impossibles."
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Tom taught me a lot about an actor in the stunt world
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and treating it like that's a big part of the job
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and how to prepare your body enough
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to go through the punishment,
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which got my brain thinking about stunts in a different way,
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which really started a trajectory for me in the stunt world.
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And I loved it 'cause I've always been athletic,
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always been an athlete,
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and now I got to sort of use those skills
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in the acting world.
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That's why the action movies are just as fun to me
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as like some character-driven movie,
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'cause there's lots of challenges and things to overcome
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in those types of films.
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In the stunts, you know, jeez,
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Tom is just an absolute genius maniac.
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This guy's insane.
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But it inspired me to be the best I could be.
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[dramatic music]
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[Ethan yelling]
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[dramatic music]
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- Stark, got a lot of strays sniffing your tail.
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[dramatic music]
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- Just trying to keep them off the streets.
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- Well, they can't bank worth a damn.
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[dramatic music]
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Find a tight corner.
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- I remember going in to talk with Kevin Feige
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and Lou D'Esposito
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and they'd show me like the Ultimates version of Hawkeye.
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"Iron Man" had come out,
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and I said, "Look, man, I'm in to what you guys are doing."
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'Cause I loved "Iron Man."
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"I like how you made, you know, 'Iron man' plausible.
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"It was so like, ah, I love that."
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So that's where they wanted to go with it.
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I'm like, "Great."
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You gotta kind of sign on for like, you know,
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a bunch of Avenger films and potential Hawkeye films.
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They kind of sign your life away.
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I'm like, "Wait, man, I might be 50 in tights."
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That was like my main concern.
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I'm like, I don't know if I wanna do this.