The perils of stardom too young are well known. Too many promising child stars, bursting with talent, crash and burn once exposed to the Klieg lights of Hollywood. If anyone, however, is determined to keep his head while others are losing theirs, it’s rising star Callan McAuliffe.
“So many people strive
to get to a place like this.
So I felt as though
I’d just make the most of it.”
The Sydney-born actor was 12 when he started acting, landing roles in Packed to the Rafters, Blue Water High and Cloudstreet. Unlike so many peers, he remembers being decidedly nonplussed about acting. “I always thought it looked like a terrible job,” he says on the line from Los Angeles. “I thought it always looked too stressful, too many people worrying about you. It seemed far too big a responsibility.”
However, that ambivalence evaporated when he landed the lead role in Rob Reiner’s charming 2010 coming-of-age tale Flipped. “Now I have a deep passion for it, because I started to enjoy myself after my first project and I found a real love for it.”
Realising the opportunity was too good to squander, he and his mother moved to Los Angeles in 2010. “So many people strive to get to a place like this. So I felt as though I’d just make the most of it.”
And make the most of it he has. After a lead role in the Steven Spielberg-produced I Am Number Four, this month he will appear in Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby – as the young Jay Gatsby, no less.
He says making the film was a great experience. Now 18, his cute-as-a-button features have settled into the stuff teenage adoration is made for, yet he was transformed into a younger version of Leonardo DiCaprio – who plays Gatsby – with blue contact lenses, blond hair and nifty contouring tricks. He met DiCaprio and watched his scenes to match up mannerisms. Yet while DiCaprio would have been a worthy mentor for managing the road from child star to Hollywood heavyweight, the two didn’t discuss acting. “I’ve never met an actor yet who gave me tips,” he says. “I feel like part of the way you learn is experiencing it for yourself and then changing your methods or the way you perform based on how you feel you’re progressing. I do think it’s a personal journey, becoming a good actor.”
Unsurprisingly, Luhrmann was very hands-on. “Baz was fantastic,” McAuliffe says. “He likes to have fun on set, but all the same, he’s very professional. And he gets things done. On the set it was all very, very organised.” It was all about achieving Luhrmann’s vision. “You can tell when you see the footage – it’s vibrant, it’s colourful, it’s out there, it looks beautiful.”
I get the sense that McAuliffe was most fascinated by the mechanics of the multimillion- dollar production. One of his scenes, for instance, sees the young Gatsby rowing a boat through a fierce storm and then boarding a yacht. “[There was] a bunch of guys in blue suits rocking a row boat in mid-air, while I pretended to row.” He remembers how the rain machine and giant fans made acting almost redundant. “There was so much wind and water in the air, I couldn’t see anything, so I didn’t realise there were crews and poles and scaffolding all over the place. You really felt like you were in a storm.”
Later this year he will appear in indie film Blue Potato, written and directed by married documentary makers Aron Gaudet and Gita Pullapilly. It’s a coming-of-age story set in the small US town of Van Buren, on the Canadian border. McAuliffe remembers it as a special experience, not least because it was actually filmed in Van Buren, population just over 2,000. “That’s half the reason I’m in this industry, so I can travel and see the world – and it was great to go to a place like that because I got to see the beautiful autumn foliage and met lots of wonderful people.”
“I knew everybody’s name
– every single person who was involved in this film.
That’s a rare thing.”
The cast and crew all stayed together in bunk beds in a Christian life centre in the small town. “If you can imagine the size of a motel just with Jesus all over the walls. And there was a church opposite and a graveyard, which was extremely creepy.” McAuliffe describes it as a very personal adventure. “I felt like everyone was a family, which can’t be said for some of the larger shoots, just because there’s so many people, you don’t have enough time to meet everyone. But I knew everybody’s name – every single person who was involved in this film. That’s a rare thing.”
A few weeks after our conversation, McAuliffe was flying to South Africa to begin filming Kite with Samuel L. Jackson. Rather than being awed by the veteran actor, McAuliffe says he is most looking forward to going to Africa. It’s been a lifelong dream and he hoped to go on safari and experience as much of it as he can. Africa is the second dream he has fulfilled recently. The first was seeing snow for the first time, which he did when he went to the Sundance Film Festival. Demonstrating yet again how resolutely unaffected he is, he eschewed the countless film screenings and hobnobbing and took to the snow to learn how to ski and snowboard. “I’d never been to the snow in my life, and when you’re nearly 18, it’s one of the few incredible experiences that you can still have – because it’s something completely new. And these days with the internet and everything so exposed, actually going to a place and feeling the cold, that was really incredible.”
Hollywood, this one’s a keeper.
Published in Vogue Australia May 2013
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