Read up on my latest exclusive interview with the stars of Avengers: Age of Ultron James Spader and Paul Bettany. Plus don’t miss out on the latest behind-the-scenes information I learned during the Avengers Event while I was in LA.
Exclusive Interview With ‘Avengers Age Of Ultron’ James Spader and Paul Bettany
As we bring the interviews to a close the last one I was privileged to be a part of during my trip to LA was with James Spader and Paul Bettany. These brilliant men played “The Vision” and “Ultron”. Their talented acting skills show throughout the movie and are amplified as they adventure into these roles of good vs evil.
I feel as though these two actors were PERFECT for these roles as we all can see throughout the movie. What I loved to see was Jarvis finally come alive and become “The Vision” and Paul Bettany did such an amazing job bringing the computer to life. Paul gave some very insightful information in this interview about what it was like for him to make the transition (you will be surprised by what he says below!)
Of course, James is the villain we love to hate so it was very cool to learn and speak to him about what it was like for him to get this role and how what he actually went through to bring “Ultron” to life I was very taken away at how much it took to bring him to life and how it sort of seemed to be easy in a way for James to do so.
Read my Avengers: Age of Ultron Movie Review
More Interviews From The Avengers Event
Would you like to read our other interviews with the other stars? Click on the links below and read up on some exclusive interview questions and answers you won’t find anywhere else.
- Chris Evans & Chris Hemsworth
- Producer & Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige
- Director Joss Whedon
- Elizabeth Olsen & Aaron Taylor-Johnson
- Jeremy Renner and Cobie Smulders
Photo Credit Louise Manning Bishop / MomStart.com
Interview With James Spader
James discusses the background on how they brought Ultron to life with his voice.
James: I had multiple sessions doing additional dialog recording. But it really was sort of new stuff to further define, clarify, and so on and sort of distilling the prism. But most of the dialog that you hear in the movie and most of what you’re looking at, we shot on the set just in a fairly conventional fashion.
It didn’t feel conventional at the time, considering everything I was in, the dialog was all from what we shot on the set doing scenes with the other actors as you would in any film or, you know, in any setting. And I was so pleased ’cause I haven’t seen the final film but I was very pleased that I saw a lot of footage during post-production. So I sort of saw big sections of the entire film.
Even in its sort of formative stages, it was remarkable to see, I haven’t seen how his face really yet, fine-tuned ’cause that’s the most sort of precise and infinitesimal thing that they do in terms of trying to take advantage of my expressions and translate them into a metal guy.
James: I was amazed that I saw this magnificent body, and made out of vibranium and all the rest of it, this sort of technological wonder. To actually see my 55-year-old sort of very comfy physique, and to see all of my sort of gesture and posture and movements and expression and all of it was there. And then my son did see the film a couple of days ago. And I said, “But how about the face?”
And he says, “You know, I see you in the face.” He said, “Amazingly enough, considering it doesn’t really have a nose.” And he said, “I really saw your eyes and your expression and certainly move- head movements, everything. I saw it all there. So it was worth it, I guess, to go through all of the arduous processes of motion capture, which is fascinating actually. Do you mind if I tell you just very quickly?
Photo Credit: Marvel – Edits Made By Me
Paul No, no, no.
James: But I’ll tell you…
Paul: I’ll just have a snooze.
James: But I’ll tell you a very funny thing. I’m just excited about it because somebody in an interview just before this had asked specifically about this and, I hadn’t thought about it until now. But the very first day that I walked onto the studio lot, before I ever hit a set or anything.
Within a half-hour I walked into a room and they had cameras set up around the room in different areas, the room was a big empty room and there were cameras set up around and there was a bunch of guys with a whole bunch of laptops and women all sitting around.
James: And they put me in a fractal suit which is just a sort of you know, sort of two-piece and looks like you’re gonna go for a run, and, but has shapes and colors and things and all over it. And then they dotted up my face and they, uh, put a big rig on my back and a big headgear rig that had two sorts of antenna that come down that are cameras that are right here with headlights right here, so I’m lit right here.
And they had me go through a range of motions and fingers, everything, head turns and all the rest of it. And then they put it into some program on the computer or something and, I stood around for about ten, fifteen minutes later I was, also set up around the room were these monitors.
And in fifteen minutes I could walk in my outfit into the center of the room and turn my head, move my fingers, go like this, and I could look at a monitor and see a sort of formative stage of Ultron doing everything I was doing.
Photo Credit Louise Manning Bishop / MomStart.com – Edits Made By Me
James: So right from the very first moment I arrived there, I could start getting a sense of what sort of physicality would be appropriate for that eight-foot robot. And there was a guy there, quite small, who would’ve been proportionate to my height. I’m five-ten.
He was very small. He sort of proportionate height to what, you know, not Chris Hemsworth but, maybe an average height avenger might be in proportion to me if I was eight feet tall. And he was wearing a fractal suit, he was a stunt guy, he was wearing a fractal suit and all the gear as well.
And they made him do the range of motion and everything else and within 15 minutes he and I would go move around the room and he was as, you know, different character and, and so I was able to see right away an eight-foot Ultron.
Me as, like an eight-foot Ultron with another actor who’s a proportionate height to what, an average size person would be. It was really amazing. So right from the very first moment, I was already getting a sense of how to perform for this character.
Interview With Paul Bettany
Question: We always knew you as Jarvis. What was your reaction when you found out that you would be The Vision?
Paul: It was sort of vindication really because I had just come out of a meeting with a producer who told me my career was over. And I this is a true story. And I sat on the curb in Hollywood with my feet in the gutter and my phone went and I looked at it and went, “Hello?”
I didn’t recognize the number and it was Joss Whedon. He said, “Do you want to play The Vision?” And I went, “Um,” it’s so quick these days, “yeah, I kinda do.” True story. So it was lovely.
Question: How is it different for you on set?
I don’t think in the other movies where you’re playing Jarvis were you there interacting with the other actors?
Paul: No I was brought in at the last moment to solve any clarity or issues the film had which was my superhero power as Jarvis. What was the difference? The difference was I had to go to the gym. I had to stop eating carbs. I finally got to be on set with a bunch of really lovely, creative, talented people. However, it also means that I have to show up at junkets now. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away
James: I did not have to cut back on carbs. Somehow, amazingly enough, those animators were able to slim me right down.
Photo Credit: Marvel – Edits Made By Me
Question: James, did you have to be convinced to play Ultron, or were you ready the moment he asked you to play it?
James: I had met about two to three years prior to the phone call to me from Joss Whedon I had met with Kevin Feige and Jeremy Latcham. My agent is also Sam Jackson’s agent. And so she’s very in tune with what’s going on in the Marvel world. And I have three sons.
James: I have never in my entire career ever chosen a film to work on, for the sake of my children. And most of the films that I’ve done they really shouldn’t watch. I remember I took my mother when she was in her eighties to go with me to Sundance to see this film I did called Secretary which is about. And I took my mother and my mother had…
Paul: What a schoolboy error that was!
James: Both my mother and father have sat through some… they’re both passed away… but they both have sat, lovingly through just an array of perverted little movies that I’ve made. But in any case, I wanted my second son was really… (and he was about seven) He’s now 21 or 22. I’m terrible at ages, but in any case, he was about 18 at the time, something like that, 18 or 19.
James: And he loved comics and loved superhero movies and fantasy and all that stuff. He just loved it. And then by circumstance I also at the time I had a three-year-old son, again, and he was already sort of raiding his brother’s little figures and little things like that and was excited about it.
And I just thought, I just want to make a film for them, you know? So I went in and I sat down with Kevin Feige and Jeremy Latcham and they had reached out to my agent and said, “You know, we’d love to sit down with James.”
Photo Credit: Marvel – Edits Made By Me
James: And, you know, those sort of meetings are always just so brutal and fruitless. And, and I had said, “Really?” But, I mean, do they, and then my agent said, “Kevin doesn’t really meet with anybody unless there really is a genuine interest. And I said, “Great. Well, then I’d love to talk to him.”
So I sat down with him and I said, “I just would love to do one of these things and just be such fun.” And I told him the reasons why and I think he really responded to that ’cause that’s his fan base, you know? And, uh, so we were sort of looking for, you know, the, he was looking for something and I was sort of thing.
James: And then all of a sudden there’d be things that came along the way over the next like two years or so and he would be like, “I just don’t know, I know what James is looking for. He wants a really great bad guy and some really great something, you know and everything.”
And so all of a sudden, like about two or three years after that meeting, Joss Whedon walked into their offices and said, “You know, I don’t really have anyone else for this role except for James Spader.”
And they said, “Well, funny you should mention that ’cause we’ve been trying to find the right thing. And so the next thing was a phone call from Joss and, you know, as soon as I spoke to him. I said, “What the **** can I bring to an eight-foot robot, you know? I don’t… That’s not my skill set.”
Photo Credit: Marvel – Edits Made By Me
James: He told me sort of what he was looking for in terms of the character. But he said, “You know, let me send you something to look at ’cause the script is in revisions right now, but let me send you something so you can get a sense of what this character really is.”
And he said, “In the comic books, the guy’s just sort of this raging robot. ‘I am going to destroy you’ you know?” He said I really want to extrapolate on that. So he sent me these scenes that were, you know, threatening, intimidating, crazy, funny, quoting Emily Dickenson.
James: It was just such a weird, complex amalgamation of things. And I just read that and as it turns out, Kevin Feige told me, you know, a couple of days later he said, “You know, Joss, those aren’t even scenes from the movie. Joss wrote those scenes just to send you, so, just so that you’d have a sense of the character.”
I thought, what a lovely thing to do, you know, that he just wrote these scenes as this is what this character’s going to be like, an example of the sort of who he is.. And they were really tailored for that. And he was absolutely right. It was all of that. Just a weird mix of crazy, scary, funny, poetic, you know, just a weird guy.
Photo Credit: Marvel
Question: Paul, how much of Vision was makeup and CGI?
Paul: Oh it was a lot of makeup, haha. It was sort of, I would sit in the chair and then you would wait for an eternity to come, and then you’d be… done. So it was all real.
(Paul gestures to parts of his face and points out where everything starts and ends)
From about here forward the prosthetics, well the prosthetic actually stops here was painted purple.
But they would have tracking dots on so that they would then move the circuitry could be on my face and my musculature could move and you could still see me express things, ‘Cause we tried having full prosthetics that went over everything and we lost a lot of expression in the face. So thankfully, because that was really, really uncomfortable.
Question: What’s it like being the only other superhero who can wield Thor’s hammer?
Paul: I’m not sure I’m even allowed to talk about that. I think that’s number one in bold print on my things not to talk about.
James: Now I can say, I think it’s rather impressive.
Question: James, you have always played the bad guy we love to hate in so many of your films.
James: You don’t hate him.
Question: Bad buys you love to hate. But with Ultron, is there any part of your humor in Ultron?
James: Yes.
Question: Cause we definitely see your mannerisms.
Paul: And his world view, in fact. Global devastation!
James: I’m a great believer in chaos. But… but no, yes. I mean, I think that’s true in any film or television show or play or, I mean, anything you do. I think that if the casting works, you’ve been cast because that director intuitively knows that what they need, you’re going to be able to provide. And he was specifically looking for that.
James: He was looking for that sense of humor. And he was looking for that irreverence in marriage with the other aspects. And so he took advantage of it and we would play with things and I’d make a suggestion. But I really was very faithful to what he was writing because he was really writing it so specifically to me.
Paul: Right., And if you’re looking for a James Spader type there are not many places to go, you know. It’s, like, it’s, there’s a one-stop-shop.
James: And I think he probably, you know, the reason why he probably walked in to Kevin Feige and said, “James Spader’s who I’m thinking about for this and I don’t really have anyone else on the list,” is ’cause I think he probably, he’d already written to that.
Photo Credit Louise Manning Bishop / MomStart.com – Edits Made By Me
This concludes our amazing interviews with the amazing cast of Avengers Age Of Ultron, I hope you were able to follow us along with our interviews. If you weren’t all of the links to the past interviews are at the top of this post. I hope you take a few minutes to give each of them a quick read trust me you won’t be sorry!
With our last group photo, I feel as though I not only know the Characters of the movie better, I feel as if I know the cast a lot more and are able to see the process of how they were able to bring these characters to life by, deriving from their past and their present.
Marvel Studios presents “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” the epic follow-up to the biggest Super Hero movie of all time. When Tony Stark tries to jumpstart a dormant peacekeeping program, things go awry and Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.
Including Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, The Incredible Hulk, Black Widow, and Hawkeye, are put to the ultimate test as the fate of the planet hangs in the balance. As the villainous Ultron emerges, it is up to The Avengers to stop him from enacting his terrible plans, and soon uneasy alliances and unexpected action pave the way for an epic and unique global adventure.
