Joe Anderson talks Breaking Dawn Part 2

Joe Anderson will play Alistair in The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 2. In a new interview, he talks for the first time about his Twilight involvement, as well as his upcoming TV show The River, and his new movie The Grey (number 1 this weekend at the box office!). From Sioux City Journal:

And then? Then there’s “Breaking Dawn,” the last two parts of the “Twilight” saga. In the vampire drama, Anderson plays Alistair, a particularly complex vampire who intercedes for the Cullins. The actor read the books, saw the early films and “tried to absorb as much as I could” but knew he’d never be as savvy about the character as some of the popular books’ fans.

No sweat. “It’s nice to play against the grain of the film,” Anderson says. “He can do what he wants because he is who he is.”

The 29-year-old British-born actor, however, didn’t realize the devotion of “Twilight’s” fan base.

“I hadn’t even arrived at the motel and already there was fan mail. They figured out where I was going to be — and I didn’t even know. But every one of those letters was so genuine and so sweet.”

The creepy stuff? That was saved for other actors. “A woman was standing outside the Sutton Place in Vancouver with a pair of scissors. She had flown from England to cut some of Robert Pattinson’s hair for a doll.”

“Breaking Dawn, Part II” (slated for release in the fall) came with such high financial stakes “tension was ripe,” Anderson says. “There’s not a lot of rehearsal. So before a scene with Kristen (Stewart) I had to gun up the character from the trailer to the stage. It’s the first time you see this guy come to life. But until you get the gear on, you’re not quite sure what he’s going to be.”

Because Alistair pops up “and is rather aloof,” Anderson found he could “take a little bit of literary license with him.”

Read more here.

Joe also talked to Dread Central about his character in The Grey:

Anderson said, “Flannery is a young and ignorant guy; that ignorance breeds fear within him. He’s got a lot of mouth and is always saying the wrong thing, but he’s not necessarily a bad guy for it. Ultimately, he’s scared and that’s his reaction to the situation he’s thrown into. I would say there’s a little bit of Joe inside Flannery, but I think I had to do that so he’d feel natural in the film. There’s a naturalness to The Grey so playing him any other way would never have worked. He needed to be himself but in a way that you still want him to survive by the end, too, so I never would have made him this over-the-top type of character.”

Read more here.