CraveOnline: We’ve joked in the past about the “Paul Walker haters” back on Running Scared even. Are they still out in full force?
Paul Walker: I don’t know. There was a time where I was much more affected by it than I wanted to admit so I wouldn’t look at anything, because if you want to believe the good stuff, you have to believe the bad stuff. Everyone’s entitled to an opinion and the fact of the matter is you’re not going to win over everybody. When I was younger, I was so damn pretty, I looked like a girl, so I understand guys didn’t like me. Their girlfriends wanted to sleep with me. Shit, I hated those guys. I hated Christian Slater when I was a kid for the same reason. I couldn’t stand Keanu Reeves when I was a kid for the same reason.
Then you grow up, you get a little bit older and you realize what was really going on is that you know your girlfriend wanted to bone him, or whatever it was. It’s been a fun journey. I just turned 40 and it’s weird to think that I’ve been doing this almost my whole life. I was a child actor and then didn’t do it through junior high and high school, then started up again in my late teens doing “Young and the Restless.” Dabbled with school, went back to college, played around. I think I was doing Pleasantville at 23. That’s a fucking long time.
You went through a phase where you could have been a teen heartthrob with Varsity Blues, The Skulls…
I haaated it.
Were you happy to leave that behind?
I haaated it so much, doing the teen magazines and that sort of thing. I did everything I could just short of completely sabotaging [it]. Even to this day there’s times where I do that. I go into complete isolation, I don’t do e-mails, I don’t return phone calls. I really wanted it to go away because I believe in my heart of hearts that the way that it came to me, without even wanting it, that if I wanted it later that I could earn it back.
There’s something to be said about earning something as opposed to it being placed in your lap. When something just comes too easy because people go, “Oh, you’re the good looking guy. We want you doing this shit.” I knew damn well what was going on. I knew it wasn’t because of my hard work. I knew it wasn’t because of merit so as a result it didn’t mean much to me and people were going to keep giving me opportunity and I wanted to curse them. My agents didn’t understand why I was so pissed off when I’d get another offer, without going in, sitting down, reading, having to meet with people. “We just got you another offer!” It was like, “Oh really? Cool, leave me the fuck alone.”
I think I can relate to that on a smaller scale. Being a journalist for so long, so many people offer me great opportunities luckily, it sometimes overwhelms you to the point you might think, “Stop fucking inviting me to another movie.” Which is of course the wrong attitude, because it’s a good thing to be invited and offered, you just have to say no when it’s too much and appreciate that they want me.
Yeah, exactly. You have to control the tempo because if you don’t control the tempo, a lot of people wonder why certain people become disgruntled and bitter. I think with a lot of people out there that have had success in various arenas, a lot of it becomes because they know deep down inside they haven’t really tested themselves.
When was the point you felt like you were earning it back?
When I did Running Scared I felt really good. There were moments where I was doing Eight Below and I was out in the snow doing different things, really connecting with the environment and really feeling like, “Man, I am this guy.”
Or doing “Shark Men” for National Geographic?
That was good. There are times where I go, “Whoa.” Chazz Palminteri really helped me out when I did Noel with my confidence. He said, “You realize you’re always going to be better if you’re intimidated? Because things just come too easy for you. You need to test yourself.” And I heard him say it and I knew he’s just such a sincere and such a cool guy, I knew he meant it when he said it. Then when I do dig deep regardless of what it is in life and I really am challenging myself, I think of him all the time. I don’t think a week goes by that I don’t do something that I go, “Fucking Chazz Palminteri.” That really means a lot to me.
You talked about winning in the beginning of this interview, and I know in the past you’d talked about using your name to help other films. Like The Fast and the Furious notoriety helped Running Scared get made. Is that still a model, that your name helps Hours or is that changing in the industry too?
I don’t even know. I’m a heart person. I’m not heady. I mean, I am. I overanalyze shit but so long as I can keep my heart clear and I just listen to what my heart tells me, it never fails. My intuition is good, my instincts are good, my judge of character. It’s important to me to be living right and living right is being surrounded by the people I love, loving the people that I love, being surrounded by my friends and making sure that I’m taking care of myself physically.
If I got those things going on, and I’m not in servant mode which I fall into because things have come relatively easy to me in life. I look at people in certain circumstances and I fall into caretaker mode real quick, real easy. I like to shoulder people up and carry them along, and then I end up creating some kind of dependency. I enable. It’s really, really hard for me. I learned that from my mother. My mother still does it. She’s the best and a caretaker.
As long as I don’t do that, I just live and I just do what I feel is right, I usually do okay. It carries across the board so the second I start looking at models, most of that comes from noise input. I think early on in life I knew that if I just live by my heart, I’m good. I think the same probably goes with most people. I don’t know that maybe the mass majority of us even realize it because maybe they haven’t trusted because we listen to the noise for too long, but I think most people would find that if they can just get to that place, the rest is just noise. It falls off and things work themselves out the way they’re supposed to.
Was Vehicle 19 something where putting you in a car, the Fast and the Furious name helps?
I don’t know. Probably. I would think if you were to ask Peter Safran, the guy that produced it, he’d probably say yeah, this is familiar. It was an opportunity to do something contained and South Africa is like the wild west. You have no permits so we we’re driving through live traffic in downtown Johannesburg when we were filming that, with crew members hanging off the cars. It was fun. Wild west filmmaking.
I was a huge fan of James Wan’s Death Sentence. Is he bringing any of that tone to Fast 7?
He’s got a really cool look, definitely a different look than what we’ve seen in the past. I like what I’m seeing, but more than that I really like him as a person. That’s paramount to me. It’s a lot easier for me to work under somebody that I respect as a human being. He stepped into something, I told him early on, I said, “I hope you realize what you’re getting yourself into.” He said, “What is that?” I said, “This means far too much to too many people.” We got into it and he said, “You know, I heard what you were saying but I didn’t hear what you were seeing. Now that I’m here, I get it.”
He has such a strong sense of community, he’s just a good person. So as a result, even though we didn’t have enough prep time and he’s doing everything he can just to stay above water half the time, he remains positive, he remains focused, he remains not just fair but very decent, beyond decent. Just good to people every day.
We’re happy they brought Lucas Black back for not only this one but three more. Are you going to be in three more?
Oh, I don’t know, that’s all speculation. I don’t know about three more.
Are Hitman and Brick Mansions still on your plate?
I did Brick Mansions last year. That was a physical test for me because I came off an ACL injury so just a couple months later I was doing it with David Belle so it was fun.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Best Episode Ever and Shelf Space Weekly. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
