Chris Marquette Message Board

411's Tony Farinella sits down with Chris Marquette for an exclusive interview!

Chris Marquette is one of Hollywood's brightest young actors. In his career, he has worked on such films as Alpha Dog, The Girl Next Door, The Invisible, Freddy Vs. Jason, Just Friends, and a whole lot more. Recently, he worked alongside his brother Sean in the film, Remember the Daze, which hits DVD on June 3rd. The film offers a glimpse into the teenage wasteland of suburbia 1999 that takes place over 24-hours, and the teenagers who make their way through the last day of high school in the last year of the past millennium. In my interview with Chris Marquette, we talked about Remember the Daze, high school, acting, Hollywood, and a whole lot more. I hope you enjoy my interview with Chris Marquette.

TONY: When you first read your character in the script, what were your first impressions of him?

Chris Marquette: This part came about in a much different way than it usually does. My little brother Sean, who is in the movie and plays my little brother in the movie, actually was filming what was called at the time, The Beautiful Ordinary. So he was filming that movie, and he gives me a call one night at around eleven o'clock, and he's like, "Hey, I'm sitting around with the cast and the director of this thing, and we were talking, and I was wondering are you gonna be working in a couple weeks?" And I was like, "Nah, not yet. I got about a month before I start working." And he said, "OK. In two weeks, would you come down and maybe play this character in this movie?" And I was like, "Yeah, are you kidding me?" So I had no idea what the movie was about or what character I'd be playing. Any opportunity I have to work with my brother, I just jump at the chance at it, so I just kind of blindly walked into the project and showed up on set about a week later. And the director and I just kind of came up with the character on the spot, actually, and I improvised pretty much all of it, and my brother and I kind of riffed and tried to make some jazz music out of these scenes. So that's how it came about. Originally, when I got there, the director kind of said, "Hey, listen, I've got these couple ideas for this character. Originally, it was supposed to be something completely different than you and much older than you, so what are your thoughts?" And she let me go wild, and that was about it. Felix was born.

TONY: I thought your character was very similar to Matthew McConaughey in Dazed and Confused. Did you use anybody as inspiration for this character?

Chris Marquette: Yeah. I based this character off a really close friend of mine, who is another actor who I really look up to and admire, named Ben Foster. The idea, originally, was for this guy to be like a Matthew McConaughey, but Matthew McConaughey is like really buff and good looking and can get all the girls, and in Dazed and Confused, he's a bit creepy. And I, obviously, am the opposite. I'm not the big supermodel-looking guy, so the idea was I'm a lot more creepy and a lot more off-putting, and I think whenever I talked to somebody, I just tried to put them as off-balance as possible. Matthew McConaughey in Dazed and Confused is really slick and really cool, so I tried to play the opposite of that: A guy who is socially awkward rather than socially charming.

TONY: As an actor, what's it like working on a film with a bunch of actors around your own age? Do you have a certain comfort level with them?

Chris Marquette: A lot of other people in that movie were close, close friends of mine way before the movie: Aaron Himelstein, Michael Welch, Lyndsy Fonseca. And some of those people have become close friends of mine since after that: Melonie Diaz and John Robinson and Dough Smith. It almost feels like we didn't shoot a movie. The thing about actors is they're constantly performing in their lives and playing different characters. I go out with my friends, and somehow we end up on some random tangent pretending to be a bunch of wacky people that we aren't just for fun. So it felt just like that. It was like, "Hey, you're going to show up to set," but, really, it felt like somebody called for a house party. And we're like, "Cool! We'll be there in an hour." I've worked with a whole cast of adults and young kids, where I'm the only young person there, and then working on a film like that, where it's all people my age and all my peers is definitely a different experience. And most of the time, it's much more comfortable, actually, and it was much more comfortable because I knew the people.

TONY: Remember the Daze is an interesting film, because it tackles the high school experience in a very unique way. What was your high school experience like?

Chris Marquette: Oh, mine was terrible. Mine was awful. I've moved around a lot in my life, so I moved into Burbank and went to Burbank High School, and I moved into Burbank right before high school, so I didn't know anybody. And the thing about high school is it's all about people finding themselves, and you really find yourselves through other people and through your comparison and reflecting on everybody else around you. And I didn't know anybody. So I spent the majority of my time in high school alone. It was a really big high school with thousands of kids, so I would walk from one end of the high school slowly eating my food to the other end so that I would just take enough time, which was a half hour of lunch, to get to the other end where my class was at, and I would pace myself because I didn't have anybody to hang out with. So I eventually made some good friends and they were cool and I could relate to them in different ways, but I still had a lot of solitude in high school, unfortunately, but, fortunately, because I was happy in my experience too.

TONY: I read that you went to some dance with Christy Carlson Romano. Is that true?

Chris Marquette: I think I had gone to a random high school dance of another friend of mine not with her as my date, but just in a group of people that she was there with. I've known her since I was about eight or nine, because we were both musical theater actors at one point in our lives when we were kids, so we had know each other through that. A random friend of mine called me and said, "Hey, I'm going to this dance at some school. Would you like to come?" And I was like, "Yeah, yeah," and then she happened to be there. I think that's the way it went.

TONY: What's it like having brothers in the acting business? I'm sure it's easy to relate to them and talk about similar problems or similar situations in Hollywood.

Chris Marquette: Yeah, it really is. It's all about relating, and it's really amazing. There's some things within the perspective of being an actor and trying to make it in Hollywood, and everybody goes through the same struggles and the same ups and downs and the same confusion. So it's nice to have a brother that when I call up talking about something that would seem, to most people, really confusing and abstract, I guess, he can definitely relate. And all of my good friends are actors, because those are my people. So having my brother as being one of them really has saved my life a billion times. It's nice.

TONY: In your career, you have worked on a number of unique movies and television projects. What kind of work do you want to seek out in the future, and what sides of your personality do you want to explore?

Chris Marquette: That's a great question. I can't paint and I've never directed anything and I can't play an instrument. I can sing, but I don't like it. I can dance, but I don't like it. So, I think acting is my outlet, and it's where I naturally tend to kind of sway in my life. There's been a billion times where I've been like, "Well, what else could I do? Is there something else that's easier? Is there a business I can get into or something else I can learn?" And acting, there's nothing else like it in my life, honestly. And if I were to delve into any other part of my personality, it really depends on the time in your life. You go through some really difficult things in your life, and as an actor, if you're going through some really big struggles, you want to be somebody powerful, because you want to overcome those struggles, so you look for powerful characters. And then there's times where I'm relaxing and not much is going on and life kind of seems like it's a little stale, so I just want to relax and hang out and enjoy it as much as possible. And maybe that means doing a funny character or playing somebody funny, so you can go on set and make jokes and make yourself laugh and make other people laugh. So, I think in the future, I think it's the wild side and the wild man in me.

TONY: What's it like dealing with the celebrity aspect of Hollywood?

Chris Marquette: It's been good, it's been good. I don't participate in that world ... at least I haven't yet. I've always hated it. The events, the openings of some fashion designer, and those things in my life, I just am not interested in, naturally, so I don't go to them and I stay out of that limelight. But it's been alright. Every now and then, I go out to dinner with one of my parents, and somebody will walk up to the table, and it always surprises them and shocks them. If we're walking down the street or at the movie theater, somebody will go, "Oh, my god, dude, you're that guy." And my father always laughs hysterically, and, at the end of the day, can't believe it. He's kind of always like, "Does that freak you out?" And it's like, "Nah, at this point, it's really no big thing." So my family deals with it well, and it's all a chuckle. Anybody who knows me knows that .... at least I think that actors aren't really very special people. They can be, but, for the most part, they're just regular people.

TONY: I know you're close friends with Emile Hirsch, Paul Dano, and Ben Foster, so I have to ask you, what has it been like watching them grow over the past couple of years? All of them are having great success lately.

Chris Marquette: Oh, it's amazing. I mean, these people have been dear, dear friends of mine for so long and to see them bud and grow and catapult into where I knew they would always be, it's amazing. It always warms me to see my friends doing exactly what I know they're capable of doing. So it's nice. There's something really magical about even just knowing those people and seeing us go from these really romantic, idealistic young actors who look up to all the legends and are mimicking every thing we've watched and seen into watching these people find their own voice and their own style of character. They say that pretty much every young actor watches every Brando movie six times a day for six years and then tries to sort of put their own impersonation into their characters that they play, and then eventually that all stops and you kind of find your voice and you find what you do as an actor and what makes you the Marlon Brando of your generation or your own life. So all those guys, Emile and Paul and Ben, you watch their work and you see them from five years ago grow into the parts that they've done in the last couple of years, and each one of those guys has really sort of risen to the surface. You really see that they do things that nobody else can do except for themselves, and that I think is really magical.

TONY: Thank you so much for your time, Chris. It was great talking to you. Have a nice weekend.

Chris Marquette: Yeah, man. It was great talking to you too. You too, man.