15 years ago, Alex Pettyfer was the next big thing. Cast as teen super-spy Alex Rider in Stormbreaker, he was supposed to lead a long-term, lucrative franchise. The Stevenage-born, Oxford-educated teen star with chiselled cheeks and a jawline you could cut glass with seemed destined for success, even if Stormbreaker didn’t quite come good (the film struggled to make back half of its rumoured $40m budget).
- READ MORE: Back Roads review: Stormbreaker star Alex Pettyfer stretches new muscles with promising directorial debut
Leads in more big budget flicks followed, but rumours of on-set difficulties and a growing reputation as a ‘bad boy’ who was difficult to work with, followed the actor who, at just 30, has more recently decided to take matters into his own hands by setting up a production company funding – and in the case of new indie Back Roads, directing – his own films.
Set in a sleepy US town where not a lot happens, Pettyfer plays Harley, the son of Bonnie (Juliette Lewis), a woman locked up for murdering her husband, leaving Harley to raise his two sisters and eke out a living working in a supermarket. With the family dogged by a violent, abusive past, Harley has to come to terms with his own childhood before he can help his sisters.
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Before the film’s debut online, we spoke to Pettyfer about working with Juliette Lewis, making his directorial debut and why he’s been so open about his past on-set fallouts.
What was it like making your directorial debut?
“It was such an amazing life-changing experience for me, creatively. Previously, as an actor, I was really focused on my own character’s arc and journey, and when you’re directing a movie this collaborative experience starts to transpire.You start to realise that the filmmaking experience is about collaboration and that’s key, so my whole psyche towards making films, and moving forward as an actor, has completely changed.”
Who are your biggest influences as a director?
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“A lot of the influence that I had was came from working with Steven Soderbergh [Ocean’s Eleven, Erin Brockovich] who does these long Steadicam shots, and the European and French filmmakers that I grew up watching and admired. Ultimately the main influence for Back Roads came down to the financial situation really, if I’m honest. We were on a tight budget and I was making a hard drama. I was given around 19 days on the budget that we had raised to make the film which was near to impossible to complete.”
Did you get a thrill out of seeing your shots come together on set?
“The feeling that you get when you’re shooting is the same feeling that a painter gets when they become one with the painting. When you are really immersed in what you are doing, which is a meditative state, when you’re behind the camera and you’re seeing these things that you’re really not expecting, but would love to have happen. There’s a beauty to that. That’s the drug that we’re all looking for as creatives, be it a painter or singer – we want to lose ourselves within the art.”
Are you looking to direct more in the future?
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“I started a new [production] company that I’ve had for around two years, and we’ve filmed two movies already. One is Echo Boomers with Michael Shannon, and the other is called The Collection. They’re two really solid stories and we’ve got three or four things in development. Our goal is to make great content and that doesn’t just mean film and television, it can be documentary, reality, whatever it has to be.”
You’ve been open in interviews about your behind the scenes problems, do you find it cathartic to talk openly about that stuff?
“I’m open about things that have happened in my life because I’m grateful for them. I’m in a position today where I have so much more appreciation for the work that I want to do and so much appreciation for the events that have occurred for me to be able to have a better understanding of who I want to be as a human being.
“We all, as human beings, whether professionally or personally, go through experiences that hopefully have us realise self-growth. If life was easy and simple and we just bobbed along on the happy train, where would the realisation of what truly transpires within come from? I think that has been shown in a large sense with this pandemic, of people having to stop and slow down and have a more intimate conversation with themselves.”
‘Back Roads’ is available on digital download from today (July 6) and DVD and digital rental from July 20
