Awaken the fears within...
TRUE ROMANCE: Hayden with co-star Jessica Alba before it all goes wrong, in Awake
Monday March 31 2008
While most movie stars tend to go in for flash sports cars and luxury pads on the beach, Canadian-born Hayden invested in a farm last year, complete with pigs.
“I tried to spend most of my past summer there,'' he says. “I've got these two miniature potbellied pigs and the female is very much the girl and the male is a sort of rambunctious, curious, oinking animal.
“They are actually very intelligent and are supposed to be smarter than dogs. They became litter-trained within the first couple of days,'' he adds.
But the harsh realities of farming could prove difficult – he admits he's struggling to even eat meat, let alone take his animals to slaughter.
“It's a big dilemma for me right now. I am not a vegetarian and I like my meat, but having these pigs is definitely starting to mess with my head!
“I actually had my family over yesterday and so I went up to the market to buy food and usually I would buy pork ribs. I had this whole thing at the counter as to whether or not I should get them. I didn't get them.''
When he's not in Canada down on the farm, Hayden is out globe trotting, admitting he's spent lots of time in the Bahamas and London.
But for his latest film, Awake, he went back to New York, where he'd studied at the Actors Studio. The thriller sees his character undergo a heart transplant just hours after marrying his fiance, played by Jessica Alba.
But as his character, Clayton Beresford, slips under the anaesthetic, he realises he can still hear and see everything but is unable to move – a reallife medical phenomenon known as “anaesthetic awareness”.
STRAIGHTJACKET
Trapped in a chemical straightjacket, Clay can feel the surgery and hears conversations that make him realise he's never meant to wake up.
“It was a really scary premise,'' admits Hayden.
“But there was a little over a week of filming where I had to be lying down on an operating table, completely dormant, and that got very boring!
“I was actually in this contraption that they had built that looked like an operating table, so my body was really contorted underneath.
“I was in an awkward position for sometimes a couple of hours before they'd take a break and let me out, because it was a 15-minute ordeal to get me in and get me out again. And then they'd tape my eyes shut and stick something in my mouth!''
Hayden's character, Clayton, had a seemingly charmed life, with a doting mother, a beautiful fiance Sam and a cardiologist (Terence Howard) as a best friend.
But he also has a deadly heart condition – and can't tell his mum (Lena Olin) about his fiance because Sam works for her.
He finally confesses their relationship and is shocked when his mum offers to pay Sam to “go away”. In haste, he betrays his mum and marries Sam. But while he's under the anaesthetic, he hears things that suggest he might have put his trust in the wrong person.
It's a complex and emotional plot – a world away from light-sabres and Jedi mindtricks. “I like to be part of things that are different and play roles that are contrasting. That's the challenge and that's what I like.''
His last movie outing was as a hounded teleporter in sci-fi thriller Jumper, so does he pick more intense roles on purpose?
CONFLICT
“I don't know, I guess I am attracted to those characters subconsciously and so I have played a few of them. But I think they are still different. Although, they all seem to have that undercurrent of serious conflict.''
In Awake, Hayden also gets to play the romantic fiance – at least until he goes under the knife – sweeping Jessica Alba off her feet. Is he that romantic in real life?
“Well. . . not that long ago, a few months ago, I made a really nice swing for Ellen, my girlfriend. I made it myself from a piece of wood and carved it out and made some engravings on it. I hung it from a pretty tree that sits on a hill on the farm.''
