Jim Sturgess ("The Other Boleyn Girl," "Across the Universe") stars in "21," the new movie based on the real-life story of a group of MIT math whizes who won millions of dollars in Las Vegas. The character he plays was inspired by Jeff Ma. I spoke to them both about the movie.
Jim Sturgess
Your American accent in the film is excellent! Was it difficult to learn?
I did not have very much time to prepare for the dialect, two weeks or so, so it was fairly intense. A decision was made not to give him a thick Boston Southie accent so there would be no extremities about who he is as a person. We did not want to be so specific it would be distracting or people would think that's the points off him.
Your director, Robert Luketic, is well known for "Legally Blonde" and other bright, light-hearted comedies with female leads. Was this a big adjustment for him?
I'm so proud of Robert for this film. He wanted to break away from the genre or the mold he was known for. I hadn't really seen any of his films and I was nervous, all these romantic comedies, but "Legally Blonde" was an intelligent look at the genre. Once I met him I was completely at ease. He wanted it to be about real people. He didn't want it to be "Revenge of the Nerds 2." Put in another person's hands it could have been completely that way. They were just students. We didn't look at them as nerds.
Tell me about the character you play. What is it like to play someone who is such a super-brain?
There's just a confidence and a quickness about what you are thinking. He's fairly mild in his approach to life but when he talks about anything mathematical that's his world and where he feels comfortable. And then you put him next to a girl and he's hopeless!
Had you ever played Blackjack before this movie?
I never had played blackjack. We played it and played it. That is all there really is to do in Vegas, and we were indulging with that as much as possible. We had blackjack camp and that taught us basic strategy. I don't think it is possible to be a good or bad player unless you are beating the system like these guys did [by counting cards]. It's a game of luck.
What do the scenes with your character's mother add to the story?
Ben and his mother brought a conscience to the film. It showed he had somebody to let down who would be disgusted by his behavior. My mother is the same. Your mother's always slightly in the back of your mind.
What was it like to shoot in Las Vegas?
Vegas just kind of blew my mind. We had a great time there but we were there too long, a month and a half. It's designed for people to come in and spend all their money and have a crazy time and go home to their normal lives. When it becomes your life it is too much and by the end of it we were desperate to get out. Boston was the antidote. It is very similar to England, great when you need a normal pint in a normal pub.
What were the challenges in adapting the real-life story for a movie?
Film has to be its own thing. There are rules of movie making. It's roughly two hours and the audience has to be engaged. While it was not the case in real life, for the movie, Ben had to have a purpose to earn the money [so the script has him needing it for tuition]. If he was gambling for an idle purpose, just for the money, if he did not have some lesson to learn, it would not work as a movie.
Earlier this week, I saw you in "The Other Boleyn Girl," a historical drama. What makes you decide that a project is right for you?
It is different each time, different reasons depending on where you're at in your own life space. For this one it's like it's going to be fun and inspired by true events, it reads like an absolute piece of fiction and captures your attention. Your ears really prick up and then I was completely hooked.
What makes you laugh?
Anything tragic is normally pretty funny. The last comedy I saw was "Superbad," which I thought I wasn't going to enjoy but there was so much heart to it and so much honesty and it was ridiculous as well. If people are trying to be funny you just sniff it out but if people are going to be honest, it is really funny. "The Cable Guy" is the most warped and tragic film so lonely, but very funny, hilarious.
And what inspires you?
Absolutely everything! Things I'm completely unaware of. Having your ears and eyes as open as you possibly can.
Jeff Ma
What's the hardest thing about playing 21?
The amount of practice you need to do to get good at it, to be good enough to play in a casino where there's distractions, the pit boss talking to you, the pretty girl walking by. You need to practice a lot. The computations get easy because you can practice. When I talk about practice it includes computation, counting. In a nutshell none of these things are that hard but when you put them into practice in the casino they are. Vegas has a lot of stimulus.
How do you feel about the changes they made in the movie that depart from your real story?
I don't look at it as they changed a lot. They took a story and a concept and made it into a movie. I see little parts of what we did -- the transformation coming from a sort of shy MIT background to becoming a high roller with a level of confidence to attract a Kate Bosworth. I feel that happened to me. There's a lot of things that happened with the book and the movie that are so on point. The story is just to provide entertainment. It is not an autobiography or a documentary.
Jim's character is inspired by my life to some degree. But any time you take seven years and condense it into 300 pages and then again into 2 hour movie, there have to be changes. The screenplay morphed a lot, the original one was much more true to the book but it did not seem to work. That's why it became more of a Hollywood cliche kind of thing. One reason they sort of resort to that is that they only have two hours and have to have identifiable themes. The Ben character is very likable because of his modest upbringing. My parents were immigrants from China who had no money. They became successful by putting all of their money into education.
You went from playing Blackjack to options trading. Was that similar?
Options are a lot more like gambling than playing Blackjack, because b was purely mathematical. We knew over time we would make money. Our worst year was a 47 percent to our investors. Our best was 154 percent. It is an interesting dichotomy; my options trading job which was very respected, and a card counting hobby I had to hide under the rug but the hobby was more legitimate.
Is it still possible to do what you did, card count in Las Vegas and make a fortune?
It is still possible to do it, but at the scale that we did it is quite difficult. It's a great thing for the casinos, because not a lot of people will do it well enough because they won't practice. The casinos loose very little money to card counters each year. Maybe there are five or six other teams taking all total $10-20 million. Blackjack is really in the casino's favor too. The time and money they spend trying to catch card counters is not worth it.
What are you doing now?
I have a sports media business. We trade athletes like stocks then it morphed to be more about sports media in general, with Facebook applications and a video network. One of the shows is Jeff Ma's Wide World of Gambling, on Doubleplay TV, teaching people to card count. You don't have to be a mathematician, you have to learn it really well and practice it a lot. You need to have enough money and not overbet for the money.
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Thank you thank you thank you for posting the Jim Sturgess interview. He is one of my FAVORITE actors...my aunt loves this site, and when she saw that you had Jim Sturgess on, she ran down the stairs screaming for me to come and watch. You reall brightened up my day!
Love, Sarah 15 yrs.
Thanks for writing, Sarah! I am happy to tell you that Jim Sturgess is every bit as nice and smart and funny as he appears and then some. He promised to try to let me interview him again when he has another movie in release. I can't wait!
You brightened up my day, too. Please come back again and write more comments any time!
Hi, are you the person who interviewed him? That is awesome! I loved this interview. The moment I saw it, I put it up on my Facebook group for him as the first video concerning his movie 21. Jim is so cool and a thousand times worth supporting. I always felt that his worth and good qualities run deep. And according to your words, it seems I was right. I will definitely be a watcher of his career. Can't wait for "Man on The Run" and "Heartless" in particular. :D
I loved the interviews! Thank you for providing such awesome inside info on everyone everywhere! Do you have any suggestions as to who an aspiring actress should go to? I'm helpless at the moment!
Thanks, Ellie
Thanks for writing! I cannot improve on the advice Alec Baldwin gave in his wonderful interview on the television show "Inside the Actor's Studio" (if you have not seen that entire series, it should be high on your list). He said that when people ask him that question he tells them to study acting and especially to act in any venue they can -- community theater, workshops, local productions of all kinds. And then, when they ask him how to get an agent and audition for movies, he says, "Oh, you want to be a movie star! I have no advice on that; too much depends on luck. But if what you want is to be an actor, the great thing is that there are many opportunities and if acting is what you love, those opportunities will give you everything you are looking for."
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