Tamer Hassan has made a career for himself inside the British film industry with the likes of The Business, City Rats and Dead Man Running over the last few years.
He is back in Wrong Turn 3 before taking on Hollywood later this year with Clash of the Titans and Kick Ass. I caught up with him to take about his latest picture and what 2010 holds in store for him.
- Your new movie is Wrong Turn 3 so can you tell me a little bit about it?
It’s the third part of the Wrong Turn trilogy, it’s the third movie, one and two were incredibly successful. It’s the same sort of premise getting lost in the forest and there are these mutant cannibals running around eating people, but his one has a bit of a twist to it.
Basically the movie is a bout a prison break but it all goes wrong and they end up in the forest, instead of having of having beautiful teenage Americans running through the forest screaming and getting eaten he put a twist on it where my character goes after him. So there are plenty of fights and car chases and it’s an action packed adventure.
- You take on the role of Chavez in the movie so what was it that drew you to the character and the project?
I was a fan of the films before you know? I have to do an American accent in the film which was a challenge to me but I took on the challenge of a Mexican American. But I’m all about the action and reading the script there was fighting and people getting burnt and car crashes so anything that is action driven I’m really interested in.
- You get to do a lot of physical stuff in the film so how did you find that and did you have to do anything specific in preparation for it?
Well I’m an ex-boxer and when it comes to sports and stuff I played a lot of semi-professional football and I’m kind of an all round sports man I’m also good with guns, horses, swords I’ve sort of done the whole lot.
I don’t really need to prepare that much now most of the stuff I do I’m either killing or being killed and fighting and doing action and hard-man sort of roles.
But this one it was particularly difficult because I strained my back, my lower back, and I had to go through four and five of my back strapped up so it was very painful but you can’t have rain stop play when you are shooting a movie. So it was kind of strap up and punch through it, which we did.
- You shot in Bulgaria, a setting used quite often in movies at the moment, so what was it like filming there?
It was hard work I have got to tell you. This is probably why I will try and swerve every horror movie that ever comes with to me; I have done a couple of horror movies, because the horrible thing about horror movies is they are all night shoots.
Where ever you are in the world you never get to see it we were up in the mountains in the forests and we started shooting when the sun went down and we were still there when the sun came up.
By the time you get home and sleep it’s like you never leave and the day that you have got off you miss it because you are sleeping. So I never got to see beautiful Bulgaria and I never really got to do much but it was a really tough shoot.
- I read that you only shot for a month so that’s a pretty tight schedule do you like working like that?
No no. I think predominately the British film industry, well the film industry in general, you are getting less and less time because the money isn’t there at the moment, especially in the British film industry, due to the recession.
People will give you a certain amount of money and you have to shoot within your budget, years ago one of the Jaws movies took eighteen months or three years to film back then it was it takes as long as it takes and if you need re-shoots you can come back.
But with the lower budget movies they are really pushing forward and pushing you, pushing you and pushing you, as I was saying earlier it was fourteen hour days six days a week and the day you have off you sleep. I left Bulgaria and went on holiday to turkey with my family.
- Director Declan O’Brien is very experienced with this genre of film what was it like having him on board?
Brilliant! He wrote it as well and what he wanted to do was create something new within the horror genre and within the Wrong Turn genre and I think he achieved that. He is strict with his crew but he is great with the actors he lets us do our thing and act and it was a pleasure working with the man.
- You have recently appeared in Dead Man Running which reunited you with Danny Dyer you are becoming quite a partnership?
We are it’s quite funny. Someone likened us to Ant and Dec but I feel we are more like De Niro and Pesci if you don’t mind. I have had Football Factories, The Business, City Rats and Dead Man Running; yeah we have had four outings together, which ain’t too bad if you think about the ten years that we have known each other.
What we don’t want to do is saturate the market with a Danny and a Tamer movie because you are opening yourself up to people saying ‘oh no not them two again’.
I think we quality control the things that we do, Nick Love is talking about doing The Business 2 which we are very excited about and there looks like there is going to be a Dead Man Running 2 and franchise it so it looks like we are going to be out there again.
But judging from people’s comments and the press that we have got people like watching us on screen together.
More than anything we are best friends away from film, it’s like a male marriage me and Danny, we try and do anything together; we have travelled the world together and we try and do all the sit down chats together. It’s a pleasure working with him and if I could work with him on everything I did I would be a very happy man.
- You also had a hand in producing Dead Man Running how much do you want to go into that side of movies?
Do you know what it is with me? I have found something that I love doing I don’t actively get involved in the hands on production side of things but what I do, and I’m just about to put another movie into production called Diamond Rose, I will get a script, I’m the kind of glue to it all, I’ll get the cast and the director and the finance up to the point where I have to hand it over because I’m an actor.
So executive producer side of it, when you say executive producer that basically means you have got the money or you are the money man, but I try to do a little bit more than that and get it all together, put everyone in place such as the camera crew and make sure everyone is happy and we have a happy ship and then I just hand it over and go ‘right it’s time to get on with it because now I have to be the leading man.
- Kick Ass is on the horizon for you, which reunites you with Matthew Vaughn, how did that come about?
Me an Matthew are good friends, I love Matthew, I worked with him on Layer Cake his directorial debut which was which was a huge hit for him and he has turned into a phenomenal A-list director and I’m really please for his success.
I was in the gym and I was due to shoot Dead Man running within five or six days and he called up and he said ‘I need you to come in’ and I told him that I was about to go and do this film and we had this banter of ‘why didn’t you cast me back in the beginning?’
He said ‘ There’s a big scene and I need to you to be the head goon, the assassin to wipe these kids out’ and I said ’Ok how long do you need me for?’ He said: ’I will only need you for a couple of days’ he ended up keeping me for a week and I had to put the schedule back a few days because once you are in the job you can’t let him down.
Apart from that it was a lot of fun and it was great getting back in the room with Matthew and I think he’s going to have a huge hit; he likes take chances out Mr Vaughn.
- Yeah it looks fantastic it’s going to be one of the big films of the summer.
Matthew has got this idea in his head that if you cast the best you don’t need to direct you just sit behind the monitor and you watch the beauty unfold. He has got Nicolas Cage and Mark Strong and these brilliant kids, he has filled up the film with a fantastic cast, he has taken a chance and I think hat it’s going to pay off for him because everyone is really raving about it, it was only a little part but it was great to be a part of it.
- You have also got Clash of the Titans later this year and you are playing a god.
Can you believe that? A lot of actors are lucky to get one cult movie under their belt and there is me coming along untrained, not one day in drama school, and I get to shoot Cass, The Business, Dead Man Running, which is slowly becoming a cult, and now I get to play a god. (laughs)
And the great thing is it’s Aries god of war, which everybody wanted, it was brilliant. I worked with Louis Leterrier on Unleashed, I think it was his second film he did Transporter then he went on to do that, and we became good friends.
It’s always nice as an actor to work with great directors, for me Louis Leterrier is a visionary he is brilliant, and when you get called back again it’s kind of satisfying that you have done a great job and they are comfortable with you.
To be part of something like Clash of the Titans, I remember when it first came out the special effects were sort of the first of it’s kind; when you look at it now it’s so cheesy and rubbish but if you are old enough to remember it it was mesmerising with the Kraken and the owl everyone just went ‘wow’.
What he has done, the beauty of Clash of the Titans, he has kept the same story and the same characters the Kraken, the owl Medusa it’s just going to be so big and the effects so brilliant that it’s just going to bring it to life again.
We don’t have much dialogue the gods, there’s Liam Neeson who plays Zeus and Ralph Fiennes and to watch them two work was a fucking masterclass and you can do nothing but learn from them, but the gods are peppered through the movie and there’s talk, but I don’t know, if it does well he will do another movie called The Return of the Gods.
I’m playing Aries god of war maybe I will get to sit on a horse and gallop through the glen. But it was an absolute joy and a pleasure to do.
- Finally it’s 2010 a new year what does it hold for you?
Huge success I hope. I have just got back from Los Angeles my managers have just screened Dead Man Running people love it and people have warmed to me. I was due to go out to Los Angeles just after The Business but I felt that it just wasn’t time yet because the worst thing you can do is go out to L.A. with your hands open and have nothing to show.
But now I’m being invited over there and being offered work so my 2010 is to take my family and move over to Los Angeles.
Wrong Turn 3 is our on DVD 11th January.
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw
Tamer Hassan has made a career for himself inside the British film industry with the likes of The Business, City Rats and Dead Man Running over the last few years.
He is back in Wrong Turn 3 before taking on Hollywood later this year with Clash of the Titans and Kick Ass. I caught up with him to take about his latest picture and what 2010 holds in store for him.
- Your new movie is Wrong Turn 3 so can you tell me a little bit about it?
It’s the third part of the Wrong Turn trilogy, it’s the third movie, one and two were incredibly successful. It’s the same sort of premise getting lost in the forest and there are these mutant cannibals running around eating people, but his one has a bit of a twist to it.
Basically the movie is a bout a prison break but it all goes wrong and they end up in the forest, instead of having of having beautiful teenage Americans running through the forest screaming and getting eaten he put a twist on it where my character goes after him. So there are plenty of fights and car chases and it’s an action packed adventure.
- You take on the role of Chavez in the movie so what was it that drew you to the character and the project?
I was a fan of the films before you know? I have to do an American accent in the film which was a challenge to me but I took on the challenge of a Mexican American. But I’m all about the action and reading the script there was fighting and people getting burnt and car crashes so anything that is action driven I’m really interested in.
- You get to do a lot of physical stuff in the film so how did you find that and did you have to do anything specific in preparation for it?
Well I’m an ex-boxer and when it comes to sports and stuff I played a lot of semi-professional football and I’m kind of an all round sports man I’m also good with guns, horses, swords I’ve sort of done the whole lot.
I don’t really need to prepare that much now most of the stuff I do I’m either killing or being killed and fighting and doing action and hard-man sort of roles.
But this one it was particularly difficult because I strained my back, my lower back, and I had to go through four and five of my back strapped up so it was very painful but you can’t have rain stop play when you are shooting a movie. So it was kind of strap up and punch through it, which we did.
- You shot in Bulgaria, a setting used quite often in movies at the moment, so what was it like filming there?
It was hard work I have got to tell you. This is probably why I will try and swerve every horror movie that ever comes with to me; I have done a couple of horror movies, because the horrible thing about horror movies is they are all night shoots.
Where ever you are in the world you never get to see it we were up in the mountains in the forests and we started shooting when the sun went down and we were still there when the sun came up.
By the time you get home and sleep it’s like you never leave and the day that you have got off you miss it because you are sleeping. So I never got to see beautiful Bulgaria and I never really got to do much but it was a really tough shoot.
- I read that you only shot for a month so that’s a pretty tight schedule do you like working like that?
No no. I think predominately the British film industry, well the film industry in general, you are getting less and less time because the money isn’t there at the moment, especially in the British film industry, due to the recession.
People will give you a certain amount of money and you have to shoot within your budget, years ago one of the Jaws movies took eighteen months or three years to film back then it was it takes as long as it takes and if you need re-shoots you can come back.
But with the lower budget movies they are really pushing forward and pushing you, pushing you and pushing you, as I was saying earlier it was fourteen hour days six days a week and the day you have off you sleep. I left Bulgaria and went on holiday to turkey with my family.
- Director Declan O’Brien is very experienced with this genre of film what was it like having him on board?
Brilliant! He wrote it as well and what he wanted to do was create something new within the horror genre and within the Wrong Turn genre and I think he achieved that. He is strict with his crew but he is great with the actors he lets us do our thing and act and it was a pleasure working with the man.
Tagged in Tamer Hassan