Cocky. Confident. Brash. Aaron Eckhart has all but patented the alpha male swagger in stinging performances from In the Company of Men to Your Friends and Neighbors to Possession. He’s so good at these modern a-hole types that we tend to forget his comic and dramatic turns in movies like Nurse Betty and his excellent work in Erin Brockovich.

This Chicago afternoon Aaron Eckhart is in a talky and jovial mood, as we step into the Peninsula Hotel’s elevator enroute to discuss his new film Suspect Zero, a lurid serial killer thriller about a detective who uses remote viewing—a psychic ‘seeing’ phenomena—to catch a madman. Eckhart, who went to film school himself, has a sharp eye for the mechanics of moviemaking and a smart sense of directors and projects, having carved out a character actor’s niche in a leading man’s body.

Lee Shoquist, Reel Movie Critic: Let’s talk about Suspect Zero. The serial killer film has become one of the most prolific modern movie genres. Suspect Zero has its own particular angle on the subject, and I’m wondering what exactly grabbed you about this script.

Aaron Eckhart: I really didn’t think of any other serial killer movies. That wasn’t on my mind. I thought the character had a great journey. I thought he was a tough character and that he would be challenging to play. I loved the story. The story evolved because the original script didn’t have remote viewing in it, so it was different story. And so through the time that I started getting interested in the movie and when we actually shot it, it really changed a lot and really enhanced Sir Ben Kingsley’s part and really made the whole journey more interesting. I wanted to run around with a gun and catch bad guys. I saw it as a romantic character, and that’s why I did it.

LS: Do you sometimes get drawn to a script because you find one element of the story and you say, ‘God, I’d really love to do that scene and say those words,’ or…?

AE: Oh, yeah. Mostly that’s what gets me because my first question really is ‘Who is the girl?’ You can’t argue that! That brings so much to it. I don’t put too much thought into it. It really is just instinctual.

Sometimes you do movies for other reasons. You do movies because a director is involved. Really, I should only do movies that have great directors, because they’re the ones who are putting the movie together from beginning to end. They’re the ones who are going to cut it. They’re going to score it. Their whole vision is right there. As actors, really, our asses are hanging in the wind so much! I mean, we can only control the scenes we’re in. We can’t control how they’re cut, how they’re edited and that sort of stuff.

Elias (Merhige) did Shadow of the Vampire. I dug that movie. I thought he made a kick-ass movie with the actors and I didn’t know where it was going; who came up with it. I thought Cary Elwes was great in the movie. I thought Willem Dafoe was great. Catherine McCormack—I thought she was great. It was a charming, unique movie. It was not a formulaic movie. I thought Elias could do a really great job with this movie, so that’s it. We made it.

To use a biblical word, good work begets good work. And you really want to again, work with directors, because directors can get actors. Sean Penn can get Nicholson, and then if you’ve got Nicholson, you can get anybody. Or Gwyneth, or Al Pacino or Morgan Freeman, whomever it is, you know? And we were lucky enough to get Sir Ben and Carrie-Anne (Moss), because (she) was doing The Matrix at the time, and it was going to be a conflict. Finally, we convinced her to come. And it makes a difference who you’re playing with.

LS: Let’s talk about your relationship with Carrie-Anne in the film. It’s a very streamlined and minimally written set-up, but a lot is suggested in terms of a history between you. What are the challenges to suggesting that longevity with little dialogue?

AE: Well, I had never met her before rehearsing, so that was problematic! That’s just not the way you should make movies, but sometimes you have to. Know your lines! Sometimes you’ve just gotta do what you’ve gotta do. In that case, it worked well because we had a past, we didn’t really know each other; obviously acting is creating a reality under imaginary circumstances, so you’ve already prepared what you’re going to do and then let it fly on the day.

Originally in the screenplay, Carrie-Anne and I didn’t have as strong a love story. It was intimated that we had a past but it really didn’t indicate that we had a future. I had a future with another girl, which didn’t end up in the movie. But Carrie-Anne and I were getting along so well and thought that we had good chemistry and energy that I thought that we should amp that up a little bit. I would have liked to have had more of sexual relationship with her in the movie because I thought we worked well together. I think the movie needed that to give it another place to go. I think what we did in the movie is good.

But movies are different because again, it’s really a director, the way he cuts the looks, what he cuts away to, how much time he puts between the next cut. All of that creates the tension or lack of tension and I think in this case we got away with something. I think right when you see us in the beginning, you know what’s going on between us, and then walking out to the car I think it’s pretty well done.

LS: Do you see a film sometimes that you were in ¾ and when you talk about not knowing what the director is going to do with it in post, and you don’t know exactly when you’re in the scene [or] exactly what the camera is seeing ¾ do you sometimes see the finished product and say, ‘This is not at all what I thought it would be…?’

AE: Sometimes I say that while we’re making the movie because you don’t know how the movie is going to look. I don’t know how he’s shooting Sir Ben, or Carrie-Anne, or the rest of the people when I’m not out there. So that’s why you have to really say, ‘Can this guy direct a movie? Can he tell a story? Can he direct actors? Can he talk to actors? Can he cut a movie?’ Elias shows that he can do that. Elias did some great things in this movie. That’s what you sign on for, and that’s why I think a lot of actors become directors—because they know how to act, they know the sensibilities of acting and performance and storytelling, and so the natural progression is to go behind the camera. The problem is you get too technical or you get out of your comfort zone. And I think sometimes directors try to get too fancy at the expense of the storytelling, which is a major problem, because that’s what we’re doing—we’re trying to tell a story. But what do I know? I know nothing. I’m an actor.

LS: Your Suspect Zero cinematographer, Michael Chapman, has turned in a great looking film. What can you tell me about the relationship between the actor and the cinematographer?

AE: As an actor, cinematographers are extremely important. First, to make you look good, to light it, to expose your face; know how you move. In Hollywood everyone is all about having a good side or bad side. I don’t think that’s true with most people. I think some people but not others. But on the other hand, he has a responsibility to light you so that people want to look at you, right? That’s number one. Number two is their demeanor on the set. What kind of person are they? Are they going to disrupt the filming? Are they going to distract the actors? Can they handle their crew? And this is for the director as well—does he have a handle on the crew? Because everybody on the set influences what happens that day.

Michael Chapman is a great shooter. I don’t know how old he is, man, but he had that camera on his shoulder in the middle of the summer, sweating his ass off for three, four, five minute takes. I remember there’s one take in the movie (where) I’m running around Michael literally. At the end of the take, camera is on his shoulder, I can hear him just huffing and puffing and waiting for this thing to get over! And I had to try to hold the scene for dramatic- really play out what I was thinking in the scene. And I could hear him dying. So he’s a trooper. He’s a great shooter.

So the cinematographer affects the mood on the set. It’s very important that we all be in sync together. He also affects how a director shoots the movie. He affects the angle. He affects the proximity to the scene. He affects the lenses and obviously the lighting and everything. So a strong cinematographer can take over a director’s vision. A lot of first and second-time filmmakers, you’re having a lot of cinematographers directing the film. So they’re very influential. I think camera work is important because it¾ especially in this film¾ it becomes another character and mood in the film. The way Michael shot it, the way he lit things. But I think the responsibility of the cinematographer for the most part is to tell a story. Anything beyond that is really destructive. And that could be said of any job on the set, actors included.

LS: If you’re in a very dramatic moment in close-up or medium shot or whatever, the cinematographer has a great ability there to dramatically increase or decrease the intensity of the performance simply by how he chooses to connect with you. Do you pay attention to that?

AE: Oh, my gosh!

LS: Do you say, ‘I know this is a killer moment for me and he’s close to me, so I’m going to really deliver for this take.’

AE: I didn’t before, but I’m getting more used to that because I see the movies and I see what they could have done versus what they use. And I say, ‘Why aren’t we using that close-up?’ Or ‘Why am I in a two-shot right here?’ You know the work you did. You know the work you put out for a close-up. The good thing about close-ups is usually in close-ups you only need two or three seconds, if that. So you can take as much time- you’ve got 400 feet of film in a mag, and you only need one part of a scene, so you can play around for 5 or 6 minutes, if they’ll let the film run, and you can do whatever you want. So you know you gave it to them. Whereas, if you’re in a two-shot or whatever it is, you have to respond off the other actor and you’re not solo, so you have to be in sync with the other actor and stuff like that.

So it’s very important to know what lens they’re using, where the light is, where they’re cutting you, how you’re going to move. Because frickin’ John Woo puts the camera right here (gestures to his face), and he’s got a lens on it this big (makes large gesture), and you’re like ‘John, what are you getting here? Are you seeing here?’ (gestures to head). And he’s like, ‘No, I’m seeing here!’ (gestures to eyes). So you’re like, ‘Okay, in this shot I only have to move my eyes. But it’ll tell the story.’ I wasn’t used to that—the camera sweeping in from a hundred yards away and landing right here, and having to say, ‘Get him.’ But John uses the energy of the camera and the camera's movement to create the drama in his movies. And he took the time to explain it to me.

I went to film school so I do know what everybody does on the set. And I made films. I think if I’ve learned anything from photography is that photography is not about f-stops and apertures. It’s about telling a story with an image. If a filmmaker can tell a story, then he’s ninety percent there. It’s not about camera movement. It’s not about lenses. It’s about telling a story. Some movies I look at and say, ‘Why did you have to move the camera? Trust your actors.’

LS: Because there’s this unwritten rule that the camera has got to be moving continually or else people in the audience don’t want to sit still.

AE: Well, it’s an unwritten rule that if you have more than 2 dollars to make a film that you have to move the camera for some reason. But if you have less than 2 dollars, you don’t have to move the camera and then they call you a genius, like In the Company of Men. In fact, the reason why is because we had no film, we had three lights and one pair of sticks. I don’t know if we had dolly tracks. So basically Neil (LaBute) was saying, ‘This angle looks good, and I’m trusting you guys to give me the goods.’ Sometimes directors don’t trust that their actors are good enough. They don’t trust the story is good enough. That’s when you’re in trouble.

But I think (in Suspect Zero) we did a good job. I think Elias, going from a milk carton and coming up to the truck—that is an interesting shot. Going through the mirror, looking back on Sir Ben is an interesting shot. So at first you’d be like, ‘Elias, why can’t we just leave the camera here?’ But he knows. That’s why I’m an actor and he’s a director.

LS: Is that why you like working with Neil LaBute so much? Because he focuses more on acting, storytelling, the words, etc.?

AE: He understands storytelling. When he writes (a) script, you don’t change it afterwards because his words mean something. Neil loves acting. He loves the theater. He knows what dramatic progression is all about, and climax and conflict and letting his actors play. Neil’s stuff is compelling.

LS: I think all actors answer this question a bit differently. What do you look for from a director?

AE: I want a director to create an environment that’s safe for an actor; that I can come on the set and know I can do whatever I want. I can try whatever I want, because I can go here and I can go here, and then somewhere in the middle. And I know that they’re going to cut it. I know that they’re going to cut me in the middle. But it’s important that I know that I can go there. I also want a director who can talk me through something. If I’m just not getting something, first of all I can admit it to him, and he’ll have patience and all that sort of stuff, and know that we’re trying to create something here. We’re not just trying to get through the day, and that he’ll talk me through it: ‘Okay, it’s like this, it’s like this, it’s like this.’

You hear the great relationships of how Scorsese talks to DeNiro, and stories of that, and you’ll find out that they talk in very intimate terms, in very non-acting terms: ‘Remember when we were at this shop the other day and this girl came out? How’d you feel?’ ‘I felt like this.’ ‘Well, give me that.’ It’s just sometimes you get so tied up in result-oriented stuff that you forget the meaning. And sometimes you have to be reminded of the meanings and forget the results, the ends. And that’s the way to talk to an actor.

Sometimes directors are afraid to talk to their actors because they don’t know what to say. They think they have to be technical when they just have to be human. You always hear about, ‘Oh, he’s an actors director, or he’s a technical director; a camera director.’ You’re like well, all right, we’re just trying to tell a story here and nobody has got the answers. No matter what happens, when shit hits the fan, you always look at your director! Shit’s going crazy, it’s like, ‘Well, what do we do?’ So I have no answers.

LS: How much of acting to you is the words and how much is what comes after the words, beyond them, in the moment, between the people?

AE: Uta Hagen said, ‘The words are the wings of your desires.’ So that says it all. Words are a product of what you feel. You say the words because you feel something. Acting is all about images and feelings. So the words are important, obviously, especially if you have a great playwright or a screenwriter. But the words have to be propelled by inner thought. And the most important thing about acting is thinking and feeling. And if you don’t have that, then the words are hollow.

LS: Do you value the ability to use improvisation in a scene?

AE: Oh, absolutely. Before I even get to the set I’ll have improved it, I’ll have done it in my own words, I’ll have screamed it, I’ll have cried it, I’ll have laughed it, I’ll do it all out of context. I’ll do it every which way to make sure that I have it and understand it, then I can go anywhere in the scene. Then it’s up to a director to say, ‘Yes, but let’s try it this way, or don’t do this,’ or whatever. I’ll do whatever is possible. I ask a director to manipulate me if he has to. If he thinks that manipulating me can get me to a place that I don’t think I can go, then manipulate me, pit everybody against me, make me go crazy. I think I went crazy on this movie. I didn’t know what was going on sometimes. I lost my mind. When I was hitting the guy with the rock, I think I was literally out of my mind. I did go crazy that day.

LS: Is it difficult to get to those places like that?

AE: It takes dwelling on those times to get you there and keeping it really close to you, and then using everything on the set- (gestures to me), ‘Why are you sitting there? Why aren’t you listening? Why aren’t you saying anything?’ Boom, boom, boom, dwell. Boom, boom, boom, dwell. ‘Why can’t I- I want more ice in this.’ Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom! You get up there- ‘Why isn’t my car…’ Boom, boom, boom, boom, shoot, bam! And then you can go off and be whatever. You’re dwelling on it, and dwelling on it, and dwelling on it. Keeping it close to you. Keeping it close to you. And then once you get it on film, that’s your baby.

I think that’s why you hear stories of Daniel Day Lewis never breaking character in My Left Foot, because to get that performance he needed to do that. He’s got more discipline than I’ve ever heard in any actor. And I think he’s the greatest actor alive.

LS: Do you work like that between shots? Do you break character because you have to relieve the tension, or you want to ‘go somewhere else?’

AE: I’m not that disciplined! (laughs) Unfortunately! I could be a much better actor. Could be a much better performer. I just have to work on my discipline. I try to do things with myself. I try to have inner monologues all the time, and use the crew and the other actors while they don’t know I’m using them, and manipulate them. But a lot of the time, the crew ends up hating you! (laughs) And the other actors misunderstand you, and the directors aren’t educated enough in acting to discern. Really what you have to do is go up to them and say, ‘Listen. This is how I work. This is what I’m going to be doing. And if I’m out of my mind right now, then please shoot me. Don’t make me wait a half hour. And don’t go to other people and do their coverage. Stay on my coverage. If you have to move the camera, move the camera. If you have to move the light, move the light.’ Just be sensitive to that, or else you’ll go crazy as an actor.

LS: You’ve made some good career choices at a time when it seems so hard not to get hyped up, burnt out and then gone two years from now. You are sort of carving out this character niche, even though you look and act like a leading man. Is that a conscious career plan so that you’re not gone from the mainstream in 5 years?

AE: Well, sometimes I feel like I am going to be gone from the mainstream in five years. Maybe it sounds calculated, but I just really only take what’s offered to me at that time. And I’ve tried to do other kinds of movies. I’ve tried to do big kinds of movies like The Core and Paycheck. But I still have a certain amount of integrity that I want to keep, so I guess I do it because I really get turned on to actors. If I had a big movie that was going to pay me a lot of money and guarantee me a hundred million dollar movie and another movie that wasn’t so big but it had this director and these actors, it would be very difficult for me to turn down this movie because there’s so much going for it…

LS: Meaning the smaller film…

AE: The small (film) with the great actors and the great director. Because this movie will make you more money in the long run. Doing Your Friends and Neighbors after In the Company of Men has made me more money than me going out and doing some heartthrob movie that was a piece of shit, because this gives me career longevity. You want directors to call you up and say to the studio- the studio says, ‘Well, Aaron Eckhart movies don’t make money.’ ‘Well, I don’t give a shit. I want to work with him because he’s going to do this for my movie. He’s going to make these people great and do this….’ That’s what you want. You want Oliver Stone calling you, and Sean (Penn) calling you and Soderbergh calling you and Neil. Those guys are going to continue to make movies.

Now, you’d like those movies to make a hundred million dollars, or three hundred million dollars! That will come. I firmly believe that. You’ve just got to keep on plodding along. Look at Gene Hackman, Sir Ben Kingsley- look at Ian McKellan. I’m doing a movie next with him. Look at Nick Nolte. Jessica Lange. Sam Shepherd. Those guys are working into their sixties now. So that gives me at least a couple more years.

I’ve been offered a lot of big romantic comedies that I turned down, that have since gone on and made money; huge mainstream movies. Now if it’s between Hugh Grant and me, they’re going to Hugh Grant! That’s just the way it is. Can I get myself there? Do I have the desire to get myself there? I like to play complex characters because it’s more challenging to me.

I would like to do romantic comedies. I would like to do straight comedies. I would like to do action movies that are, you know, action movies maybe not in the center of the Earth, you know what I’m saying? That’s all out there. I feel like, why can’t I do those? I think I can do those damn well. I guess it has to do with timing and positioning. And in this business, it’s cyclical. If your movies don’t make a lot of money, then you’ve got to go back and start working again. You’ve got to go to London and do theater. You know what I mean? You’ve got to get it back. I think we’ve seen that a lot. Look at Matt Damon, who was struggling for awhile after a couple movies, and now has kicked it through the roof.

You never know. You just have to keep on- you can’t win if you don’t play. But I like conventional characters. The thing about it is that in movies that the studio makes, they’re not writing complex bad guy roles—they’re writing complex hero roles. The more money that you get in these movies, unless you’re doing Jamie Foxx in Michael Mann’s (Collateral), for the most part, the antagonist serves a role, and that is to define the protagonist. They give all the good stuff to the protagonist—a down and out protagonist who goes through a struggle to redeem himself—all the Lethal Weapon movies. And those are good places; they are dramatic roles for Mel Gibson.

I don’t want to make a career on assholes. It’s not what I like. It’s not who I am in my life. It’s not fun for me anymore. Yes, I did it- I think Chad (In the Company of Men) can’t go down as a one-dimensional bad guy. I think he was a very complex character. I think Barry in Your Friends and Neighbors, I don’t know. He’s not a classic bad guy. I think Paycheck is probably the closest I’ve gotten to a one-dimensional bad guy and I don’t want to make a career of that. I think even the pricks I’ve played like Del in Nurse Betty was a cartoon; it was a fun part, what I did in that movie. But I think Erin Brockovich- The Core was a heroic role. It really goes back to, how good was the movie? Because I can play the role. It’s just how good is the movie? And in this one I play a complex good guy. I don’t think I’m an asshole in this movie, am I?

LS: No, no!

AE: So that’s what I want to continue to do. I think for the future I just have to lighten myself up a little bit, because when I see in the script, ‘he breaks down and cries,’ I think, you know, I gotta go to the depths of the Earth to do that. And I’ve just got to change my way of thinking about that.

LS: You mentioned the villains being simplistic in many films. Wouldn’t you say the opposite is true in Suspect Zero, at least to some extent with Sir Ben? We can’t get a grip on him until probably the final reel of the film.

AE: The final shot. First of all, he’s innately interesting. He’s magnetic. Put remote viewing on top of that and then how he’s shot, and then his character- he has an arc. He can be said to be protagonist/antagonist, antagonist/protagonist. So that’s the beauty of his character. Also, it’s up to the actor to bring the complexities to the role. But he has redeeming qualities and pathos that we find at the end. And that’s really the last scene of the movie. To me that’s just great storytelling. It’s unique.

This movie can be compared to Seven and all that sort of stuff, but to me they’re vastly different in tone; in the way they’re shot. I mean, they are serial killer movies so it’s genre film. But that was a seminal film for Brad Pitt. Brad Pitt was great in that. I think of that less as a serial killer movie than I think of that as a Brad Pitt/Kevin Spacey/Morgan Freeman movie. And I think of Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster in Silence of the Lambs. So I just hope people go to see this movie. It’s an entertaining movie.