Joseph Gordon-Levitt on learning to high-wire walk
Actor, who stars in film about Philippe Petit, says staying focused is the trick
In his bare feet, with his ears poking out from beneath a red, feathery pixie-cut, Joseph Gordon-Levitt looks somewhat like a hobbit. He is standing in a film studio in Montreal, clutching a rolled-up script and methodically practising tiny movements with his left foot on the edge of a crash mat.
We are on the set of The Walk, where the walls are decked out in the floor-to-ceiling Kermit-the-Frog green that is customary for any movie in which the background will be inserted with the click of a mouse. (In this case, it is the skyline of early-1970s New York City that will be pasted in later.) Occasionally, Gordon-Levitt breaks from his reverie to confer with his director, Robert Zemeckis, a boxy, cheerful fellow with wispy hair and a crumpled smile. Above them on a raised platform, assorted technicians are busying themselves in preparation for the next shot: a walk across a high-wire.
Gordon-Levitt will be leaving this one to his double, Jade Kindar-Martin, though he has been doing many of his own stunts and trained intensively to be able to cross the entire sound-stage unaided on a wire.
“He got a huge ovation from the crew,” says the producer Steve Starkey, his voice hushed so as not to disrupt the star’s concentration.
“They were so happy to see him do the whole crossing by himself.” But he knows when to quit. “There are shots where Joe was, like, ‘Are you kidding me? I’m not doing that!’ He’s not stupid. He doesn’t forget he’s an actor.”
Kindar-Martin says he needs only to call out key words. “I’ll shout out things to help Joe: ‘Hips! Shoulders! Arms!’”
The key, though, lies not in the systematic naming of body parts so much as psychological preparation. “I told him to believe he is master of the world. If you start thinking it’s the master of you, that’s when you’ll become scared and doubtful. A high-wire walker who doesn’t think he’s in control would really be in trouble.”
The 34-year-old actor confirms this. “There are some similarities between wire-walking and acting,” he tells me in a break between takes.
His head looks minuscule, his face bony and pale, but his arms and upper body are weirdly bulked-up; the muscles jostle inside his black T-shirt when he moves. “It’s all a mental game. When you’re acting, there’s this chaos going on around you and you have to compartmentalise and not think about it. It’s the same on the wire. If you start thinking, ‘Ooh, I’m so high up,’ or ‘I could lose my balance,’ then you’re done for. You can learn the physical. Staying focused — that’s the trick.”
