Josh Hutcherson:

Life In and Out of Terabithia

by Lynn B

14-year-old Josh Hutcherson has grown to teenhood in the film world. You know him as Robin Williams’ son in the funny RV or a kid on an outer space journey in Zathura. Josh was also the human prototype “Hero Boy” in the CGI Christmas favorite The Polar Express. He’ll be seen soon in Firehouse Dog and next year in adventure film Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D. This week, catch cute Josh as a lonely farm boy who finds a fantasy world in Bridge to Terabithia.

We sat down with Josh, whose hair is now longer than it is in the film, at the Mondrian Hotel on Sunset Blvd. in L.A. to chat about “Terabithia”, being friends with girls, knowing cool teachers, his baby blankie, Batman obsession and his journey from Kentucky to Hollywood.

AGW: How did a boy from Kentucky get involved in Hollywood?

Josh: I starting begging my parents to let me be in movies since I was three or four. They always said no and said, ‘why don’t you play sports or why don’t you do something else?’ because, being from Kentucky, you always heard about the negative stuff about being a young actor. That was always in the back of their heads and finally I was nine and they let me get a local agency from the yellow pages believe it or not. I met with them and met an acting coach. I still haven’t done one acting lesson in my entire life, but I went to this acting coach to see what it was like and he said we should go to California for the big stuff. I was so excited and my parents were like, ‘oh he’s going to make us go isn’t he?’ I begged and begged and begged and they finally took me out here and let me try it for one pilot season. I got a pilot, a lead in TV movie and it just kind of took off from there. I was so excited and I still love it today as much as I did when I first started.

AGW: Did you read the novel “Bridge to Terabithia” before being in the film?

Josh: I read the book when I found out it was getting made into a movie. When I read it, I totally fell in love with it and I could so picture the movie coming to life on the pages.

AGW: We understand that you’re a pretty competitive guy especially when it comes to running. Are sports another interest you have?

Josh: Oh yeah, I love sports. My second passion is football, soccer and being a normal kid is what’s great about what I do. I live in Kentucky still and my family is all there. My friends are all there so I go back home after filming and just hang out and be a normal kid. I play sports and all that sort of stuff.

AGW: Could you relate to being bullied at school or feeling like an outsider like your character does?

Josh: I could. When I first started acting, I got a lot of [hassle] from kids at school for it. They were being really mean and I didn’t understand because I just loved doing it and I didn’t know what was wrong with it. It was hurtful to me, but I figured out after going through all of that, that you kind of have to let it go and just let them do that. Eventually if you don’t let bother you, they’ll stop because that’s what they like. They like seeing you kind of getting all upset about it.

AGW: As a young teen guy, can you still be friends with girls without any kind of pressure to make them girlfriends?

Josh: Yes, that’s another great message in this movie [as well as] being friends and accepting people for who they are is that guys and girls can still be friends. I know, it’s unbelievable but really it’s true, it happens. I’ve grown up with having really good friends that are girls, not girlfriends, had those, but friends that are girls are great. I grew up across the street from two girls and they were both my age and we were really good friends and we played guys stuff. We’d play kickball in the streets, we’d play football and everything like that. It was a good time and I think people need to realize that [girls are] humans too and it’s not a different species. You can still be friends with them.

AGW: Are you comfortable with the attention you’re getting from young girls?

Josh: I like it. It shows me that I guess what I’m doing is good and people are liking my movies. Even if it’s not girls. If anyone comes up to me and says, ‘oh I love you in blah blah blah. Can I have your autograph?’, it makes me feel good to know that my movies are getting to people and that they are seeing them.

AGW: Your character has a crush on Zooey Deschanel. I guess that wasn’t the hardest part of the movie for you I’m assuming?

Hutcherson: No, that wasn’t the hardest part [big grin]. Zooey was great. She’s a real fun person to hang out with along with the fact that she’s a great actress and just getting to work with her. Just fitting the role of Ms. Edmonds pretty much perfectly.

AGW: Do you have any cool teachers like her?

Josh: My teacher is a dude so I don’t have a crush on him. I’ve had a lot of really great teachers. I’m home schooled now. But I had a lot of really great teachers. One of my greatest teachers was my third and fourth grade teacher because she was really strict. She wasn’t really cool, but she was strict and she taught me a lot because I used to talk all the time in school. I’d get in trouble for talking so much and she really kind of set me straight on that. But, I haven’t really had any kind of cool teachers like [Zooey’s character], unfortunately. I wanted one really bad. I’ll still take one. Actually I have a cool, hip teacher right now. His name is Pat. He’s 51, but he acts younger than me sometimes. We play sports together. We just have a great time.

AGW: Was it fun to play a kid with real problems?

Josh: It’s great, especially with Jess, my character because he has all of these real kid problems. He’s bullied at school, he has a crush on his teacher, his home life with his family isn’t great, unfortunately. I mean, mine is. I’ve always grown up with a great relationship with my parents and my parents are like a friend to me as well. It’s very good for me to play a character who is different from what I am.

AGW: Jess is a really good artist. Can you draw or paint at all.

Josh: No, I’m terrible at that. I can do a little bit like when they had me shade in something or just finishing a line, but there is no way I could draw those things.

AGW: Do you think kids are losing the ability to use their imaginations?

Josh: For me, imagination is such an important part in everybody’s life and that’s what I do every single day in my life as an actor. I’m always acting and imaging that everything is going on. Imagination I think is kind of lost a lot in kids because they play so many video games. My little brother plays a lot of video games, but he’s getting better about going outside. I was always raised outside playing and imaging and making up games and pretending that there is an army crawling on the ground or playing with squirt guns outside, playing kickball and everything. I don’t know, I just think kids need to do that more often.

AGW: So did you have any imaginary friends as a little kid?

Josh: I was four or so and I used to have two imaginary friends called Hano and Dano. We used to sings songs together and create worlds together and I used to love doing that because I could get in trouble and go to my room, but Hano and Dano were there and we would hang out and play all we wanted. Even if my friends couldn’t come over and hang out,… it sounds like I was doing this recently…I didn’t have any friends because I was too young to really have friends to play outside and stuff. I think Hano was the girl and she was pink. And then Dano was the guy and he was blue. Wow! That’s reaching really far back there with my memory.

AGW: Since we’re psychoanalyzing you, did you have a favorite toy? What did you play with?

Josh: I used to be obsessed with Batman. I dressed like Batman. I had every single possible Batman toy on the planet. My favorite toy of all time I think was this big giant bat cave that I had. I put Batman in there and little things would shoot out, he’d slide across the rope and that was so much fun.

AGW: Did you have a pair of tennis shoes or a blanket you didn’t want to get rid of like your character has his favorite running shoes?

Josh: I used to have a blanket. It was actually called ‘yellow blankie’. It was a blanket that was yellow and I used to carry it around with me everywhere.

AGW: How old were you?

Josh: Embarrassingly enough, I was about six or seven. My parents were like, ‘Josh, I’m sorry, but you’re getting kind of old to be carrying around your blankie all the time.’ It was all matted and knotted up because I’d been chewing on it since I was a baby. I tried so hard to fight for that thing, but I think we eventually ended up throwing it away when I was about 10. I was emotionally attached to it. It hurt!

AGW: How did you like doing the CGI fantasy scenes in this movie verses Zathura where a lot of creatures [guys in suits, etc.] were right there on set with you.

Josh: It was hard. They built it for us after we already imagined it. It was difficult because we had to pretend that these characters were jumping out after us and we had to dodge and dive and hit things that weren’t even there. Sometimes we were lucky to even get a tennis ball to react to, but with the help of Gabor the director and the producers and everyone, they kind of helped us paint a picture of what it was going to be like afterwards in our head.

AGW: What else do you have coming up?

Hutcherson: Well, I have Firehouse Dog coming out. That actually I shot before I filmed ‘Terabithia’. After ‘Terabithia’, I was home for about two weeks and then I went straight to Montreal and I filmed Journey to the Center of the Earth 3-D with Brendan Fraser and that’s due to release August, ‘08.

AGW: Did you ever see the original old movie?

Josh: I never saw the original. I loved the script when I read it. It’s a serious hard-hitting action-filled adventure with 3-D and this is new technology that James Cameron helped design. It has two camera bodies on one camera. It’s amazing because it weighs less than a normal camera does. They use fiber optic cables from the camera bodies back onto these visual decks. It was already ready in 3-D. They didn’t have to do any kind of technical thing. You can go to into this booth with a digital projector and you could watch it in 3-D and put the glasses on. It was just stunning. That movie is the most action packed movie I’ve ever done.

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