Alex O’Loughlin: Transcript of UK Interview #1 for TBUP – April 2010

Aussie hunk Alex O’Loughlin has hit the big time – playing the romantic lead in Jennifer Lopez’s comeback comedy, “The Back-up Plan.” The 33-year-old has been battling away as an actor for nearly a decade, appearing in TV dramas like “The Shield,” “Moonlight” and “Three Rivers” before landing a big break in his latest film. It hasn’t been an easy climb to the top, with Alex slumming it in various jobs just to make ends meet

 – Associated Press: Jack of all Trades, Master of One

Alex: It can be a little overwhelming, there is so much work. And you know, you sit in so many interviews and you talk about the same thing and you kind of keep going over and over. So it’s good for me to sort of stop and walk outside occasionally and look up at the sky and [Breathe] ‘Wow, Okay. This is great, I’m part of a thing that, you know, we all want to be a part of”. And yes, so I am enjoying it. It’s a lot of fun.

Reporter: Did you have a back-up plan, if acting didn’t work out?

Alex: No. So glad it has.

Alex: I remember my first film. The first lead role I did back home in Australia, a little film called Oyster Farmer. My grandmother called me half way through filming. I was having lunch with the girl that played my sister and her husband and got this call ‘Oh it’s my gran hold on a second‘.

And she got on the phone and said ‘Darling I just needed to talk to you about something.’ And I was on such a high, my first film, and I said ‘Yeah what’s that gran?‘ and she said ‘I was just thinking, you know, if you never work again as an actor, what are you going to do? You’ve got no qualifications.’ And I was like ‘OK, leave that with me.’ So that was …. God bless her, I love her so much. That was ….. but it was a reality check. I was like ‘Okay hang on a minute, do I need a back-up plan?’ 

Alex: I think if you are committed enough to something….. So many people are like, ‘If that doesn’t work, or if that doesn’t…‘ And they do that in ….. people do that in love as well and they do that in life. And it’s like, well if that’s the case I’m never going to commit to anything. If that’s the case I’m never going to put my everything in to one thing and I will never know. I don’t want drop off my perch and go yo know, ‘I never did anything to its fullest,’ and so that’s the way I am doing it anyway.

Link to: Alex O’Loughlin – The Back-up Plan – UK Interview #1