#AlexOLoughlin on ‘The Early Show’ with Maggie Rodriguez, April 2010

 

Step aside, Hugh Jackman — Australia’s new acting export has arrived.

Alex O’Loughlin, 33, left his native Sydney a few years back to headline the television series “Moonlight,” and the later medical drama, “Three Rivers.” This month, O’Loughlin is starring opposite Jennifer Lopez in the romantic comedy “The Back-Up Plan.”

O’Loughlin stopped by “The Early Show” Thursday to discuss the film and what it was like to work with Lopez. O’Loughlin plays Lopez’s new lover, Stan, who meets the love of his life shortly after she has decided to take pregnancy into her own hands.

“Early Show” co-anchor Maggie Rodriguez wanted to know if O’Loughlin was nervous working with such a high-profile celebrity while taking on his first major movie role.

CBSNewsCBS,

15 April 2010,

with Maggie Rodriguez.

Alex & Maggie on their way to the studio

Maggie: You’ve seen Alex O’Loughlin on TV in “The Shield”, “Moonlight”, now he’s on the big screen with Jennifer Lopez in the new romantic comedy “The Back-Up Plan”. He plays a man whose girlfriend has a secret, she got pregnant before they even met.

[They show a clip from the first date in The Back-Up Plan]

Maggie: [Comments on the clip] Not the first kiss they were hoping for Alex O’Loughlin. Good morning Alex.

Alex: Morning.

Maggie: Welcome back.

Alex: Thank you.

Maggie: You’re still …. I have to tell you, he’s still such a nice guy, even though he’s in this big blockbuster now with Jennifer Lopez.

Alex: Yeah, I’m trying to let LA … Hollywood change me. It is not happening as fast as I would like.

Maggie: But your life have changed a lot since we last spoke. You get this call to be in this movie with Jennifer Lopez, and you have to go to her house to meet with her and Marc Anthony.

Alex: True.

Maggie Were you nervous?

Alex: I was sort of more curious than nervous, I think. You know, it’s like she’s so famous, and we all know who she is. But, it was great. It was just like meeting anybody, you know.

Maggie: Were you more worried about impressing her or him?

Alex: Oh him, for sure, you know.

Maggie: You’ve got to make a good impression on the husband.

Alex: It was funny, I came in you know, and I was talking to Jennifer and Marc was … Marc was doing something with the kids. And he sort of popped in after I’d been there for a little while. And I was like, ‘Hey!’ And what ended up being … what was supposed to be a meeting with Jennifer and I, …. I ended up sort of hanging with Marc.

Maggie: Oh yeah.

Alex: And we were walking around the house showing me stuff you know, talking guy stuff.

Maggie: So he was more than okay with signing off on you working with his wife?

Alex: Well yeah, evidently. He’s a great guy.

In addition to the pre-premiere jitters, “The Back-Up Plan” may force O’Loughlin to face one of his biggest fears: inadvertently acquiring fame.

Maggie: Now that you’re in this movie, I have to tell you that one of your biggest fears could be realized.

Alex: What’s that?

Maggie: You said once, ‘Losing my anonymity in this world, I think is something that I find terrifying.’

Alex: Yeah maybe. I don’t know. I think …… When did I say that?

Maggie: I don’t know. In a magazine. A long time ago.

Alex: It is true. It is true. I can’t remember the interview. It is true. I think that a lot of actors are private people, you know. I think a lot of actors really, you know, don’t live the life that the rest of the world thinks we would live. I don’t know, we’ll see what happens.

Maggie: Are you okay with not being anonymous anymore?

Alex: Not really. I might have to move to Hawaii or something, you know. [Laughing]

Maggie: Ah ….. Speaking off, you are in the CBS pilot for Hawaii Five-0, which we will talk about. But let’s go back to this movie. You spend a lot of time filming with a woman who looked like this [Maggie showing her own pregnant tummy]

Alex: Yeah, I know. Congratulations.

Maggie: Except you know, mine is real. But Jennifer Lopez’s character pregnant. She has been artificially inseminated the day that she meets you. And then you two wind up becoming a couple.

Alex: Yeah, that’s right. I mean these two ….. It’s a story about two people whose lives kind of collide, you know. And their …. and they fall in love, and they don’t realize what’s happened. And it’s that thing about ….  you know, you can’t control when you fall in love.

We think, you know…. we all have these careers, and we have these lives and stuff, and we think we want to get everything in place and make sure we’re ready for love, and we’re ready for all that stuff. But sometimes you just can’t control it.

So yeah, then he …… when he comes to the realization, my character Stan, that, ‘Wow, I love this girl. I really want to …. I’m ready for it,‘

Maggie: Yeah.

Alex: She drops the baby bomb on him.

Maggie: And a great, great story unfolds which everybody should go and see.

Rodriguez also asked O’Loughlin about his work on CBS’ pilot for “Hawaii Five-O.” He plays Steve McGarrett in the remake of the classic television show, which aired from 1968 to 1980.

Maggie: I want to ask you before you go, about this Hawaii Five-0 pilot on CBS. Can you tell us anything about it?

Alex: It’s all pretty hush-hush, you know. They still haven’t …. there’s still not an official pick-up in a nutshell. We finished …. I think it’s the biggest pilot CBS has ever done. And it’s …. I’m pretty excited about it.

Maggie: What character do you play?

Alex: I play Steve McGarrett.

Maggie: Ah, perfect. I love it. Thank you Alex. Great to see you.

Alex: You too.

Link to video

If you were wondering when Alex said it:

“Losing my anonymity in this world I think is something that I find terrifying, I am a very private person. I have my life and I have my family, which mean the world to me.”

– Alex (O’Lachlan) O’Loughlin

Australia Associated Press (General News) – Sydney

16 June 2005

(This interview in 2005, was done during the promotion of Oyster Farmer)

BUT remember he also said:

I think it’s ignorant if you’re going to pursue a career in acting to allow yourself to get any sort of celebrity status and then be angry about it. I completely accept the loss of anonymity as part of success in this career I’ve chosen. But it doesn’t change the fact that I can get agoraphobic in crowds and that I spin out sometimes when I get too much attention, or that I get anxious, or that I’m sensitive.

– Alex O’Loughlin

GQ Style, March 2011

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The’Back-Up Plan’: 5 ways it made #AlexOLoughlin look good – 2010

Entertainment Weekly

by Mandi Bierly

25 April 2010

Is Alex O’Loughlin a movie star?

That’s the question I wanted to answer when I went to see The Back-up Plan this weekend. For all my documented appreciation of his hotness, I was surprisingly sceptical. I feel like for a TV actor to make it on the big screen, his lure should be so powerful that you have to watch whatever series he appears on – and even though I’d been bitten by Moonlight, I never actually made it to Three Rivers. Would his charisma carry to the back of the theatre?

Perhaps you can guess the answer is yes from the headline. Before I begin listing the ways The Back-up Plan did him right, I should probably reveal a few things in the sake of full disclosure. I was with Michael Slezak, who agreed to see this movie with me the moment the shot of O’Loughlin riding a tractor shirtless was released. Also, we had to sit in the second row because we took the time to stop for a drink beforehand. We were only a little tipsy. Like, just enough for me to say, “Release the O’Loughlin!” when we passed Clash of the Titans on our way to Theater 10, and for him to suggest that be my headline. Now, on we go…

1. The wet entrance. I think I actually leaned over to Slezak and said, “He’s wet,” when O’Loughlin’s character, Stan (Slezak: “Stan???”), a maker of fine goat cheese, climbed into the same cab Jennifer Lopez’s pet store owner Zoe did during a New York City rain. By the way, I don’t care if Zoe was in a great mood because she’d just been artificially inseminated and didn’t want a fight to ruin it – no way does anyone give up a cab during a storm in Manhattan.

2. The Henleys. I always wondered why a man wearing a Henley drove me wild. But as soon as the movie ended, Slezak said, “Even in his working hours, he looked like he was ready for bed,” and I got it. (Slezak also said something about Stan looking a little bit like an off-duty Santa Claus in the North Pole, which sounded weird until you think about the warm fuzzy feeling you get.)

3. The shirtlessness. Really, the still photos on or around that tractor don’t do him justice. You need to see him in motion, starting from the back. I had a slight problem with Zoe staring at Stan instead of the road while she was driving into his upstate New York farm and hitting a tree.

Yes, pregnant women can get really, let’s call it excitable, and I can believe that anyone could get that distracted looking at a man. (When I was a teen in central PA, I was walking with my mother when Aaron, an attractive Amish boy who’d done some work for my parents, passed us in a buggy. My head turned to follow him, and I walked off the side of the road, tripped, fell, and scraped my hand and knee.) But pretending that little joke wasn’t dangerous for a pregnant woman? Unnecessary.

I also took issue with Stan throwing out Zoe’s giant pregnancy pillow. I know men’s frustration with that celibacy wall is very real – and in the context of the film, you could argue that Zoe, who was deep-down convinced that Stan wouldn’t stay with her since he wasn’t the biological father, was really using it as a wall around her heart. But I love sleeping way too much to see anyone stripped of something that helps them do it, let alone a pregnant woman. However, watching O’Loughlin then remove his shirt with such purpose – as if to say, this is what you want, this is what you need to wrap yourself around – was hot enough that I forgave him.

4. The ability to give multiple orgasms. Yes, yes, this is technically a wonderful side effect of Zoe’s pregnant body being super sensitive, but it can’t not reflect positively on Stan. Props to Lopez for committing to that moment in Stan’s what, cheese barn?, when she was satisfied by steamy foreplay alone, but it was also hilarious because, in the back of their minds, some women in the audience were thinking that being that close to him would be all it would take.

5. The movie was actually funny. Originally, I thought I’d be filing whatever I wrote about The Back-up Plan under our “I Saw It, So You Don’t Have To!” category, but both Slezak and I enjoyed it.

Bottom line: Mainstream romantic comedies are going to have cliché moments, but the good ones find a way to still make those jokes work.

A pregnant lady being so hungry she dips two pieces of bread into a vat of stew when she can’t find a spoon – I laughed.

A man freaking out while watching a doctor (Robert Klein) do his work down there (“Vagina! Vagina! Vagina!”) – I laughed.

A park dad (Anthony Anderson) revealing the truth about parenthood, saying it’s awful, awful, awful, then something magical happens, right before his son comes over and opens his hand to reveal a piece of poop (“This ain’t even his s—”) – I laughed.

The water birth Zoe and Stan are forced to witness – I laughed.

Every sarcastic quip that came out of the mouth of Zoe’s friend (SNL’s Michaela Watkins) – I laughed.

Would I pay to see the movie again? No. But it was a fun night with a good crowd that applauded at the end. And I’ll totally watch it when TBS plays it in a Lopez triple feature with The Wedding Planner and Monster-in-Law.

Your turn. Did you laugh? Are you convinced Alex O’Loughlin can be a movie star? Like Matthew McConaughey, he’s masculine but still has a soft side – rom-coms could be his new home.

PS. All caps from Bluray and should be enjoyed in full size 😉

The Performance: #AlexOLoughlin in ‘The Back-Up Plan” – April 2010

A Rugby Match Sparked It All

By Amy Kaufman,

Los Angeles Times

27 April 2010

For someone so new to Hollywood, Alex O’Loughlin is very Hollywood.

“Do you mind?”

he said, motioning toward his pack of cigarettes while sitting poolside at the Roosevelt Hotel earlier this week.

“Or are you going to write in the interview, ‘and then he lit a Camel?'”

It’s not that the 33-year-old is consumed with his own image — like some industry A-listers — but that he already understands its importance. Even the outfit he was wearing, which he would show off later that evening on ” Jimmy Kimmel Live,” had been selected by a stylist: distressed jeans, a pair of quirky bright green boots and trendy skinny tie.

It was a look far different than the one he has in his new film, “The Back-Up Plan,“ out Friday, in which he plays a cheese farmer — yes, really.

His character, Stan, bumps into Zoe ( Jennifer Lopez) when the two serendipitously end up sharing the same taxi. Stan is immediately taken with Zoe, but the timing isn’t ideal — she’s just come from a doctor’s appointment where she was artificially inseminated. When Zoe subsequently ends up getting pregnant with twins, Stan has to evaluate whether he’s ready to settle down.

It’s a predicament O’Loughlin finds difficult to imagine accepting.

“The baby stuff, especially,” he said, oblivious to the glances he was receiving from admiring female onlookers.

“It would be an enormous commitment. But I don’t know … these two people’s lives collide. They both find something they were looking for that they want really badly in someone else. That comes across in the film — how unique that is.”

Also rare is the arc of a career like O’Loughlin’s, which has brought him from his native Australia, where he worked in television and film, to the States, where he’s now finding his face plastered all over billboards opposite one of the country’s biggest stars.

And though the film opened to a lower-than-expected $12.3 million over the weekend, O’Loughlin said he tries not to focus on box office.

“You always feel it, it’s right there, but I’m trying not to plug into it,” he said.

“I do think about it when I drive past some massive photo of myself and it’s like, ‘Oh, that’s me.’ But you just can’t dwell on what’s going to happen.”

He can recall feeling an early affinity for the stage as a precocious child.

“I did my first play when I was about 9, and to this day, I remember the feeling of first walking out on stage and feeling the lights and the presence of the audience,” he said.

“I remember being in this comedy play, and I had some spectacles on and two fish sticks coming out of my nose, and everyone was rolling around with laughter.”

At the time, he declared he wanted to be an actor — but it was an ambition he neglected until he was 20 and watching a rugby match with his buddies.

“I’d had too much coffee and I was sort of showing off, narrating the game and being an idiot,” he said.

“And at halftime, my mate came up to me and said, ‘Dude, you’re an actor and you’re not doing anything about it.'”

The comment kept him awake for a few nights but eventually inspired him to quit his gig waiting tables. After auditioning with “a shrunken bladder and sweaty palms” for two days, at 23 he landed a spot at Sydney’s prestigious National Institute of Dramatic Art, where both Mel Gibson and Cate Blanchett have studied.

He found the serious curriculum, which included classics by Shakespeare and Chekhov, heavy at the time but has since come to appreciate the value of the education.

In one of his first big post-graduation roles on the short-lived CBS drama “Moonlight,“ he used an acting technique and imagined himself as a finch as his character transformed into a vampire. His part on that show, as well as his stints on “The Shield“ and “Three Rivers,“ were enough to get him noticed by “The Back-Up Plan’s“ casting team.

He was called to a reading with Lopez to see what kind of chemistry they had together, and when the two meshed, he got the part.

It was the first time he had met the singer-actress, though he was already familiar with her work — and the stories of her rumored diva-like attitude.

“Of course, I heard those stories,” he said, casually taking a drag of his cigarette.

“But I was really curious to meet someone with that sort of level of celebrity [and learn] about the social nature of her existence. Because I can’t imagine not being able to sit here and talk — or living in the shadow of that fame.”

On set, he said he found Lopez to be “grand,” often interacting with the crew members and her own family — her twins and husband Marc Anthony — who would come to visit.

Next up, O’Loughlin has shot a pilot for a new CBS remake of the series “Hawaii Five-O,” in which he plays Det. Steve McGarrett, the role originated by Jack Lord.

He doesn’t have any new film projects lined up yet but said he hopes his next film will vary from the romantic comedy genre.

Where you’ve seen him

Alex O’Loughlin is best know for his role as vampire Mick St John on the short-lived CBS/Warner Bros Television Show “Moonlight”. He has also appeared on FX’s “The Shield” and the medical series “Three Rivers.” Most recently he was seen in the feature films “Whiteout”, “The Invisible” and “August Rush”.

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