#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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Baby, I Love Your Way – May 2010

 

Sydney Morning Herald Interview

with Alex O’Loughlin and Jennifer Lopez

Aussie actor Alex O’Loughlin helps Jennifer Lopez face her biological clock in The Back-up Plan.

By Jenny Cooney

14 May 2010

Australian actor Alex O’Loughlin looks curious as he sits beside Jennifer Lopez on the Culver City soundstage where they are shooting romantic comedy The Back-up Plan. Lopez has been asked why she chose the 33-year-old to play her love interest. “You mean, besides the obvious?” Lopez, 40, says with a giggle as she playfully squeezes his arm in acknowledgement that it’s no coincidence he’s shirtless more than once in the film.

“But honestly,” Lopez adds before the chagrined O’Loughlin can react, “my character is independent and ready to have a baby without a man, so she needed someone who could really challenge her and when we had our first meeting, Alex and I also had this playful push-and-pull banter and I thought, ‘Oh, this guy is not going to back down to me,’ so that was a good sign.”

The pair certainly have a playful energy and genuine respect for each other as they talk about the high-concept comedy that marks not only O’Loughlin’s first leading role in a Hollywood film but also Lopez’s return to work after the birth of her twins, Max and Emme, now two.

In The Back-up Plan, Lopez’s character, Zoe, is artificially inseminated and on the way home she meets Stan (O’Loughlin). As the pair fall in love, Zoe drops the bombshell and they attempt a courtship in reverse.

“What makes this film modern and cutting-edge is that this is a situation that is happening to a lot more women today, who get to a certain age and face the choice of doing it on their own or not having a child at all,” Lopez says, wearing a simple pink sundress and thongs before heading into wardrobe and make-up for today’s shoot “But why I really liked this film was it’s also a throwback to the old style of romantic comedy, with really great physical comedy.”

O’Loughlin graduated from NIDA in 2002 and was active in Sydney theatre productions until he starred in the 2004 Aussie film Oyster Farmer and headed to Los Angeles. “But my faith rapidly diminished after a year of unemployment, “O’Loughlin humbly reveals, shattering the “overnight star” myth. “I couldn’t get arrested in this town and just when I felt I’d run out of resources, I got a small movie [teen thriller The Invisible] and then The Shield.”

O’Loughlin’s edgy role on the Emmy-winning police drama led to his own series in 2007, vampire drama Moonlight, and when that was cancelled after two seasons, he starred in last year’s short-lived medical series Three Rivers.

Now he’s waiting for reaction not only to his movie role but also a pilot he filmed recently for a television remake of Hawaii Five-0, in which he’ll play Detective Steve “Book ‘em Danno” McGarrett.

“The Back-up Plan is my first lead in a movie in this country at this level and I guess it’s the first time in my career I went, ‘Wow, I’m here and I’m really doing it,’ so the decision to sign a seven-year contract for a TV show was very difficult,” O’Loughlin says, “but I really liked this take on the original show and this character … so I have no regrets.”

Lopez, who broke out as a star in the 1997 biopic Selena and has starred in Out of Sight, The Wedding Planner and Monster-in-Law, continues to expand her empire with another album and a possible tour, as well as a revamp of her clothing line. But she says her twins go wherever she goes. “I love my babies and it’s hard to be away from them but what I do as an artist is such a big part of who I am and the best mum that I could be is to be a fulfilled mum,” Lopez says.

Almost on cue, the nanny in her dressing-room trailer beckons and Lopez bids us farewell.

O’Loughlin says the toddlers gave the project a family atmosphere, even if it did come with a downside. “It’s usually an adult playground when you’re making a film, so I love the days when we know they’re on the set – usually when you hear the director say, ‘Cut! We have to go again, Max is crying in the background.’”

My Thoughts

• Remember, this is an Australian article and in Oz, thongs mean flip-flops (and not a G-string) 🙂
• Of course Moonlight only lasted 1 season and not 2 as stated above.

Scan:

 

#AlexOLoughlin On The Jimmy Kimmel Show in April 2010

Jimmy: Our next guest grew up in Australia and came to our land to take our jobs and women. His new movie co-starring Jennifer Lopez, is called The Back-Up Plan.

Please welcome Alex O’Loughlin.

[Applause]

Jimmy: Welcome. Thank you for coming. I want to ask you a question and this might sound like a stupid thing. But, you’re from Australia.

Alex: I am.

Jimmy: And you might know Americans think of Australians as least as a little bit crazy. Do you know this?

Alex: I do.

Jimmy: Have you ever thrown a boomerang?

Aboriginal Boomerang

Boomerang

Alex: I have actually.

Jimmy: You have?

Alex: Yeah, I have. You know the ones that are shaped like a crescent moon, you throw and they come back.

Jimmy: Right.

Alex: But, the real sort of hunting boomerangs, which is what they’re used for, just go in a straight line and…….

Jimmy: Cause you don’t want them coming back, ’cause they’ll kill you.

Alex: No, they’ll kill you, instead of the kangaroo or whatever.

Jimmy: So, and you throw them at kangaroos?

Alex: I don’t.

Jimmy: People do.

Alex: But apparently people have.

Jimmy: Is it like in school, like in the 3rd, 4th grade do you learn to….?

Alex: Part of the curriculum.

Jimmy: It is? You learn boomerang?

Alex: Yeah, we get to go and learn to kill things with this.

Jimmy: So what did you throw it at? Like at your brother’s or something?

Alex: Jimmy, I did not really throw it too much, you know.

Jimmy: You didn’t?

Alex: Not so much

Jimmy: Well maybe you should learn.

Alex: We did …… we do ride to school in kangaroo pouches though.

Jimmy: Oh, you do.

Alex: Yeah

Jimmy: Okay. Well that’s something

Alex: That was one of the first questions I got asked when I got to America. “You guys ride in the pouch, for elementary school?”. Yeah. You get allotted a kangaroo and that’s your friend…..

Jimmy: There are a lot of idiots here.

Alex: Yeah. I mean…I didn’t mean….

Jimmy: So how long have you been in the United States?

Alex: Five years, now.

Jimmy: Five years, and how long was it before you started like acting and getting jobs, here?

Alex: It’s kind of, like I have been back and forth  for a number of years before that.

Jimmy: Oh.

Alex: And then it was a year, out of work before I got a job.

Jimmy: So it was a full year?

Alex: It was a full year, a lot of which I spent living on my mate’s couch, actually in Laurel Canyon, here in LA.

Jimmy: Now by mate, you mean friends?

Alex: Friend, yeah.

Jimmy: Yeah.

Alex: Cause, you guys are gonna learn a lot tonight.

Jimmy: You see here mate means a totally different thing and you wouldn’t be on the couch, you……

Alex: Yeah. Or you might be depending on…..

Jimmy: It depends

Alex: It depends

Jimmy: But it would be two of you on it. So you and your buddy, you live….

Alex: Me and my buddy weren’t on the couch together.

Jimmy: You weren’t on the couch together.

Alex: He had a bedroom situation, and I …..

Jimmy: So you were on the couch that long?

Alex: I was on the couch for about nine months.

Jimmy: That’s a good friend.

Alex: He was a good friend. He still is actually.

Jimmy: He is.

Alex: He is.

Jimmy: Have you rewarded him, by…..?

Alex: I haven’t done anything.

Jimmy: You haven’t?

Alex: I fed his dog, while I lived with him.

Jimmy: Okay

Alex: She used you wake me up by licking me in my face.

Jimmy: Oh I see.

Alex: And I was on the couch for about….. [To the audience] Did you guys just go, “Awww”?

Jimmy: Yeah, that’s it…

Alex: It wasn’t cute. But my back went out. I was on the couch for 8 or 9 months and my back like……You’re not supposed to sleep on couches, more than a couple of nights.

Jimmy: Right

Alex: So you relax on the couch. And I woke up one morning and my back was……. I couldn’t move and so I ended up….so I moved to the floor.

Jimmy: Easier access for the dog.

Alex: Yeah, easier access for the dog.

Jimmy: When you heard you were going to do this movie with Jennifer Lopez. Do you audition with Jennifer Lopez?

Alex: No, I had to meet her.

Jimmy: Meet her, okay.

Alex: I had to get her approval.

Jimmy: Oh, you did?

Alex: Oh yeah.

Jimmy: Are you allowed to speak to her?

Alex: No, I only went…… No, I can’t. I can’t make jokes about it. Because I got to tell you, the whole world has this, they have this sort of image of Jennifer and what she is, you know whatever they think she is. But she’s really cool.

Jimmy: What do you think they think she is?

Alex: I think, I think…..I’m not, no. I don’t know. I don’t know what the rumours are.

Jimmy: It’s like those boomerangs, they came back at you sometimes. And you don’t want to get hit in the head by them.

Alex: That’s right. No, she is fantastic though. We met. And they call it a chemistry meeting, you know. It’s to see…… It’s kind of like this where we are getting to know each other.

Jimmy: Oh yeah. So we have……

Alex: If this interview would work, if we actually did it.

Jimmy: If we take it to a next interview?

[Laughs]

Jimmy: And so the chemistry I assume, the meeting, the chemistry meeting went well and you passed?

Alex: I pass…….she passed.

Jimmy: She passed. Exactly.

Alex: I was like……….

Jimmy: And then, did you call your buddy and say, “Hey guess what? Remember when I was on your couch for 9 months, now I get to make out with Jennifer Lopez”

Alex: “Check it out”. And he said, “What do I get?” And I was like, “It’s a bad line, dude”. I send him some dog food.

Jimmy: Some dog food would be nice. Or maybe a rug.

Alex: Yeah.

Jimmy And you enjoyed making a film with her, I assume?

Alex: It was great. It was a lot of fun.

Jimmy: I hear you are going to be playing Jack Lord in Hawaii Five-0. That’s pretty good. I guess the most important question is, are you going to go for the hairstyle?

Alex: I don’t know if I can pull it off, Jimmy.

Jimmy: I think you have to go for the hairstyle. I mean that’s Jack Lord, right. It’s like if you are playing Mr. T in the A-Team, you would have to get a Mohawk.

Alex: It’s a killer isn’t it?

Jimmy: It’s Jack Lord. You have to go for this incredible pre-Donald Trump hairstyle.

Alex: That’s a….is it a quiff, right? That’s what they call that..?

Jimmy: No. Quaff. Yeah.

Alex: I’m Australian. It’s different.

Jimmy: Over there, it’s called the quiff and the toilets go backwards. Yeah. Well, it’s very nice to meet you.

Alex: Good to meet you too.

Jimmy: Looking forward to seeing that.

Alex: Thanks for having me

Jimmy: You know, we’ll test our chemistry afterwards. We’ll see how it went.

Alex: I look forward…

Jimmy: Alex O’Loughlin everybody. “The Back-Up Plan”.

Video:

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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