Share

• Print
• Email
• Facebook
• Reddit
• Digg
• Delicious
• Fark
• MySpace

Sebastian Stan Discusses Playing Bucky in Captain America: The First Avenger

Marvel Studios recently "wowed" comic book movie fans by releasing the first still image of title star Chris Evans in action in the full star-spangled costume of the patriotic hero in Captain America: The First Avenger. But, Cap won't be fighting off the evil Nazi hordes of the Red Skull (Hugo Weaving) alone in the movie; he'll have his youthful sidekick, James "Bucky" Barnes (Sebastian Stan), by his side. While we have yet to learn whether or not Stan will be sporting Bucky's trademark domino mask and red-and-blue fighting duds in the movie, the young actor recently discussed the special relationship between Cap and Bucky in an interview with MTV and also talked about the experience of shooting some of the movie's action sequences.

Stan admitted that he "didn't know anything about the comic books" on which the movie is based when he first auditioned and didn't do any research beforehand because he "wanted to find the characters and connections naturally."

Steve Rogers and Bucky are both orphans and kind of like brothers. They kind of grow up together and look after each other. It's a very human, relatable thing. And growing up in the Army is a very specific thing. There's a certain way these guys carry themselves, there's a certain etiquette, a certain body posture, the way that they interact. So I went back and read the comics and watched a lot of documentaries on World War II. Band of Brothers was very helpful.

I wanted to make sure I respected the themes in the comics that people related to about Bucky, but at the same time, in my head, we were shooting a movie that takes place in 1944 and it is about a bunch of guys going to war and how they're going to look out for each other. Bucky always protects and looks out for Steve Rogers.

I also wanted to look out for how their relationship changes once Steve Rogers becomes Captain America. There's always a competition and they're always one-upping each other. I paid attention to how Bucky is affected by Steve's change and suddenly Steve is this leader.

Stan went on to say that he found acting against a green screen to be a "challenging" experience and that he tried to do as many of his own stunts as possible.

There's a lot of CGI stuff and working with a green screen. I hadn't done that too extensively before. That was very challenging, because you're just there surrounded by green walls, but there's going to explosions going off around you, so you have to factor that in and maintain that in your imagination. It helped to go back to the monitor or to check out the boards with pictures of what it was going to look like.

Also, the stunts were challenging. You want to do the stunts yourself, so you feel like you accomplished it. But sometimes it's important to step back and let the real professional guys do it because you don't want to hurt yourself.

Captain America: The First Avenger was written by Stephen McFeely and Christopher Markus and directed by Joe Johnston. The movie takes place primarily in WWII and shows how the sickly Steve Rogers (Evans) became a super-soldier after volunteering for an experiment designed to increase his physical performance to the peek of human perfection. Hayley Atwell, Toby Jones, Dominic Cooper, Stanley Tucci and Neal McDonough also star.