The Hunger Games: Official Illustrated Movie Companion (6 page)

The young actors playing the tributes came from many places and many backgrounds. Some were seasoned actors, with experience in television or commercials or smaller films, while others were complete unknowns. What they had in common was an enthusiasm for the film as well as a sense that this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Alexander Ludwig was excited to get the role of Cato, a Career Tribute from District 2. He remembers really connecting with the role. “When I finally met Gary and he offered me the role of Cato, it was a no-brainer, because I was just such a big fan.”

Isabelle Fuhrman, the actress who plays Clove, was passionate about the books long before getting cast in the movie. “
The Hunger Games
is my all-time favorite book series, and I was the biggest book buff that you would ever possibly meet. I turned all my friends on to reading it. When I heard it was being made into a movie, I freaked out. I thought,
I have got to be in this movie
.”

Fuhrman originally auditioned for Katniss, but was told she was too young for the role. “I got a call a week later. They wanted me to audition for Clove. I read with Debra Zane, who’s the sweetest person I’ve ever met.” Fuhrman didn’t have to wait long to find out if she got cast. She was at lunch with her mother when her agent called with the good news. She was so happy that she burst into tears. “People are staring, and I’m trying to make it seem like it’s not a big deal, and I’m crying my eyes out, I’m so excited. Everyone was like, ‘Who’s this crazy little fourteen-year-old girl crying her eyes out at a vegan restaurant?’”

Jack Quaid, who plays Marvel, recalls, “The audition was kind of weird because it was the first audition I’d ever walked into where the first thing they said to me was ‘Choose your weapon.’ They had a box — there was a crossbow-y type thing, a big knife, and a gun. So I just picked up the big knife and I did the audition and, right about then, I knew this was going to be something cool. I go to NYU and I was in this class a few weeks later when I got the call that I got the part and I was flabbergasted. So . . . I’ll have a unique story to tell about what I did with my summer vacation.”

Twelve-year-old Amandla Stenberg’s audition was a little different. “I went to Gary’s house, and for the audition I’d actually dressed up and I’d been rolled around in dirt, like Rue in the Games. So I was all dressed with all my dirt and my leaves in my hair and everything, and when I got to Gary’s house — well, he has a really nice house. I didn’t want to sit on anything, because I didn’t want to get anything dirty! I went in and I felt really good about it, and then I got a call from my agent saying, ‘What are you doing this summer?’ and I was like, ‘Not much. Why?’ and she said, ‘Because you booked
The Hunger Games,
’ and I was screaming and squealing, ‘I’m Rue!’ and it was so exciting.”

Jacqueline Emerson, who plays Foxface, remembers, “
The Hunger Games
was my all-school read at school, and I read the first book, and I just fell in love with the whole series. Then I found out there was gonna be a movie made of it, and I actually spent a whole day with my friends looking up those possible casts on YouTube. I was looking at people, being like, ‘Oh, Emma Stone would make a great Foxface’ — and now it’s me!”

She continues, “I came in and I did an interview for Gary, because he was interviewing kids that had read the books. And I did that probably in the fall, and that was taped. And then, a couple of weeks later, he asked me if I wanted to come in and read for the role. I just completely freaked out!”

W
hile the cast was still coming together, the central actors had already begun training — and training hard.

Nina Jacobson gives an overview of what Lawrence needed to do: “Obviously Katniss is a hunter. She’s an archer, she has to be agile. You have to believe that this person could win the Hunger Games, and so we wanted her to have the skills, we wanted her to feel at home doing all of the things that Katniss does.”

Katniss runs through the woods outside District 12.

Lawrence grins, describing her regimen. “I did every kind of training you can possibly imagine for this role. I had a running coach and I did stunt training so, you know, I did wall climbs and vaults and jumps and all sorts of stuff. I had archery for many weeks . . . it was rough, but it was fun. Archery is such a mind game. You have to just focus on one thing and if you get it wrong you get whipped with a string going over a hundred miles an hour. And it is painful, believe me.” Before filming began, she was driving some fifty or sixty miles around Los Angeles every day, from stunt training to wardrobe fitting to archery practice, getting in shape for the movie.

Once her physical training was over, there was still more. Lawrence admiringly recalls working with T-Bone Burnett, the twelve-time Grammy Award winning musician who has worked on movies such as
Crazy Heart
and
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
“T-Bone Burnett is producing the music, which is still unbelievable to me. So he trained me a little bit with the singing. I have the worst voice in the world, so that was probably one of the hardest things he’s had to do, but I sang the melody, the lullaby, in my big scene with Rue.”

Josh Hutcherson remembers, “Everyone else was learning how to do the weapons and things like that. And in this film, Peeta doesn’t do a whole lot with the weapons. So for me it was all about getting to the right physical condition, which was bigger than I was. They wanted me to put on about fifteen pounds of pure muscle for the role, so I had to eat a lot of food and I was working out five days a week — it was very rigorous.”

Liam Hemsworth had the opposite challenge. “I’m not in the Games, so I didn’t have to do any fight training. But it was more just not eating as much as what I was eating. I wanted to look hungry.”

Filming in the arena. Left to right: Clove (Isabelle Fuhrman), Peeta (Josh Hutcherson), Marvel (Jack Quaid), Cato (Alexander Ludwig), and Allan Poppleton, the co-stunt coordinator

The Hunger Games
book became the actors’ guide to the interior life of the characters they were about to play. Jennifer Lawrence recalls, “After I got the part, I read the first book over and over. It’s great when you have a movie based on a book, because you can read the inner monologue of the character and that’s incredibly helpful.”

Gary Ross gives feedback to Jennifer Lawrence (Katniss)
and Liam Hemsworth (Gale) while working on the District 12 scenes.

The actors playing the tributes had some further exploration to do. Gary Ross was instrumental in asking probing questions to figure out who these characters really were.

From left to right: Clove (Isabelle Fuhrman), Cato (Alexander Ludwig),
Thresh (Dayo Okeniyi), Rue (Amandla Stenberg)

For instance, Jack Quaid came to understand Marvel like this: “I’d say if he were in high school, he would be good at one thing and one thing only, and he’d let academics and everything else kind of slide. He is totally vicious. He doesn’t care what he’s cutting up — he just goes for it.”

Alexander Ludwig began to see his character, Cato, as somebody even more brutal. “I like to think that Cato, before he gets into the Games, is kind of popular and charming, but he’s always had that violent anger inside of him. When he gets into the Games he gets lost in this whole sick game and he almost goes insane toward the end.”

Amandla Stenberg says, “My character’s fighting style is to evade, because she knows that she can’t fight the big, tough guys. She knows that if she tries, she’ll lose. So what she does is she climbs in the trees and she eats eggs from birds, and that’s her style — to outlast everyone else.”

And Dayo Okeniyi, who portrays Thresh, came to see his character as a sort of gentle giant. “There’s not too much of a backstory for my character, so that was great, because I got the chance to make it up. He’s very family-oriented and he’ll do anything to make it back to District Eleven to see his mom and his brother again. Thresh is a large character, and a presence to be reckoned with. But he doesn’t want to get in anybody’s way; he’s not out for blood. He just wants to survive.”