STACK #136 Feb 2016

DVD&BD FEATURE

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You gotta start somewhere... “I started when I was 13 years old. I did a really horrible soap opera called Fifteen for Nickelodeon that stoned college kids kept on the air for three years.” Then came a regular role in sitcom Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place (1998–2001), and National Lampoon feature Van Wilder: Party Liaison (2002). “It made me the party guy,” he recalls of the latter. “I would walk into a bar and people would start lining up the shots. You could sum up my career at that point as a free shot at a bar.”

1998

2002

THE Beefcake Horror Phase Embarking on a three-month-long workout and a 3200 calories- a-day diet, he added 25 pounds of muscle to his physique for the role of vampire slayer Hannibal King in Blade: Trinity (2004), and consequently kept his shirt off in the remake of The Amityville Horror , released the same year. “That time changed my life because it taught me you can actually do things that were previously impossible,” he told Men’s Fitness .

2004

2007

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2008

THE INDIE PHASE Having starred in a few failed comedies and hit-and- miss action films, he entered the independent film circuit and proved he was more than just a funny guy with a pretty face, in movies like The Nines (2007), Buried (2010) and The Voices (2014). “That was such a wake-up call for me,” he says of his experience on The Nines . “The movie was made on less than a million dollars. I loved the process. There were particular films after that that I went after. I had a new view.”

THE ROM-COM PHASE His boyish good looks made him a natural choice as a romantic lead opposite Sandra Bullock in The Proposal (2009) and Elizabeth Banks, Isla Fisher and Rachel Weisz in Definitely, Maybe (2008).

2009

2010

2011

2016

2014

THE SUPERHERO PHASE He fought hard for the role of Hal Jordan in The Green Lantern (2011) only to regret it following friction with director Martin Campbell on the set, poor reviews and box office failure. An appearance as Wade Wilson, aka Deadpool, in X-Men Origins: Wolverine ( 2009) led him to reprise the role of the wisecracking Marvel mercenary in the hotly anticipated Deadpool (2016), a passion project he describes as being “the most faithful adaptation of comic to film we’ve ever seen”.

FEBRUARY 2016

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