General News

Steve Carell, Channing Tatum, Mark Ruffalo Star In New FOXCATCHER Trailer And Photos

By Michelle McCue | October 15, 2014

Sony Pictures Classics has sent us the new theatrical trailer and photos from director Bennett Miller’s film FOXCATCHER, starring Steve Carell, Channing Tatum, Mark Ruffalo, Vanessa Redgrave, Sienna Miller and Anthony Michael Hall.

Based on true events, FOXCATCHER tells the dark and fascinating story of the unlikely and ultimately tragic relationship between eccentric multi-millionaire John du Pont and two champion wrestlers, Mark and Dave Schultz.

FOXCATCHER is a rich and moving story of brotherly love, misguided loyalty and the corruption and emotional bankruptcy that can accompany great power and wealth. As with Academy Award nominee Bennett Miller’s previous feature films, CAPOTE and MONEYBALL, he explores large themes in society through his complex character portraits of real people.

Steve Carell’s fans will be surprised to see him in a role as dark and challenging as John du Pont, a man of immense wealth and power whose downward spiral culminates in murder and imprisonment.

Miller, winner for Best Director at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, knew from the outset that the actor could play awkward, eccentric, and even violent. He also knew that it was useless to try and cast a conventional or expected actor in the role of a character whose nature was so unexpected.

“Nobody believed what du Pont was capable of,” says Miller. “But when I met Carell I realized how many layers there are to him – he is one of those actors with a public self and a private self. And you never see the private self, ever. I thought those protected, guarded areas might help him to relate to this character in some way.”

To prepare for the exacting role, Carell studied du Pont’s physical demeanor and speaking manner by watching hours of the Team Foxcatcher video footage Miller provided his cast. “I listened to his cadence — not only how he spoke physically, but the actual words he chose to express himself,” says Carell. “Bennett would sometimes have us improvise, so I allowed room for that. But there were certain affectations that were specific to him which I thought were important and lead with.”

His fellow actors were unprepared for the total transformation Carell brought when he arrived on set, already in character. “When Steve first walked out as du Pont, it gave me a shiver,” says Ruffalo. “In the thousands of hours of video footage I watched to prepare myself, two hundred of them included Dave interacting with du Pont in a coaching capacity. So I became very intimate with that man — who he was, how he sounded, how he moved. Steve’s ability to capture the physical qualities of du Pont was creepy and uncanny.”