After playing the rigid vampire Jasper Hale in two Twilight films, Jackson Rathbone (Dread, S. Darko) finally gets to loosen up and rip heads off in Eclipse, the third film in the series. It’s a welcome change for Rathbone, who told me over the weekend how much he relished the chance to dive deeper into Jasper’s past as a human and his violent life with the vampiress Maria (Catalina Sandino Moreno).
(Jasper’s present day scenes had their perks as well. Rathbone gets to spar with his fellow Cullens and make heads roll in the fight against the newborns — and though he wouldn’t disclose the exact terms, Rathbone let slip what he did to make sure his kissing scene with co-star Ashley Greene made it into the script.)
It’ll be a busy summer for Rathbone, who also stars in M. Night Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender, opening just days after The Twilight Saga: Eclipse hits theaters on June 30. But between promoting those films and reuniting with his cast mates to film Breaking Dawn this fall, the aspiring director hopes to shoot a short film and, one day, make his feature directing debut in the horror genre. In the mean time, he’s studying up. Read on to find out which recent gore-fest made Rathbone’s flesh crawl with approval.
So, Jasper Hale finally gets his moment to shine in Eclipse…
I don’t sparkle like a diamond in Eclipse, but Jasper gets to come out a little bit and do what he loves to do, which is to fight. To get in the middle of it all. It’s interesting, because filming Twilight and New Moon I was showing the darker side of Jasper; he seems withdrawn, like a pariah almost. In Eclipse you can see why — his back story is the reason for the way he holds himself, the way he’s kind of afraid of his own instincts.
Is it then gratifying to be able to tell Jasper’s story more fully?
It is! I get to go back in time and show Jasper when he was a human in the Civil War era, and when he gets turned, what his life is like. It was a pleasure. It was fun. I got to ride a horse again; I haven’t been on a horse in like three years so that was pretty exciting.
Did you ride horses for fun, or did you learn for a particular role?
Just for fun. I’m from the South; we tend to ride.
Oh, right. You all have horses, don’t you?
Everybody in the South has a horse, didn’t you hear? [Laughs]
Speaking of the South, we hear Jasper’s drawl really come out more at times during Eclipse.
Yeah, at certain times — it’s one of those things, with Twilight and New Moon there was limited dialogue, and I kind of wanted to keep it to the way I would assume Jasper would carry himself at school, or around a new acquaintance such as Bella, where he wouldn’t reveal himself and would keep his accent in check. He’s already suspicious looking enough at high school to have a Southern accent in Washington. So the more relaxed and comfortable Jasper is, his accent comes out. That’s usually how I find most people’s accents come out, when they’re a little more comfortable and in a natural environment, and Jasper’s natural environment is… warfare.
That’s not the only perceivable change in Jasper in Eclipse — the way he carries himself once the threat of Victoria’s newborn army is known, he’s like a battlefield general preparing for war.
Yup, that’s another thing I was working on with David Slade. One of the things I tried to do in Twilight was to be more of an old school gentleman, the way Jasper carries himself. Very upright and proper, if you will. With the actual warfare on the rise, and having to step back into his old commanding shoes, it was even more upright and more commanding in body presence. It was fun to try to work with that.
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