Actor Anton Yelchin’s onscreen counterparts have had a bit of a rough month. Last weekend, “Green Room” saw his character nearly lose his hand before an all-out fight for survival ensued with a sadistic club owner intent on killing him and his heavy metal bandmates. And this week Mr. Yelchin’s character in “The Driftless Area,” Pierre, gets caught up in a noir plot when he returns home following his parents’ death, when crooks from his hometown snare he and a mysterious women (Zooey Deschanel) in a violent game of cat and mouse.
“I found the script tone to be kind of odd and like a sort of metaphysical neo-noir, and I liked that about it,” Mr. Yelchin, 27, told The Washington Times. “The script is like the B-movie world meets this kind of metaphysics.”
In both “The Driftless Area” and “Green Room,” Mr. Yelchin modulates his voice, adding a kind of gravelly rasp to his natural timbres that gives his avatars a kind of toughness befitting the deadly situations in which his characters find themselves.
For “Driftless Area,” Mr. Yelchin, who counts Robert De Niro and Jack Nicholson among his many influences, said he was channeling the unique speech patterns of another of his acting heroes, Henry Fonda.
“I’ve been borrowing speech patterns from various performances or people that I like,” he said. “Whether it comes out the way I want it to, I’m not sure, but I definitely [favor] the process.”
Perhaps Mr. Yelchin’s most famous accent was as the younger version of Pavel Chekov in the rebooted “Star Trek” films started in 2009. Mr. Yelchin, who was born in the former Soviet Union before coming to America at a very young age with his parents, channeled his own Russian pedigree into the young helmsman.
“When I auditioned for the first movie I researched who Chekov was, and I just sort of did an exaggerated Russian accent and had fun with it,” he said of taking over the role from Walter Koenig.
The third film in the rebooted series, “Star Trek Beyond,” will bow in July. Mr. Yelchin is mum about many of the details of the new film, saying he himself has seen rather little of the finished product.
“Things are kept so secretive by Paramount that I’m probably going to find things out about the same time as the rest of the world,” he said.
Mr. Yelchin took over another iconic sci-fi in “Terminator Salvation,” playing a younger version of Kyle Reese, the man who fathers mankind’s savior, John Connor. When asked if he plans to assay even more famous roles from other actors, Mr. Yelchin demurs, offering only that “it wasn’t a conscious effort. These are just things that came to me that I wanted to do, and I’ve been fortunate to be in films like that. And if another film like that presented itself, of course.”
Mr. Yelchin said the greatest trade advice he ever received was from acting coach Richard Wicklund, who advised that even in cutthroat, ultracompetitive Hollywood, there will always be another part.
“He said if it’s not this one, the next one will come along, so catch that train,” Mr. Yelchin said. “If it’s not the next gig, it’ll be the one after that. If it’s not that one, it’ll be the one after that.”
“The Driftless Area” debuts on DVD and digital download Tuesday.
• Eric Althoff can be reached at twt@washingtontimes.com.
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