Scoot McNairy: ‘In Texas if you wanna blow something up, you go outside and blow it up'

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/dec/04/scoot-mcnairy-black-sea-gone-girl

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Hi Scoot, where are you?

I’m in Texas. Just heading home. I’ve been visiting my folks up in Dallas for the Thanksgiving holiday. My phone might die on us. I’m getting an oil change and my car’s up on the lift so I can’t plug it in to charge it.

They told me you’d just finished shooting. Was that shooting films or shooting animals?

No, no, films! We just finished Our Brand is Crisis (1) three days ago.

Do you shoot animals as well?

We (2) don’t shoot any animals, no. We shoot a lot of guns, though. Cannons, guns, dynamite – just kind of blow up stuff.

Is that part of being Texan?

It’s part of living in the country for sure. You wanna blow something up, you just go outside and blow it up!

You always seem like a laid back kind of guy, yet you’re in loads of movies these days. Are you actually manic when nobody’s looking?

I don’t do the Hollywood hustle as much as I used to when I was living in California. Pretty laid back these days. I just go to work then go back home and chill out and kick back on the farm. But at the same time, I get a lot of inspiration for characters from the people I meet around town – when you go and get your coffee in the morning, when you go to the feed store. Part of me likes living there because of that.

So it’s a proper farm, with animals?

Yeah. We have some cattle, black angus (3).

I’m picturing you in a stetson, on horseback, with a lasso, wrangling cattle.

Well, we don’t have any horses. We used to when we were growing up. You don’t really need to wrangle cattle. Wherever the food is, that’s where they’ll go.

Your new movie (4) sounds like the exact opposite of Texas. Could you handle life aboard a real submarine?

No, absolutely not. I would just go crazy in there. I am a bit claustrophobic, like my character, so being in tight spaces … It gave me a deep-down respect for submariners. You realise it takes a certain kind of mind to do that. These people live down there for six months at a time. Their bunks are right next to the torpedo room and the engine. We could go get a beer at the end of the day.

You weren’t actually in the Black Sea were you?

No. The sub we shot on, it was on the Thames, like outside … I forget what town (5). It was an old one.

What, the town or the submarine?

The sub! There were pigeons living in it. It was rusted, partly sinking, they had to put airbags in it and kind of boost it up and level it out again. It was great, though. It felt like we were remaking 12 Angry Men on a submarine. Just a whole bunch of guys that are constantly at each other’s throats!

You seem to like the intrepid stuff (6).

I love to be thrown into, like, really bad weather, compromises, diving in first and figuring out how to swim later.

You’ve been in the best-picture Oscar winner for the past two years (7). Does that mean we should put our money on Gone Girl?

I saw it and I loved it. I don’t think David Fincher has ever made a bad movie. I don’t even know if it’s in contention for the Oscars. Is it? (8) But that’d be awesome – a hat trick!

You spent a long time doing commercials before making it as an actor. Did you fit into a type?

How you advertise in America, it’s usually “the average guy gets the hot girl”. So therefore, if you’re an average-looking dude, you tend to work a lot in commercials. I like to think of myself as special but that’s not the case, I guess.

Was it fun?

Yeah man, I had a blast! I did commercials for eight or nine years. I went surfing every day. Then around 26, 27, I was like, “Alright, I need to start getting serious about my life. This is great but if I’m going to have a career I need to put my head down and start really pounding at it.”

You sort of made your own break, didn’t you? (9)

Yeah, I guess. That all spun from the fact that I wasn’t getting any parts. I’d be the director’s first choice, but the studios would always be turning me down. So I tried to take my career into my own hands and stop relying on other people to do things for me.

There must be thousands of aspiring actors who dream of doing the same. Any advice?

I can’t tell you how many vacations I cancelled, and nights I didn’t sleep or didn’t eat because we needed to rent camera equipment. And all the money I made doing commercials I put right back into making movies. The only advice I can give is to work your ass off. And when you’re tired, keep working your ass off. And if you get more tired … keep working your ass off!

But you’ve got a break now?

Yeah, four weeks off! I’m gonna kick back. I’m going fishing for a week in Louisiana, then I’m heading up to Utah, gonna go fly fishing up there and maybe a little skiing, then come home and be with family and folks for holidays, then after the New Year … (10)

• Black Sea is released in the UK on 5 December

Footnotes

(1) An election-campaign satire directed by David Gordon Green and produced by George Clooney. Sandra Bullock is the lead.

(2) He married Whitney Able, best known as his co-star in Monsters, in 2010.

(3) The dominant beef cattle breed in the US. Originally imported from Scotland in 1873.

(4) Black Sea, directed by Kevin Macdonald. McNairy plays a shifty American who persuades Jude Law’s submariner to skipper an expedition to retrieve Nazi gold from a sunken U-boat.

(5) Rochester, Kent. A private collector owns a 1960s Foxtrot-class Russian submarine named the Black Widow. It’s moored on the Medway.

(6) Shooting Monsters involved travelling around central America for two months, shooting guerrilla-style, with no script, whenever they found somewhere interesting. Before he took up acting he was training to be a glacier guide in British Columbia.

(7) Argo (he was Joe Stafford, one of the American embassy staff) and 12 Years a Slave (he was one of the men who tricked Solomon Northup into slavery). In Gone Girl, he plays Amy’s ex-boyfriend, whom she framed for rape.

(8) Nominations for the 87th Academy Awards will be announced on 16 January 2015.

(9) He co-produced his breakthrough movie, 2007’s In Search of a Midnight Kiss. Writer/director Alex Holdridge was an old friend. He gave McNairy his first movie role after plucking him from a $20 acting class.

(10) His phone goes dead. An hour later he rings back to apologise.

• Black Sea is released in the UK on 5 December