-
Subscribe to andPOP News Headlines-
Add the andPOP Facebook Application(andPOP) - Hardly a teenager, Joshua Jackson had much to learn when he was given the role of Charlie in 1992's "The Mighty Ducks." He knew he wanted to act, he had some training, but beyond that, Jackson was clueless. Jackson saw "The Mighty Ducks" as an extended-recess; he had no idea what he was about to learn.
In the film, Emilio Estevez played the father-like coach, Gordon Bombay. Luckily for the young Jackson, Estevez's role as a mentor didn't stop when the cameras were turned off.
"He took all the kids under his wing and he showed us how to work and taught us to respect the job that he loved so much," Jackson tells andPOP.
"He taught me what it meant to be an actor, how to conduct yourself on set, how to approach your job, so he's one of the foundation stones of my work life."
After starring alongside Estevez is the Mighty Ducks trilogy, Jackson teamed up with Estevez again in "Bobby," in theatres Friday. This time, Jackson wasn't the naïve kid; he's now 28 years old and has an impressive portfolio of roles to show off. Estevez wrote and directed "Bobby" and spent years trying to get it made.
"It's really nice to be able to come back all those years later and be part of his great moment, be back and have my little piece in something he worked so hard for," says Jackson, speaking about the film a few hours before it was given the gala-treatment at the Toronto International Film Festival.
"Bobby" is the story of the life and death of Robert F. Kennedy, the man who stood for idealism and who taught Americans to love their country. The story is told through the eyes of fictional characters and the movie boasts an all-star cast, an "obscene embarrassment of riches" as Jackson puts it: William H. Macy, Helen Hunt, Anthony Hopkins, Harry Belafonte, Lindsay Lohan, Heather Graham, Laurence Fishburne, Demi Moore, Sharon Stone, and a dozen more big names.
Jackson plays one of Kennedy's campaign aids and says learning about the politician through the film gave him a sense of what it was like to be a part of the 1960s, beyond what he already knew.
"We're all raised with that idea of what the '60s was about, that time of great social movement and sort of a political upheaval, the galvanizing of the anti-war movement, but it's sort of a glossy picture of what that time actually was." Estevez provided the cast with a package of research material. "It allowed me to have a broader understanding of what that time actually was, and how many different social currents were actually taking place."
Had Estevez shot the film three or so years ago, Jackson wouldn't have been able to be a part of it because he was busy being a teen-heartthrob on Dawson's Creek. While a cast member on the show, which aired for six seasons, Jackson didn't have much time to devote to films because he only had a few months off per year.
"The last three years have been great for me personally and professionally," he says. Jackson starred alongside Donald Sutherland in "Aurora Borealis," which saw limited release in September, and appeared on stage in London in "A Life in the Theatre" with Patrick Stewart.
But time isn't the only beneficial factor in Jackson's acting career.
"I've been in a transitory phase of my acting life. I wasn't a teenager any more but I wasn't quite a man. Now I'm coming into what is, what I hope, the most interesting point in my career and the most interesting point in a male actor's career because the roles start to become men, fully-fleshed out humans that aren't just the jock or the cowboy. I feel like now I have access to more interesting roles and scripts."
For the young boys who grew up watching the Mighty Ducks films, Jackson will always be Charlie Conway. For the Dawson's Creek crowd, he'll always be Pacey Witter. And for Jackson, that's fine. He'd much rather people remember his characters and not think of him at all.
"The less they know about me as a person," he says, "the easier it is for me to do my job."
