Hollywood’s New Neighbour

Hollywood’s New Neighbour Liam Hemsworth is best known to us as “Josh Taylor” in Neighbours but instead of following the path of fellow alumni (relative obscurity), he has made a splash in Hollywood alongside brother Chris (Thor). In this Australian exclusive, Liam discusses his first major Hollywood role alongside girlfriend Miley Cyrus in “The Last Song”, which is available on DVD now.

How did you score the role of ‘Will’?
Originally I was flown over here to LA to do a screen-test for the film Thor which my brother Chris ended up getting. I was auditioning for various things over here and had an audition for The Last Song. I read the script and then I got called back and read with Miley and got the part, it was exciting.

Do you remember that scene where you read with Miley for the first time? How was she?
She was great. I was kind of nervous about it. I knew who she was but I didn’t know how big she was around the world really, but that was a good thing. It meant that it was a girl that I was meeting rather than a star and it was great. From the first time I met her she was so kind and so easy and really nice.

How was the chemistry initially with Miley?
She’s gorgeous, she’s a beautiful girl. From day one we just got along, it was just easy. For some people it can be an effort to find that chemistry but we just worked really well together. It is a funny thing; I have known people who hate each other in real life but have amazing chemistry on screen. We don’t hate each other in life (laughs). We get along really well so it just worked on screen – and we get along really well together in real life too.

Your director, Julie Anne Robinson, comes from a primarily television background, what was it like working with her?
She was amazing, she’s such a kind person and always makes you feel really comfortable in a scene. It’s just calm on set, which is great. You can relax and do your thing and she’s very easygoing. She collaborates and often asked me ‘what do you want to do in this scene and what do you feel about the scene?’ It’s great to be able to talk to a director like that and share ideas.

Hollywood’s New Neighbour Were there many humorous moments on set or was it all hard work?
Oh, there were plenty of funny moments. My singing was one of the funny moments. That wasn’t even in the script. I just started singing along and then they said ‘do more’ and I said ‘oh, no’ and they said ‘but that was so funny’. I was laughing the whole way through that scene because I was like, ‘this is going to ruin my career’. Also in the fight scene I kept falling over when I wasn’t supposed to and it was frustrating. And in the wedding scene, I kept tripping in the dirt. I’d fall over and I’d have to brush all the dirt off me and that wasn’t funny, it was kind of frustrating.

What was it like doing an American accent?
Well I had already done an American accent for a film called TRIANGLE, so I did a lot of training in Australia. For this film I had a dialect coach on set every day and we went through the whole script before filming. We would go through it all and make sure it all sounded good. You have times when things slip for whatever reason but I just try not to think about those times.