Chris Evans: ‘Captain America sets the bar very high’

You could say that Chris Evans really is like the squeaky-clean Captain America in real life.

After all, he’s super polite to everyone, be it the security staff ushering him to lunch or reporters waiting to interview him. He has also been known for stopping to take wefies with fans when asked — including one where the girl approached him just as he was about step into the restroom.

But when TODAY asked him how much he has learnt about himself and the crusading, muscle-bound character he plays, the 34-year-old actor-director, who was in Singapore for the South-east Asian premiere of Captain America: Civil War, turned pensive.

“I had a few nuggets of revelation along the way. But, to be honest, there are certain things I want to keep to myself. I think that’s the beautiful part about acting,” he said. “As you play a character, you’re going to uncover parts of yourself.

“(Captain America) is a great man! He sets the bar very high. And there’s no denying when you play that character, you do take pieces of him home with you. But some things should stay intimate,” he continued.

Captain America: Civil War also stars Anthony Mackie (Falcon) and Sebastian Stan (Winter Solider) who were in town with Evans, and focuses on what has happened after the events in Avengers: Age Of Ultron.

In the movie, superhero turns against superhero as Captain America and Iron Man face off and the all-American hero has to make some uncomfortable choices.

While Evans’ real-life choices have had markedly different results, one thing about Captain America that most resonates with him is the interaction with the children.

“Every time when you meet little kids, they are so inspired and excited to meet you! And it’s such a nice feeling,” he said. “You hope they like you, not because your costume is cooler and your shield is cool, but you hope they like you for what he stands for. In that regard, you really want to try and live up to the ideal they’re aspiring to be.

“It’s an honour to kind of embody someone that you play every day and that you hope to take pieces of that home with you,” he continued. “In the same way that I grew up looking up to certain people, I would have hoped that those people embodied some of those characteristics I saw on screen.”

Evans also revealed that through all the films, he has never felt that Marvel wanted Captain America the character to go somewhere he wasn’t prepared to go himself.

“There’s a unity between where we want to push the characters and where we want them to go. I never felt that if I wanted something extreme, that it would be met with friction. It’s kind of a nice marriage in terms of what the character is and how the character will be received.

“Ultimately, the truth is Kevin Feige (the president of Marvel Studios) is the puppet master behind all of it. But he really understands what fans want. And in Kevin we trust!”

PULLING A STUNT LIKE THAT

If you think Captain America is afraid of nothing, think again. Doing stunts while being strung up with cables might prove to be a little pebble in Cap’s shoe. Or should we say, Chris Evans’ shoes.

“I think in terms of the scariest stunt I’ve done ... it was just about height,” he shared. “On Captain America 2, we did a stunt where I was cabled — and they bring you up, 70 or 80 feet in the air and just kind of gently drop you down.

“But when you’re floating there, you just kind of think, ‘My life! Not just my safety, but my life is in the hands of a couple of carabiners’. It’s intimidating and it’s scary! Of course, once you get to the ground, you say, ‘That was great!’”

Fear of falling from a great height aside, Evans said he really did love doing the stunts. “These movies really come to life when the actors have the opportunity to reel people into the characters’ shoes. I don’t want to take anything away from our stunt team — they are invaluable — but you certainly try to separate yourself from a universe where the moment the stunt happens, it (becomes) all misdirection and CGI. You want to get your hands dirty.”

That’s why he liked doing Captain America: The Winter Soldier (the second instalment in the Captain America franchise); because of his involvement in the stunts. “(You can see in) a lot of our fight scenes that I don’t have the cowl on, so (you can see) my face; so you’re really are forced to do as much as you can without the help of CGI.”

“It’s something you really want to try and do because at the end of the day, I think every actor wants to look back on their life and say, ‘I did that’. There is some pride there.”

BROTHERLY LOVE

While there is the on-screen bromance between Captain America and Winter Soldier (aka Bucky Barnes), off-screen, the bromance is between Evans and Mackie. In fact, Evans could not stop gushing about his co-star.

“You can even tell from the second we walked in that Mackie has a certain energy I don’t think a lot of actors, or even many people, have,” said Evans.

“It’s really invaluable in every walk of life, especially in a creative environment where he’s such a free spirit. He’s very much himself. He’s very much able to shift in and out of who he is during the down time. When you yell ‘action’, he can drop very effortlessly into a very different persona.”

Evans said Mackie was an inspiration as an actor. “When you watch (what he does), it’s inspiring. It’s encouraging as an actor to realise you can really be this: A bigger-than-life entity in your personal life.”

Life as an actor, and dealing with that life, can be a strange thing, said Evans. But Mackie manages to balance all that.

“You can almost feel judged (as an actor),” Evans said. “(But) Mackie can walk into any environment and literally strike that judgment right out of this landscape. It really is inspiring because he’s such a galvanising force. But he can still drop into the most true and essential form of acting, and it really encourages most actors to say, ‘I can do that too.’

“Aside from that, he makes people laugh. In The Avengers movie we didn’t have Mackie, but in this movie, I tell you, he’s a one-man wrecking ball!”

Captain America: Civil War opens in cinemas here tomorrow.