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If you're playing a Tennis star, should you learn how to play tennis?

posted 11 years ago by Foothead
3 replies | jump to latest

I've worked up at Wimbledon dozens of times over the years and know a lot of the groundsmen who work there. A few of them said that both actors were crap at tennis. Obviously it's hard to look good to people who have sat in front of the likes of Federer, Nadal etc. so I have no qualms with that, they are actors not atheletes. They said Paul Bettany was a tryer - he had taken obviously taken lessons and did the best he could. They also said that Kirsten Dunst on the other hand was terrible. That it looked like she hadn't even seen a game of tennis, let alone played one. I thought that they were embellishing the story but then I read an interview with Dominic Inglot (played Bettany's double) today in which he said...
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"I remember one scene with Kirsten Dunst where the ball boy throws her the ball off the ground and she has to catch it," says Inglot. "It took her 20 takes to catch the ball!

"She was just not getting it done, and we were on the scene after that. I'm sitting there thinking, 'Someone, I don't know how, but get her to catch this ball!'"
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If you can't even catch a ball I seriously doubt she took any lessons. Not being mean but does anyone else think that it's lazy of her to do that? She's being payed millions to make a movie where she's a tennis star.. I don't expect her to go Daniel Day Lewis on us and morph into Serena Williams, but at least take some lessons - let's say.. enough lessons to be able to catch a ball. Interview with her below -

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Q. You play a tennis star in you next film, "Wimbledon." How did you prepare for that?

A. We went to Wimbledon. I would hang out with Venus and Serena Williams a little bit. I actually didn't play that much tennis, but my character is very aggressive and young in the way that she hasn't got it down yet. But she's very aggressive and she puts all her energy into it. She doesn't have the elegance yet ... she's got this fiery tennis player in her.
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Thoughts? Is it unreasonable to expect her to have practiced at all?

[–] johnston.scot 11 years ago

It depends on what you're trying to accomplish, in terms of showing the character playing:

- If you're going to fake it with quick cuts, doubles and the like, it hardly matters how well the actor plays.

- If you're going to show actual shots longer than a second or two of the actor actually playing tennis and looking like a professional, it would take years of lessons, as well as talent the actor probably doesn't have.

Considering that Dunst's character is scarcely shown playing tennis, I don't see how having her work to become a duffer would have accomplished anything.

From the little bits of her moving that you see, the basic problem is that Dunst just isn't very athletic or coordinated, which is consistent with your story about her inability to catch a ball. Short of reversing time and having her play ball sports at age 6, I don't think there's much you can do about that, other than recasting the movie. But - given the very limited screen time in which her character is doing anything remotely athletic, plus the fact that her ability to play completely different scenes is much more important to the movie, plus the assumption that the audience has a modest ability to suspend disbelief - I don't see the casting as that big a problem.

The movie is really about the Bettany character, including his tennis-playing. Bettany may not be much of a tennis player, but he moves well enough in general to pull off what's required in the movie. If you'd cast his part with someone as physically awkward as Dunst, that would've been a problem. If you'd cast his part with someone who was highly athletic - or even was a reasonably high-level tennis player - it might have had some advantage in the tennis scenes, but other things are still more important.

[–] gb901 11 years ago

The actual game footage was terrible: you could tell the actors where just told to jupm and about and swipe at an imaginary ball which was later added by cgi trickery in post production!

Bettany was far too "wristy" in his shot making (more akin to badminton) and everything had a speeded up/cartoonish fell to it!

[–] Ironic_Tonic 10 years ago

We went to Wimbledon. I would hang out with Venus and Serena Williams a little bit. I actually didn't play that much tennis,

LMAO. I think she should have at least learned the basics, watched a few matches, maybe practice with Serena and Venus rather than just talk. Obviously it's unreasonable to expect her to become even high club level just for a film but she could have at least put some more effort in than what she said.