{"id":8813,"date":"2008-10-07T08:19:02","date_gmt":"2008-10-07T15:19:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/?p=8813"},"modified":"2016-04-08T10:31:33","modified_gmt":"2016-04-08T17:31:33","slug":"interview-armie-hammer-billy-the-early-years-2008","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2008\/10\/interview-armie-hammer-billy-the-early-years-2008.html","title":{"rendered":"Interview: Armie Hammer (Billy: The Early Years<\/i>, 2008)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a>Armie Hammer came very close to playing Batman, in George Miller\u2019s apparently now-defunct <\/i>Justice League movie. But he got to play a superhero of a different sort when he took on the role of Billy Graham, one of the best-known and most widely-respected evangelists in history, in <\/i>Billy: The Early Years<\/a>, which opens Friday.<\/i><\/p>\n

Hammer, who turned 22 in August, plays Graham from the ages of 16 to 31, before he became the world-famous preacher that he is today. The film covers Graham\u2019s conversion at a revival meeting in 1934; his courtship of Ruth Bell (Stefanie Butler), who he married in 1943; and his crisis of faith when his fellow evangelist Charles Templeton (Kristoffer Polaha) became an agnostic in the late 1940s.<\/i><\/p>\n

Hammer spoke to Christianity Today Movies from Nashville.<\/p>\n

Watching the film, I was curious as to how much of that voice was yours and how much was you playing the role, and talking to you now, I still am not sure. What was it like taking on the voice?<\/b><\/p>\n

Armie Hammer: His voice was probably the most challenging thing about Billy Graham, because I just discovered this as I was doing a lot of research. His accent was not concrete. It changed depending on who he talked to. If he thought his accent would help him a little bit, he\u2019d lay it on a little thicker. If he was speaking to someone in New York, you\u2019d almost hear no accent at all. It was very interesting, and when he preached, it was a completely different accent than when he just normally spoke. So his voice was actually one of the more difficult things that I had to work with.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s interesting, because we don\u2019t normally think of him speaking normally, do we. We just think of the preaching<\/b><\/p>\n

Hammer: Yeah, and that\u2019s the amazing thing about this film, I feel. Everybody really got a chance, if they wanted to, to know Billy Graham the preacher. But we wanted to, as a gift to the Grahams for everything that they\u2019ve given, just give them something that will allow people to know Billy Graham the human, how he got to where he went.<\/p>\n

Very often, when actors take on famous characters, there is talk about finding that right balance between impersonating someone and creating a character. For example, Philip Seymour Hoffman doing Capote. How did you find that challenge, creating a character apart from the preaching?<\/b><\/p>\n

Hammer: It was something that I was so excited about, because when I was watching a lot of Billy Graham\u2019s interviews, when he would do talk shows and stuff like that, he had so much of a personality that you never really got to see shine through. So it was a multi-faceted blessing, because I got to play someone as well-known as Billy Graham, but at the same time, because no one really knows Billy Graham\u2019s personal life, I was given a little more liberty there to create the character.<\/p>\n