After cutting her blockbuster teeth in the Percy Jackson franchise, rising actress Alexandra Daddario graduated to more… adult roles with a memorable supporting part in the first season of True Detective. Now she’s playing The Rock’s daughter in the new disaster adventure San Andreas. Dominic Corry earned the envy of the Flicks office by sitting down with her for a chat about the film, out May 28.
FLICKS: Were you a fan of disaster movies before you took this role?
ALEXANDRA DADDARIO: Yes definitely. I loved Twister when I saw it as a kid.
What’s it like working with The Rock?
It’s great. He’s incredibly professional, incredibly nice. I’ve worked with so many amazing people who have great reputations, I don’t know what it is specifically about Dwayne but his reputation is just remarkable, everybody across the board says the most amazing amazing things about him – glowing glowing reviews. And I found that to be entirely true.
It’s the Samoan in him.
Is that it?
Does working on such a huge production with so many technical elements make it difficult to focus on your performance?
It can be extremely challenging. I’ve done so much of it at this point from doing the Percy Jackson movies and I’ve done a lot of horror films where you act opposite like, a tennis ball, or you’re just looking into the camera, being scared. So part of my training as an actor early on when I was trying to get started was learning how to deal with green screen and stuff. It’s always an interesting challenge because it’s nothing you learn in acting class.
So you’re future-proofed for where cinema is heading.
Yeah exactly. It’s been helpful to have some of that behind me. My acting classes for this stuff were the films I already did.
Has working on this film changed your ideas about Earthquake preparedness?
I live in California and I had so much time between booking this film and doing it here that I was reading the script over and over and one day I called my roommate and I was all “We have to go to the supermarket and we have to get eight jugs of water, and we have to make sure we have back-up everything. Knives!’ The more you read about it and think about it the more it makes you nervous, it’s pretty terrifying.
Did it make you wanna leave Hollywood?
Someday I’d love to leave LA. But it’s the perfect place for where I am now in my career. I would be I think foolish to leave based on what potentially could happen.
Do you think this movie could potentially save lives?
I think if everyone can be more prepared for something like this, especially in areas that get earthquakes, it’s very important. I mean it’s a pretty amazing story and everything in the script is possible. Although it is extremely unlikely in the near future for one of these things, it’s all totally possible and probably will happen someday.
How are you in an emergency?
I’ve found that I need to stay calm more in emergency situations. I haven’t been in that many but recently I was in one and I just became so hysterical that I realised it became more about me than this poor person… You start to realise that basically you need to be a little bit brave and calm your emotions down so I think that’s my biggest thing. I think this movie might actually help me being braver and more appropriate in these situations.
