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Sharlto Copley - William Morris |
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Most people in the industry know Sharlto Copley from his creative partnership with Simon Hansen. Together, they set up e.tv’s Deadtime and Atomic Visual Effects and co-directed the short films 2001: A Space Oddity and Hellweek. They also started co-directing Spoon, a supernatural thriller, but Sharlto left Simon to finish the project. Instead, he landed the lead in District 9, directed by Neill Blomkamp, an expat South African who Sharlto had hired to work on Deadtime as a 14-year-old. Sharlto plays Wikus van der Merwe, a Multi-National United operative promoted by his fatherin-law to oversee the forced evacuation of an alien refugee camp in Johannesburg. He contracts an alien virus, which allows him to operate alien technology, and is forced into hiding in the very slum he was trying to evacuate. Sharlto had only acted on short films like Hellweek and Blomkamp’s Alive in Joburg, but the gamble paid off, with international critics raving about his performance. Entertainment Weekly called it “a killer feature acting debut”; The Washington Post called his performance “a tour de force”; and Time said, “Copley carries the film, bringing to a most demanding role the scheming dimness of Harry Dean Stanton mixed with the dogged, unwarranted optimism of Steve Carell.” Variety hailed his, “twitchy, blustery, shifty-eyed performance of ferretlike intensity,” while Rolling Stone wrote, “You’ll be wowed by Copley.” With District 9 topping the US box office on its $37 million opening weekend, and Vanity Fair pitching it as an Oscar contender, Sharlto is suddenly our best-known actor overseas after Charlize. | |||
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