Jim Sturgess had never played blackjack or even been to Las Vegas before he took on the lead role in the dramatic film 21 from Columbia Pictures. The British actor who burst onto the scene in the trippy musical Across the Universe (directed by Julie Taymor and featuring songs from The Beatles catalogue) got a crash course in card playing from Vegas card consultant Kyle Morris. “Gambling for me is basically throwing money on the horses or the dog tracks. It's just not the same kind of culture back in England. I knew Vegas obviously. It's such an iconic kind of city,” said Sturgess.
21 is based on the bestselling book Bringing Down the House by Ben Mezrich. Mezrich’s book was inspired by former M.I.T. student Jeff Ma who, along with 10-20 fellow students, would travel to Vegas and clean up at the blackjack tables. The group would work as a team, counting cards and winning huge amounts of money. Sturgess plays Ben Campbell, a character based on Jeff Ma.
Sturgess actually had the opportunity to get to know Ma, and even hung out with him in Vegas. “I think I was [in Vegas] two weeks before we started shooting to just indulge in the kind of laziness that Vegas offers you as much as possible. I met up with Jeff, I think, the second day I was here. He just took me out and corrupted my innocence. The rest kind of did itself,” laughed Sturgess.
Although Sturgess didn’t leave Vegas with pockets full of cash, he did leave with a better understanding of what was so appealing to Ma and his blackjack-playing team. “It's the thrill of winning the money, isn't it? It's the thrill of actually creating that huge amount of cash on the table,” said Sturgess. “Then when that card comes up, and you don't know exactly when that card's going to come out - you never can - you just work out the probability. So when it comes… Certainly in the earlier scenes when it's a completely new experience for him and he sits down and gets his first blackjack and this kind of s**tload of money, yes, it's a huge thrill. I, unfortunately, never got to experience that. But I certainly know what it felt to lose a lot of money.”
At the 21 press junket in Las Vegas, Sturgess shared his personal tale of the joy of winning and the agony of defeat: “I had one experience with winning a lot of money, which was when I lost a lot of money. I was maybe like $2,000 down and that for me was a huge kind of deal. I remember just before I went to bed, I found a chip in my pocket and I threw it down. I thought I might as well rinse myself dry. I started coming on a kind of winning streak and pretty much won all the money I'd lose back again. So it was kind of in that one sitting I kind of experienced just the absolute disgrace of losing all that money and how detached you feel from it. It's not money at that point, it's just chips and colors. It's suddenly like, ‘S**t, that is actually $2,000’ and I just sat there.”
“And then I got the feeling of like, ‘Wow, this is so great! I'm winning it all back again.’ And then the whole superstition comes into it, like because I was with a different dealer and I'm going to put my cards here and I'm in a new shirt. I had the whole Vegas experience in that one sitting,” recalled Sturgess.
Director Robert Luketic (Legally Blonde, Win a Date with Tad Hamilton!) thought he’d have a hard time convincing casinos to let him film at their tables, but he quickly discovered the casino honchos liked the idea that people think the game can be beat. The film’s premise could actually draw visitors to blackjack tables, and so the film crew was able to shut down different sections in various casinos in order to make the card-playing action in 21 look as authentic as possible.
Asked if actually working in Sin City matched his expectations, Sturgess replied, “Actually, the two films I watched before I came to Vegas were the two most depressing films. I watched The Cooler and I watched Leaving Las Vegas. I was like, ‘Great, this is going to be fun.’ I mean, from a distance, when I was coming up on the plane, yes, it sort of looked like this glamorous kind of flashing lights which is how you see it.”
Sturgess doesn’t consider himself a math geek, so counting cards isn’t something he’ll ever be caught doing on his own. But despite the fact he couldn't relate to his character's phenomenal mathematical abilities, there were other aspects of his personality Sturgess could relate to and connect with. “I remember kind of looking at [college] to go to drama school or something like that. I remember it was just way too expensive for me to even think about something like that. I kind of can relate to it on that level, but then I just thought about it and it's just amazing now all the experiences that I've had through my life that got me to places I could never even dream of, even if I'd gone to drama school. I kind of feel the sort of connection on that level with the character and the fact that he took it out of the college and it was his experiences that didn't happen in the classroom that effectively led him [to be] a more well-rounded, interesting person.”
