Steve Carell, Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo Talk 'Foxcatcher'

"Foxcatcher" tells the true story of John Eleuth�re du Pont, an eccentric millionaire who sponsored Olympic wrestling champion Mark Schultz for the 1988 Olympics and created a training camp, called Foxcatcher, to do so. He also recruited Dave, Mark's older brother who is also an Olympic gold medal champion, to be part of his goal to create an Olympic wrestling dream team.

It didn't work out that way. duPont's intrusive behavior led to a falling out with Mark after the Olympic Games and he moved on. Dave stayed on at Foxcatcher, only to be murdered by DuPont a few years later in a bizarre turn-of-events. The film, directed by Bernard Miller ("Capote," "Moneyball") and written by E. Max Frye and Dan Futterman, tells this somber tale with superlative performances by Channing Tatum (as Mark), Mark Ruffalo (as Dave) and the unlikely cast Steve Carell as du Pont.

Wearing a prosthetic nose and make-up, Carell looks grim and creepy as the soft-spoken du Pont, a far-cry from the characters he's played on television ("The Office") and on film ("The 40-Year-Old Virgin"). He was said to have scared the horses at the Pennsylvania farm where some of the film was shot. Recently he said that he even frightened his 90-year old parents with whom he watched the film over the holidays.

An intriguing story

His transformation is so memorable that he's been frequently short-listed for a Best Actor Oscar nomination. He's already been nominated for a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild award (amongst other honors). But when the role was presented to him, Carell was not thinking beyond giving a credible performance.

"It's not important in terms of proving anything to anyone," Carell said. "I didn't take the part in order to show that there was a side of me or an ability to do something. I was just intrigued by the story and the thought of working with [director] Bennett [Miller]. It is exciting to take on things that aren't necessarily in your wheelhouse or hadn't been, things that you hadn't explored before. That's what I think it was for all of us. It was a real exploration and Bennett allowed for that. He really fostered that feeling that we have the freedom to fail and try anything, and he would catch us if we went astray."

Did Carell see a big difference between a more serious role, like this one, and his comedy roles?

"It's more closely aligned than you'd think," he said. "I approach it the same way. You first look at the character and the relationships and try to ground it. To me, comedy is funnier when there's some sort of tether to reality. I think the same goes for something more dramatic in nature, but I don't think one is harder or easier than the other. I think they're different but the approach is pretty similar."

Elaborate prosthetics

To become du Pont, Carell employed elaborate prosthetics. "Bill Corso designed the look of du Pont and it was several months in the making," Carell recalled. "He's really an artist and he approached it with the same seriousness and depth that I think everyone did. So many, many tests and options. The goal was to have it be seamless and not anything that I had to act through. That was just a part of the character and who he is. In terms of the nuts and bolts, I would be there three hours, generally three hours before everyone else; so by the time everyone else got to set, I was already looking different. I think that helped because it tended to separate me from everyone else because, frankly, I was off-putting. I wasn't somebody that you'd want to hang around with."

Once he looked like du Pont, Carell had to act like the real du Pont too - an eccentric person, to be sure. Born into enormous wealth, he had eclectic interests, from ornithology to stamp collecting and, most tellingly, sports like wrestling and swimming. He developed a training camp near his Valley Forge home, invited amateur wrestlers to come and be part of his "Team Foxcatcher." In his 50s, he took up competitive wrestling, appearing in a number of competitions throughout the world, which is chronicled in "Foxcatcher."

"Physically I watched a lot of tape on du Pont," Carell said about his research into the film. "to watch his physicality, how he presented himself. He had commissioned a documentary on himself, which was a great source of information about him. (It included) what he wanted to project publicly, but also raw footage that showed a completely different side of him than the one he's projected for the documentary. That was insightful. He wrote many things so there's a lot of material to sift through. And speaking to people like John Giura, his best friend who was a consultant all the way through the film. People like that who knew him were a great help to gain insight into what made him tick. Again, it's my estimation as to who he was. I don't want to be too cavalier about that."

Emotionally manipulative

du Pont's coaching of Mark could be emotionally manipulative, especially when he hired Dave. du Pont would play favorites with the brothers, to which Mark was especially sensitive. As a young hockey player himself, Carell recalled his tough coaches, though certainly not to the du Pont's extremes.

"I was a goalie and I was playing on a good team," Carell said. "I remember the coach was demonstrating how to do a slap shot. He was a big guy and he pinged me in the shoulder and I had to go off to the side for a few minutes. He was the 'suck it up, come on, Carell, get back in there' kind of coach. So I did. Then at the next game when we were getting changed I revealed a bruise that extended behind my shoulder. The coach had no idea about it. I saw just a tiny bit of remorse in his face, but that's the only time I ever saw it when he had actually seen what he'd done. For him it was all about winning. Second place was irrelevant."

Tough coaches

Channing Tatum plays Mark Schultz. An athlete himself before becoming an actor, Tatum also knew tough coaches. "I've played organized sports a lot," Tatum said. "I played football for 10 years, baseball, mixed martial arts as well. I think I respond really well to that. I think I probably was the best that I was when I had someone just grinding me and they wouldn't even let me have a breath. I really respond to that sort of masochistic coaching in a way. My dad was very like that. I don't think it's for everyone. I don't think everyone's like that. Obviously a great coach knows whom his athlete is and how to get the best out of him. I think I was definitely someone that the more you got in his face and challenged him, the harder I pushed back."

Of the three main characters in "Foxcatcher," Mark Schultz is the only one still with us and he was a resource to Tatum. "I have the unique ability in this movie to know my character," Tatum said. "I got to spend a good amount of time with him and also people that knew him very intimately. I think du Pont came into Mark's life at a very interesting time and I think for one of the first times shone light on him and made him feel seen and I guess loved in a way. (du Pont) brought Mark out of the shadow of his brother, I guess. The emotional part of Mark, I kind of describe it as you know when you have a fever, just really raw? Just little things constantly this excruciating negotiation with the world. I got into that I guess just through Mark's physicality."

Mark's sport was a partial key into his physicality, but Tatum also noticed personal details. "Studying the way he held his fork. He didn't hold it like normal people or refined people," Tatum said. "He just grabbed it and started shoveling food into his mouth. It was just very raw, almost animalistic. I don't mean animal as in simple, just get the job done type of a feeling."

Like brothers

Mark Ruffalo plays David Schultz, Mark's older brother and an Olympic gold medalist himself. Both Ruffalo and Tatum studied wrestling together, and as Tatum tells it became like brothers.

"For one, it's very easy to be hugged by Mark," Tatum said. "He's very, very lovable and you just feel safe. That being said, he's also a very fierce, fierce person when he wants to be. That also makes you feel protected when you're within his protection. Wrestling with him for several months created a relationship like no other. There's a suffering, a learning, and a humbling aspect to it. Obviously Bennett (Miller) held my hand all the way through this thing but I can honestly say I wouldn't have been able to survive this movie without Mark. It was a mountain of an experience. I've never had a brother, but I have an older sister who takes care of me. Mark's probably the closest person I've ever met to match that."

Ruffalo concurred, "I feel the same about Channing. There's nobody more loyal and more committed that I could've thought of to go on this journey with. I lost my brother early so it was a nice momentary stand-in while I shot this film with him. The training that we went through was particularly tough. Then we were informed by this incredible complex relationship between Mark and Dave that started when they were very young. Their parents didn't create a place for them where they felt safe, so they had to make that for themselves. That became our journey as well. I love Channing and I'm honored to have gone through this with him."

Producer and consultant John Giura was also an important resource to Ruffalo. "He was Dave Schultz's best friend," Ruffalo explained. "He lived on the farm with him. He was a wrestler with him. He was there the day that Dave was shot and he was invaluable to me about who Dave was, what he was like, how he moved, how he wrestled, how he was when he wasn't wrestling. Then I have to say, Nancy Schultz, Dave's wife and her kids, Xander and Danielle, Danny, all were part of this thing from the very beginning. They visited us while we were on set."

Despite the tragedy that everyone involved suffered, the surviving relatives and friends participated in the film to help the actors tell the story. "One of the most remarkable things about this whole process was all of Dave's friends are in the movie," Ruffalo said. "They were there when we were shooting. They would show up. It was this incredibly open communication and dialogue with Dave and Mark's past that Bennett insisted happened and managed and had the great faith that all of these people who had legacies to protect came in and participated in a particularly difficult story."

If the audience knows the true story of the Schultz brothers and John du Pont, they may spend the entirety of "Foxcatcher" waiting for the inevitable to happen. Other viewers may be lured in by the calm tone with an undercurrent of menace - a tone that Ruffalo felt came from Miller's spiritual beliefs.

"Bennett comes from a particular tradition of meditation that they will sit for five, six, seven, eight, 12, 15 days in silence meditating," Ruffalo said. "That form of meditation, the people I know who've done it, it's very confrontational to the person sitting. I always feel the nature of this film is this meditation. It is very quiet, very steady, very honest and objective, but also confronting. It's something I think gives him a singular kind of point of view that no other filmmaker has."

"Foxcatcher" is in theaters.