Set in New Orleans, Contraband is Mark Whalberg’s new thriller about smuggling on container ships. He plays a blue-collar family man who’s sworn off his former life of crime, until his brother-in-law botches a drug deal and needs his help in order to repay the debt. Whalberg agrees to do one last job, running contraband from Panama on a container ship. Kate Beckinsale plays Whalberg’s wife, Ben Foster his best friend and business partner, and Giovanni Ribisi plays a New Orleans drug runner who is barely recognizable and eerily convincing.
I recently sat down with Foster in New York and we talked about the role he was initially courted for, the time he got kicked out of acting class, as well as his new production company. Hit the jump for the full interview.
Question: I know you were approached to play Kate Beckinsale’s younger brother, Mark Whalberg’s brother in law, who botches the drug deal, and that you thought the part was too young. Did they think about making the brother role older?
Ben Foster: It was nice that Balt [Director Baltasar Kormakur] and Mark wanted to see if there was a fit, so that’s a compliment, but I read the script and responded immediately to the potential of Sebastian, as something I could do something with.
Was that a role then became expanded?
Foster: It wasn’t enlarged, but it was humanized a little bit. The relationship was built where it wasn’t that way ...
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