Joseph Gordon-Levitt learnt to balance himself on a wire in just eight days thanks to Phillippe Petit, whose life the actor is recreating in the Robert Zemeckis-directed 3D drama "The Walk".
Petit pulled a coup of sorts in 1974 by shooting a wire between the newly constructed Twin Towers of New York and walking on them for about 45 minutes.
Gordon-Levitt said he did not believe the French artist when he promised him to teach the art of wire walking in just a week.
"Philippe actually insisted that he be the one to teach me to walk on the wire. And he and his partner Cathy set up this elaborate workshop. He does everything elaborately. And he found this old unused warehouse face and set up a real steel cable and then some different practice "apparatai" that I learned on.
"And we just spent eight days straight, all day. And he was insistent that at the end I would be able to walk on the wire, which sounded ambitious to me, but that actually happened. By the end I was able to, by myself, with the pole balance on the wire," the actor told reporters at the Summer of Sony event in Cancun, Mexico.
Zemeckis, famous for bringing hits like "Back to the Future", "Forrest Gump", "Cast Away", "What Lies Beneath" and "Death Becomes Here", was fascinated by Petit's stunt and decided to recreate the event in his the film, which, he says, is a love letter to New York and particularly the Twin Towers that were destroyed in the 9/11 terrorist attack.
Levitt, 34, who also stars in another biopic on NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, said Zemeckis was one of the reasons for him to board the project.
"... For me the most important thing in deciding what acting job I want to do and I'm really lucky that I get to have some say in that decision, these days is the director. That's the most important thing to me.
"I've always loved his movies. Everything from 'Back to the Future', all the way up through 'Flight', I've always loved his movies. And it can be risky to meet someone that you've always admired. But Bob really just warmed my heart in how generous and collaborative a person he was to work with," said the actor.
Besides Gordon-Levitt, "The Walk" stars Ben Kingsley, Charlotte Le Bon and James Badge Dale. Sony Pictures India is releasing the movie in India on October 9.
