Aaron Eckhart has a rule when he meets people who want to take a snap of him.
“If they want to take a picture with me, I’ll take a picture of them,” says the muscular 45-year-old, flashing a smile.
Aaron, who’s a keen “street photography warrior” in his spare time, starred opposite Julia Roberts as the big-hearted biker George in Erin Brockovich and has had standout roles in blockbuster The Dark Knight and weepy drama Rabbit Hole, so naturally the requests for photos have followed.
And as the bids for a selfie with Aaron have increased, so too have the number of billboards with his face splashed across them, the latest of which promotes his film I, Frankenstein.
In the action-packed movie, the chiselled actor takes on the unlikely role of Frankenstein’s monster (christened Adam in this version), who finds himself in an all-out battle between the Demons (headed up by Bill Nighy) and the Gargoyles. In between all of this, Adam is embroiled in a personal quest to find his purpose in life.
It was this different treatment of Frankenstein’s monster that appealed to Aaron.
“In the cinematic history of Frankenstein, the monster has become a lumbering, cumbersome being that really can’t get a word out, and we wanted to stay away from that,” explains the actor.
PURPOSE IN LIFE
“For me, the primary reason I did the film was because it’s about a man looking for his purpose in life. Haven’t we all felt like that?”
Aaron admits he, too, has agonised over life choices.
“People are looking for love,” says the actor, who’s reportedly single. “Everyone wants that reason to live. Time on Earth is important.”
Aaron is “getting better” at listening to himself but hasn’t always found it so easy.
“Peer pressure cannot be underestimated,” he says.
“I had a driver in Australia who said peer pressure is the ‘please disease’. It’s the idea that we want to please everybody else at the expense of our own truth.”
CORE MOTTOES
The American reveals he has some core mottoes he lives by, though.
“To trust myself. Frank Sinatra said it best when he said, ‘I did it my way’,” he says, laughing.
“If you can say that at the end of your life, I think that’s a life well lived.”
As a teen, Aaron had to bend to his parents’ ways, rather than take his own path, when they uprooted the family from sunny California to the UK.
“I was born and raised in California until I was 13,” recalls Aaron, who moved to the UK in the early 1980s.
“I was in camp one summer and my dad held a family meeting in the living room when we got home. He said, ‘We’re moving to England’.
“I said, ‘You might be but I’m not’. I’d just been surfing, I was getting into girls, but we did it and I had a great time over here.”
Spending time in Blighty as a teen meant Aaron felt comfortable coming here as an adult.
“The English temperament and personality is very familiar to me,” he says.
“Being thrust into English society as a child and not knowing too much about it, I probably lived all the stereotypes, but I feel like, when I come to Europe now, I can tread water pretty well with everybody.
“But, of course, I’m a Californian kid and I don’t hide it.”
That means Aaron loves being in the great outdoors and he has a pact to take up a different sporting discipline for every role he takes.
ERIN BROCKOVICH
“I remember when I did Erin Brockovich many years ago, I had to get into shape. I thought, ‘If I’m going to dedicate so much of my time preparing for a movie, I’m going to learn a skill’ so I did boxing,” explains Aaron, who took up Filipino kali stick fighting to prepare for I, Frankenstein.
“In another film, I was wrestling around in a park in Malibu in the morning with a French special forces trainer who’d beat the hell out of me.
“When you make these movies, you have to learn how to fall, how to take a punch, so it comes in handy.”
And between learning new skills and working, Aaron loves nothing better than getting on his trusty bike and pedalling around the country he’s filming in.
“Since the British are the best at cycling right now, it’s interesting to come here,” he says, smiling.
“The great thing about cycling is that you can do it anywhere. I take my bike on movies with me so if I were to do a movie here, I would find a club and go out with them.”
Even with his bike and camera for company, being away from his home could be draining, but Aaron takes the travelling on the chin.
‘I’M A NOMAD’
“I’m a nomad, I’m a gypsy,” he says. “I pretty much feel at home wherever I am.”
But he does look forward to spending time on his ranch in Montana, where his parents are from.
“After I’ve finished a movie, I’ll go to my place in Montana and look at a tree or a rock for a long time.
“It brings me away from the craziness of having to perform, not that I dislike it, but having to be ‘on’ all the time is very tiresome and demanding.
“It’s not my natural personality, and I feel as though there, I can be myself.”
I, Frankenstein is in cinemas now.
Frankenstein (1931) – A young scientist and his ogre assistant produce a monster (played by Boris Karloff) using bits of old corpses. Eighty years on, Karloff’s version of the monster is held up as one of the most iconic.
Bride Of Frankenstein (1935) – This horror sequel saw Dr Frankenstein on a mission to make a mate for his creation, played again by Boris Karloff.
Young Frankenstein (1974) – In this 1970s parody, Dr Frankenstein’s grandson inherits the family’s humble abode (a castle, naturally) and starts using his granddad’s experiments to re-animate his own creature.
Frankenstein (1994) – Kenneth Branagh directed an all-star cast, including Robert De Niro, John Cleese and Helena Bonham Carter, in this film, which is widely seen as the most faithful retelling of Mary Shelley’s novel.