HOLLYWOOD, Dec. 4, 2000 — He spent years playing sidekick Jimmy Olsen to Dean Cain‘s Superman in the television series “Lois & Clark,” so Justin Whalin‘s been primed to play the hero for some time now.
And “Dungeons & Dragons,” which puts Whalin in the lead role of a thief-turned-rescuer, might just be the ticket. It’s a role that had Whalin risking everything — even his life — to get made.
“We didn’t know if we were doing the film,” an enthusiastic Whalin says about being cast before the film was even greenlit. “It’s really been a time and energy-intensive project to work on for me. I think I won’t even realize that we’ve done it, and we did it, and it’s done, until another two months.”
Based on the popular role-playing fantasy game, “Dungeons & Dragons” stars Whalin and Marlon Wayans as outsiders who, aided by a wizard school student (Zoe McLellan), an elf (Kristen Wilson) and a dwarf (Lee Arenberg), embark on a mystical adventure. Their mission is to find the scepter that controls red dragons and give it to the Empress Savina (Thora Birch) before the evil Profion (Jeremy Irons) gets his hands on it.
It’s a film Whalin’s undeniably proud of, not only for getting made but for its mark on his 16-year career.
“I think it’s different than anybody’s seen me in the past. I’ve been acting for a long time, but this is the first more adult thing that I’ve done,” Whalin says. “It’s not strictly for adults, this movie. Obviously it’s an all-ages kind of fare. But it’s definitely something that’s different.”
Yet Whalin is well aware that a film such as this could do for him what “Star Wars” did for Harrison Ford — or to Mark Hamill, who played Luke Skywalker.
“I loved making this movie, but I don’t want to only be allowed to make this kind of movie the rest of my life either,” Whalin says. “I’d like to do straight, serious movies, too. I don’t know what it is yet, but I know what this experience has taught me. What this experience has taught me is not to get involved in anything I don’t love. So whether it’s drama or it’s comedy or it’s action-adventure, you gotta love it. Cause you gotta put so much of your time and your heart and your suffering into it. You gotta suffer for it a little bit.”
And suffer he did. Filming, which took place in Prague over four months, demanded that Whalin put his martial-arts expertise to work in fight scenes, duels and a maze in which he was nearly killed by a 400-pound axe that grazed his clothing as it swung unexpectedly in his path. It seems that “suffering for your art” is a phrase he doesn’t take lightly.
“To this day, I don’t know how I got out of the way of that axe,” Whalin says with a grin. “I could have died.”
You can check out Whalin’s real-life brush with death when “Dungeons & Dragons” opens nationwide Dec. 8.
