Tuck EverlastingAfter playing a string of troubled teens in dark dramas, Emmy Award-winning actor Jonathan Jackson says it was a pleasure to star in a Disney version of Natalie Babbitt's classic fantasy, "Tuck Everlasting."
"I did a movie for Artisan called 'Skeletons in the Closet,' where I played a serial killer and in 'Insomnia,' I played an abusive boyfriend and in the Irish movie I did ('On the Edge,') I was a suicidal Northern Irish guy, so I was doing a lot of dark roles," the 20-year-old former "General Hospital" actor tells United Press International.
"Then 'Tuck' came along and I was this joyful, young romantic lead kind of guy and it was a lot of fun. It was also more difficult than I thought. To sustain that kind of joy for 14 hours a day is actually harder than being sullen," he adds.
Scheduled for release Oct. 11, the film also stars Oscar winners Ben Kingsley, Sissy Spacek and William Hurt. First published in 1975, "Tuck Everlasting" has been a staple on elementary school reading lists for years and was the basis for a 1981 film.
Asked to describe the tale, Jackson happily obliged, noting: "It's a beautiful story about the Tuck family, who stumble across a spring. They drink from it and it makes them live forever. It stops them in time. So, my character, Jesse, is 17 and he's 17 forever and this young girl, played by Alexis Bledel from (TV's) 'Gilmore Girls' falls in love with my character and then has to decide whether she's going to drink from the spring and live with him forever or live a normal life. So, it's kind of a romantic-adventure-fable."
