Happy 25th birthday, Emile Hirsch!

Emile Hirsch at the 25th Film Independent Spirit Awards
on 5th March 2010.

"Emile Hirsch is best known for playing the foolhardy, adventure-seeking Christopher McCandless in the Sean Penn-directed film Into the Wild. This fact was not lost on Hirsch as he ascended Mount Kilimanjaro in January, realizing his outdoorsy cred could take a serious beating if he failed to reach the mountain's summit. Especially if Jessica Biel, Isabel Lucas, and Lupe Fiasco, who joined him on the climb, beat him to the top.
Hirsch and company climbed the 19,341-foot Tanzanian peak as part of Summit on the Summit, an effort spearheaded by Grammy-nominated recording artist Kenna to raise awareness about the billion people who don't have access to clean drinking water. A documentary following the climb airs on MTV this Sunday.
Emile Hirsch, Jessica Biel and Kenna.
Isabel Lucas.

Emile Hirsch: Yeah. The way I got involved is that I was friends with Isabel Lucas, and I called her when she was working on a movie in Michigan. She told me all about this climb. I said, "Wow, that sounds amazing." Isabel's very sweet: she didn't make climbing Kilimanjaro sound very scary or hard. And I didn't actually know that much about Kilimanjaro up to that point. So it sounded like this almost glorified hippie hike. It could have been a hill to me for all I knew at that exact moment.

Kristen Stewart and Emile Hirsch in "Into the Wild" (2007).

-Are you ready for my obligatory Into the Wild tie-in question? It's hard to ignore that you were in that movie and then went on a real-life expedition...

-I know. It's kind of fun in that it added to the pressure to get to the top.
-Did you have any Into the Wild moments? Wanting solitary time away from the group?

-There definitely were certain moments of that, but they were very few and far between. It would be while I'm walking to the outhouse at night that I'd have my moment of solitude. We weren't really trekking off on our own.
-Is Hamlet your next project? Is that still happening?

-I don't think so right now, no. We kind of hit a little road bump. It's hard to get people to shell out the dough for the Bard. It's unfortunate, but true.

-Do you turn down a lot of roles? Are you particular about what you choose?

-I mean, I guess I am to a certain extent. I don't know. That's a weird thing. I can't say that I'm just sitting around not doing movies. I'm definitely not doing that. I don't think I've been remotely involved even in reading scripts that have gotten made in the last year and a half. I'm not king of the mountain, sitting around passing on it all. Far, far from it. I think the only things that are getting made in the last two years that I've really read were things that ended up happening, but I wasn't really ultimately considered for, anyway".
Source: www.vanityfair.com