“Anonymous” isn’t your first experience with Shakespearean drama. How did the Bard help shape your early acting experiences in Australia?
I studied Shakespeare all through high school. Both of my parents teach English and history, so it has always been around my experience as a young man. When I startedacting school, we did a production of “Hamlet” with an American director who was visiting. So, yeah, Shakespeare has been a big part of my experience so far. I think when you are working with writing like that, you’re amazed at how contemporary it is. It really does still speak to today’s audience. It hasn’t been dated at all and it’s still relevant.

“Anonymous” is controversial in its suggestion that Edward de Vere wrote most of Shakespeare’s work. Has your experience with this film made you rethink your own views on the historical Shakespeare?
I’m pretty certain the Earl of Southampton wrote his plays. There are a lot of strange coincidences that point towards de Vere as the creator of the other works. I guess for me, personally, it doesn’t really matter. Regardless of who wrote these plays and body of work, it’s still there. We certainly had some interesting conversations about it. It makes for a thrilling story, and that’s what attracted me to the screenplay in the first place. The crux of the film is the relationship between art and politics and how, during that time, you could put on a play and potentially overthrow a government or at least put a chink in its armor. It’s relevant to remind people how powerful art is and how it can make change for the better.

Read the entire interview here.

Source: New Movie

See all of the official stills here.

Source: The Vampire Club

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Last night at the Inaugural Samsung AACTA Awards Ceremony held at the Sydney Opera House, Xavier Samuel made an appearance with A Few Best Men co-star Olivia Newton John!

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Via The Vampire Club

The Daily Telegraph has a great new feature on Xavier Samuel who gained worldwide notoriety as Riley in Eclipse but is now appearing in the film A Few Best Men.

The Adelaide-born actor, 28, says he didn’t think he would be right for the part, as he has always been asked to play teenagers.

“Initially I thought I was a bit too young for it. It’s the first time I have really been cast as an adult,” he tells Insider.

Samuel plays David Locking, an Englishman who travels to Australia to wed his sweetheart. But the wedding, set in a stunning house in NSW’s Blue Mountains, doesn’t go to plan thanks to his best men Graham (Kevin Bishop), Tom (Kris Marshall) and Luke (Tim Draxl).

He says he embraced the challenge of an accent. “It was a strange kind of paradox playing an Englishman in an Australian film set in Australia,” Samuel says.

Read more here.

AACTA president Geoffrey Rush and Cate Blanchett are among the confirmed presenters for the AACTA Awards on Tuesday 31 January at the Sydney Opera House.

Joining Rush and Blanchett is both Jonathon and Anthony LaPaglia, Rachael Taylor, Alex Dimitriades, Shane Bourne, Adam Elliot, Lincoln Lewis, and Xavier Samuel.

Confirmed guests included Bruce Beresford, Gillian Armstrong, Aden Young, Emma Booth, Nadia Tass, Kerry Fox, Daniel Henshall, Samantha Harris and more.

Red carpet begins at 4pm with the event beginning at 6pm.

Channel Nine will be screening the awards on the night. Time to be confirmed.

Source: Encore Magazine

Source: Moviehole

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Source: A Few Best Men FB via The Vampire Club

via TVC

Happy 28th birthday Xavier!!

We at TEAM TWILIGHT hope you have a wonderful birthday!

Lindsay, Angie, Jmac, Ashley, She, Stephanie, Arianna, and Megan

Source: The Vampire Club

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Source: PopSugar Australia

Source : The Vampire Club

Source: DarioTwilight

Source: PopSugar Australia

Via TVC

Via: TVC

Source : The Vampire Club

Via: TVC

Via DiarioTwilight

The Actor: A supporting player in the Twilight series, Rathbone also appeared in M. Night Shyamalan clunker The Last Airbender. No prizes for guessing which teen fantasy occupies more space on his CV…

Why So Hot? Besides starring in climactic, two-part series-enderBreaking Dawn, Rathbone will also be starring as Leo Mishkin in Paul Williams’ adaptation of The Idiot. Not many actors can say they’ve starred in films inspired by both Stephanie Meyer and Fyodor Dostoevsky…

The Actor: Another member of the Twilight brood (he played Riley in last year’s Eclipse), Aussie-born Xavier recently joined in the fun on Roland Emmerich’s Anonymous as the Earl of Southampton.

Why So Hot? You can see him next alongside Olivia Newton John for Aussie comedy A Few Best Men, before he appears in the deliriously stupid-sounding Bait, a horror film in which a freak tsunami traps a group of coastal shoppers in a supermarket with some tiger sharks! The star-making turn however, should arrive with Drift, in which he and Sam Worthington appear as pioneers of the modern surfing industry.

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Enjoy!

Source : ArriChannel

In a new interview with Collider, Xavier Samuel talks about Anonymous, his recent Australian films, and Twilight: Eclipse. Head to about 2:30 to see him talk about Twilight.

Official synopsis:

Set in breathtaking locations and inspired by the true story of Australia’s legendary surfwear moguls, the film chronicles the rise of the world’s premiere action sport and the expansion of the laidback surf attitude as a global lifestyle.  A story of passion and corruption, friendship and loyalty, deadly addictions and fractured relationship.

Australia, 1970′s.  The Kelly brothers, Andy (28) and Jimmy (22), have one great passion: riding big waves.  As kids, their mother escaped from Sydney to Margaret River, a sleepy coastal town with some of the world’s most challenging and dangerous waves.  For the next 12 years, the boys perfected their surfing skills, always searching for the perfect ride.  Free-spirited Jimmy is a gited surfer and innovator but he starts to slip toward a life of crime to help the family out of debt.  Andy makes a big decision.  Quitting a stable job, he bets on Jimmy’s surf inventions and his own business skills and launches a backyard surf gear business.  They rethink board design, craft homemad wetsuits and sell ther merchandise out of their van.  After they get mixed up with a local drug dealer, it looks like everything they built up, will be ruined…

Encouraged by their new friends, travelling bohemian surf photographer and filmmaker JB (Sam Worthington) and his gorgeous Hawaiin surfer companion, Lani, who stirs the two brothers’ hearts, they start to seek ways to expand.

Via: Collider

In Anonymous, it’s suggested that the real author of William Shakespeare’s works was in fact Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford (played by Rhys Ifans).

It’s a real theory and one that Samuel had “heard whispers” of before, although he doesn’t really support either side of the argument.

“It’s a bit of an elitist argument,” he says. “To say that a working class man such as Shakespeare couldn’t have written these plays, it had to be an aristocrat or someone that came from a kind of a wealthy background and who was in the court.”

But he says once you start doing research, there are a lot of strange coincidences that are hard to explain.

Regardless, Samuel says “it doesn’t really matter to me” who wrote the plays.

“I was like well the writing still exists, so I don’t really care who wrote it,” he says.

Others disagree and in October, angry Shakespeare fans launched a protest in England to coincide with the film’s premiere at the London Film Festival.

Read more here!

Xavier Samuel is set to star in a new film called The Grandmothers where two women/friends fall in love with each other’s son! Yes, if it sounds weird and creepy, it kind of is. So either Naomi Watts or Robin Wright will rob the cradle with Xavier. Here’s some details I nabbed from The Playlist:

Screen Daily report that Fontaine will helm “The Grandmothers,” an adaptation of the 2003 novella by Nobel Prize-winner Doris Lessing, scripted by “Atonement” and “Dangerous Liaisons” scribe Christopher Hampton. The story involves two childhood friends and neighbors who each fall in love with the other’s son, to the disgust of the boys’ wives. Naomi Watts and Robin Wright are on board to play the [grand?]mothers, while young “Animal Kingdom” star James Frecheville and Australian actor Xavier Samuel, best known for playing villainous vamp Riley in “Twilight: Eclipse,” will play the sons.

Read more about the project here.

Thanks @Larry411!

Source: Zimbio Via: Gossip_Dance

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Via: TVC

Jameson IF Awards Sydney are excited to announce their first presenter for the awards, Xavier Samuel, known for his role in the Twilight: Eclipse film and who is starring in Stephan Elliott’s new film A Few Best Men. On the 16th November, Xavier will be joined on red carpet by canine star of the box office hit, Red Dog, Koko.

Xavier Samuel plays the role of David in the upcoming film A Few Best Men alongside fellow Australian actress Rebel Wilson. The film, directed by Stephan Elliott, is due in cinemas on January 26th 2012. Xavier, who has been working both in Australia and overseas on several film projects, is also starring in the upcoming political thriller about William Shakespeare, Anonymous.

Read the complete article HERE

Source: If.com

No franchise in recent history has catapulted a cast of unknown actors into superstardom with as much velocity as Twilight. In 2009, Samuel traveled to Vancouver to star alongside Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart, and Taylor Lautner in Eclipse, the second installment of the sunshine-averse saga. Although fans of the Cullen clan “never needed to be handcuffed or anything,” their advances were aggressive enough to force the cast out of their hotel and into a private residential compound. To enjoy their spare time, the actors had to get creative. “We’d have these strategic text conversations, like, ‘Okay, in 30 minutes let’s all meet at this place,’” Samuel says. “We even had lookalikes. When we’d all get to the meeting point, it was like, ‘Yes, we escaped!’”

Samuel, whose parents are teachers (“My dad used to say, ‘You can always go into law as a backup’”), has been acting professionally for almost a decade now, ever since appearing in an episode of the Australian series McLeod’s Daughters. Still, he talks about his recent films with the enthusiasm of a newcomer. He refers to his costars as “just-add-water families.” He describes Anonymous as a “totally awesome film—really, really awesome.” Working opposite Ifans was a near-ecstatic experience. “Acting is like sex,” he says. “It’s possible if your partner is bad, but it’s better if they’re good. And Rhys, well, he’s probably one of the most generous actors I’ve ever worked with.”

Read the complete article HERE

Source: Photos Via TVC/ Article Via Black Book Mag

Source : Diario Twilight

Thanks @Epnebelle via TTS

Photo source via DT

Here’s a cute new still of Xavier Samuel as the groom in his upcoming comedy A Few Best Men. See more at the film’s official website. Also, head over and the like the film’s Facebook page.

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Source (Thanks Mark!)

The Earl of Southampton Henry Wriothesley
Played by Xavier Samuel

Character Bio:
Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, was a generous patron of the arts and a well known fan of  theater. Shakespeare dedicate works to him, and he was a particularly loyal friend to the Earl of  Essex.

Relationships:
• To William Shakespeare: Why were Shakespeare’s works dedicated to Southampton? What was the relationship between the two men? Could this patron of the arts be the “Fair Youth” of Shakespeare’s sonnets?

• To the older Earl of Oxford: The Earls of Oxford and Southampton shared a love for the arts and theater. Both men had lost their fathers at a relatively young age, giving them another shared bond. But some historians are convinced that the two share an even deep connection.

• To the older Queen Elizabeth: The Earl of Southampton was a favored courtier of Elizabeth’s, as they both loved theater and arts.

Via: TVC and BW

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Source: A Few Best Men Facebook Via: TVC

Source: BellasDiary