The film industry is distinctly divided into two halves, one consisting of those celebrities that work hard and still earn little recognition amongst people, and then there are those who end up getting successful by putting in half as much effort or less even. And Taika Waititi believes he belongs to the second category.
The New Zealand filmmaker also admitted to the same. According to Waititi, he barely put any real effort into his work and still ended up getting successful. But fans and critics might disagree with him on that one, considering how writing and directing films is by no means an easy feat.
Taika Waititi claimed himself to be the laziest actor ever
Maybe success really does go knocking at the doors of those who don’t exactly seem to be bothered by its absence. Or at least that’s what Taika Waititi seemed to be implying while talking about his career and the recognition he has earned through it.
The actor and director of the 2019 movie Jojo Rabbit, appeared in the highly popular Autocomplete Interview by WIRED, wherein he briefly opened up about the fact that he hadn’t exactly worked for all the fame and success that he has been bestowed with.
At the very start of the interview itself, Waititi had to answer a question about which character he had voiced in the 2022 movie, Lightyear. And when the 47-year-old struggled to remember the character that he himself had voiced, he joked about how he was “the laziest actor” one could ever come across.
Taika Waititi talked about being successful without trying
In his interview with WIRED, the What We Do in the Shadows star also revealed how he put little or no effort when it came to playing certain roles in certain movies, and how despite this lack of effort, he was still able to gain plenty of acknowledgment for his work.
For his 2019 war/comedy film, Jojo Rabbit, Waititi starred as Adolf Hitler, a character that he apparently had no knowledge of, but still ended up delivering a striking performance after he played the role. “I played Hitler and didn’t read anything about him,” he remarked.
Waititi said the same about the character of Blackbeard that he played in the rom-com series, Our Flag Means Death. The comedian said how he’d looked up his character on Wikipedia but lost interest in doing any further background research on him because of “too many words.” He even did his “own accent” instead of a Bristolian one. “That’s it. That’s my range,” Waititi shrugged. “My range is me.”
But regardless of that, Waititi is still a renowned personality, has written and directed some of the best movies, and has been the honorable recipient of various revered accolades throughout his career, including an Academy Award and a Grammy. Maybe his definition of being lazy is just too different.
Source: Showbiz CheatSheet
