By: Sindy
Taylor Lautner is a triple threat - he acts, dances and does martial arts! He competes with the Xtreme Martial Arts Performance Team and is now starring in the 3-D movie, The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl. I sat down to talk to Taylor about his cool new flick and his passion for extreme martial arts - here it is!
Sindy: Congratulations on the movie! So what's it about?
Taylor Lautner: It's about a kid that doesn't really fit in at school and he starts daydreaming. He dreams up these two superheroes, Shark Boy and Lava Girl, and they go on a series of adventures to destroy Mr. Electric, who's played by George Lopez, who is destroying another planet.
Sindy: Tell me about your character, Shark Boy.
Taylor Lautner: He's very self-confident and sometimes his confidence gets him into trouble - he starts fights and battles, and Lava Girl tries to cool him down. He's also kinda jealous of the character, Max, because he has an inside crush on Lava Girl and she's overly motherly to Max. And Shark Boy is also very acrobatic, so he uses lots of that in the fight scenes.
Sindy: Cool, you get to show off your martial arts skills in the movie!
Taylor Lautner: Yeah, Robert Rodriguez (the director of Spy Kids) let me choreograph my own fight scene in the film.
Sindy: What's been your fave acting gig aside from The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl?
Taylor Lautner: Probably My Wife and Kids because I got to be a [kwlink]bully[/kwlink] and push this little kid around! That was fun because I'm normally not a bully because my parents wouldn't allow me to do that. I'm just not that person, but it was fun to experience something new.
Sindy: Why'd you get involved in martial arts rather than sports like baseball or soccer?
Taylor Lautner: Probably because my mom's bosses' kids were doing martial arts, and since they were doing it, I just wanted to try it. So I started it and it was a lot of fun and I went to my first national tournament in Louisville, KY and then I met a karate instructor, Mike Chat, the Blue Power Ranger. He taught me this extreme martial arts stuff and I started liking that a lot more, so I kept doing it and I've been doing it for about six years.
Sindy: How is extreme martial arts different from regular martial arts?
Taylor Lautner: Regular martial arts is traditional, with no music and no flips choreograhed into it. But extreme martial arts is choreographed to music. It's very fast-beat uptempo and you put a lot of acrobatic maneuvers into the routine.
Sindy: So what's your fave extreme martial arts trick?
Taylor Lautner: It's called a corkscrew. It's a backflip off one leg and then you do a 360 in the air and I land it in the splits. I was the first competitor to ever land that in the national karate circuit.
Sindy: Do your martial arts skills come in handy at school?
Taylor Lautner: It's never really happened. Nobody's ever wanted to start a fight. I stay away from all that stuff.
Sindy: Do you ever think about becoming the next Jean-Claude Van Damme?
Taylor Lautner: I'd love to be an action director or writer or be in action films, just like him.
Sindy: Is there an actress who you want to work with in the future?
Taylor Lautner: Jessica Simpson! Yeah, I'll work with her! I was on the Nick and Jessica Variety Hour Show and that was lots of fun. I got to meet her, she was nice. She wasn't stupid like everyone thinks she is.
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