Interviews
Hollywood Hottie Amber Valletta Talks GAMER and Virtual Sex
August 31, 2009
Ever wish you could play with sexy model-turned-actress Amber Valletta? In GAMER, that’s one of the near-future realities in a pair of bestselling videogames. Valletta plays an actress who has her brain cells modified to follow the orders of a gamer within the social/sex play game, Society. Her character is the wife of Gerard Bulter, who figures into the other videogame — Slayers. Slayersa first-person shooter game that which offers Death Row prisoners a chance at freedom if they can survive 40 levels of action with real weapons - all controlled by gamers safely in front of a screen. Valletta talks about her virtual experience on the big screen in this exclusive interview.
What kind of research did you do for GAMER?
Yeah, I went over to a kid’s house…the producer’s son is a gamer, so I went over there and just checked it out to see what was going on. He was playing with four or five of his friends. They had been on the same game for — I can’t even remember the hours. I mean, it was long and they were playing against another team somewhere else.
They were probably playing Call of Duty or Gears of War.
You know, I was just really fascinated by how seriously they take it. But a lot of what I was interested in to for my character was in games like Second Life and The Sims. I watched for the physicality of my character because I wanted to move — especially in the beginning of the film, when she hasn’t really fully given herself into the game — I wanted to move kind of — not robotically, but in that weird avatar sort of way.
How does an avatar walk?
It’s kind of like they look before they start to walk, you know what I mean? They might look right and then they start walking right. I don’t know how to explain that, but I was just kind of trying to find the little moments. They don’t have a lot of gestures, they only have maybe 20. They can do things like blowing a kiss, a smile, a funny laugh. We were trying to find those kind of things that made it feel like my character is really being controlled. And then the more the sim goes, the more she’s given up hope, the more she just lets herself be controlled. My body became more fluid and I allowed more of the kind of twistedness from the guy that’s controlling her to come out.
I remember reading once, and you guys got this in GAMER with the stereotypical obese guy who never leaves his house playing a woman, that there are a lot of guys out there that play as women in these games.
Absolutely. Absolutely. I think there’s a total perversion to it. I mean, I think all of us would love to know what it would be to be the opposite sex, but I think that the way that the boys filmed it, (directors) Mark and Brian, was that there was just a lot of sexual perversion and deviance and exploitation. Especially the guy who is playing my character, he’s just getting off on the fact that I’m miserable.
When you were researching The Sims, did you realize that over half of the players are female?
I didn’t know that there were that many that were female. I kind of can understand people wanting to flip into another persona. I mean, that’s what I do as an actor. So I get that. I do get it. I guess that’s what’s strange to me is that — my mask comes off, but their masks never come off. Do you know what I mean? Do you ever really know who you’re talking to?
Not unless you exchange phone numbers.
I guess it’s like a sub culture and it’s very curious and I’m sure — you know this movie is really pushing the boundaries of the fetish of conversions, but I’m sure it’s not all that.
When it comes to GAMER’s other game, Slayers, it’s a first-person shooter. What are your thoughts about that aspect of the film, where death row inmates are used as target practice in a videogame?
Well, I think it’s a good game and we should implement into the criminal system. (Laughs) I’m just kidding. It might bring crime rate down. You know, I think it’s a crazy idea. I mean, gosh, let all the warmongers get it out of their system. You know boys seem to need to fight and like wow what if that could be how it was, but the people who volunteer to be in Slayers I guess in some kind of ways that’s how it is (in war). Somebody’s controlling them, but they’re not actually fighting.
For an action movie there are a lot of ideas thrown out there.
There are a lot of metaphors there. I thought the parts of the people who kind of gave their one shot, like they couldn’t actually play, the people who get hit on the side of the road.
Yeah. In the videogame they would call those NPC’s, non-playable characters.
Yeah. Those were brutal. But if they survived, they got out. It’s interesting and the concept too that there’s this 15 year-old boy who is just an amazing gamer and then you have Gerard’s (Butler) character on top of it with his own abilities, who plays the games, because you have to have a hero, you know?
