The Revenant<\/a>,\u201d he jokes. He speaks fast, in an idiolect peppered with metaphors and the occasional swear word. There\u2019s a slight air of restlessness to him. \u201cI think it\u2019s well known I find interviews and all those things kind of excruciating,\u201d he admits. \u201cI can get very anxious.\u201d<\/p>\nOn screen, more often than not, Worthington is a picture of sturdy calm; that\u2019s initially the case in Fuze, where he plays one of a gang of robbers, headed by Theo James, who use the distraction of a large, unearthed Second World War bomb near London\u2019s Edgware Road as cover while they stage a bank job. Aaron Taylor-Johnson plays a military major tasked with defusing the bomb. It\u2019s tense, twisty, and exactly the kind of film that just never gets made any more. <\/p>\n
Worthington came to the project in an effort to re-team with director David MacKenzie, whom he had previously worked with on the 2024 thriller Relay, and the 2022 miniseries Under the Banner of Heaven. Initially, no one would even give him the script to read. \u201cThey said, \u2018It\u2019s all cast \u2013 there\u2019s nothing,\u2019\u201d Worthington recalls. \u201c\u2018You can\u2019t work with him again.\u2019\u201d The part they eventually settled on was, he says, \u201cwritten like an extra\u201d. <\/p>\n
\u201cBut,\u201d he adds, \u201cthey\u2019re the roles I sometimes love. Because David trusts me enough to let me come up with something. And he knows that I know the dynamics of filmmaking enough that I can balance the other actors.\u201d Eventually, the character morphed into something of an antagonist for James\u2019s scheming thief, another \u201cticking bomb\u201d to deal with while Taylor-Johnson was handling the literal one. <\/p>\n
In effect, this meant doing a lot with a little: absent any explicit backstory, Worthington was left to construct his character through action and very scant dialogue. \u201cI don\u2019t like words, man,\u201d says Worthington, in that brisk patter of his. \u201cIt\u2019s motion pictures, not motion words! That\u2019s what I\u2019ve always thought.\u201d <\/p>\n
![\"Fire,](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/fuze-Sam_Worthington_in_FUZE_Courtesy_of_Roadside_Attractions_rgb.jpeg\")
Fire, no ash: Worthington wields a tool in ‘Fuze’ (Roadside Attractions)<\/p>\n
He shrugs. \u201cIf we\u2019re talking about a [David] Mamet or [an Aaron] Sorkin, their writing is unbelievable. But most times, I like scripts where the words are the least important thing. It\u2019s human behaviour that excites me. And if you can do that economically, or with a look, that\u2019s the challenge.\u201d <\/p>\n
For Worthington, every new role, he says, is first and foremost an act of self-discovery. \u201cEvery job is me trying to learn something,\u201d he says. \u201cMaybe over the last 20-odd years, it\u2019s been to my detriment, but I\u2019ve learned more as an actor than I ever could if I was trying to search for a career. You learn more from s*** jobs sometimes than ones that are revered. I\u2019ve always looked at that as my journey.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is not the sort of rhetoric you might expect from the man who fronted the most commercially successful film ever made. The shadow of Avatar, James Cameron\u2019s technically pioneering 2009 space epic, would have swallowed some actors\u2019 careers whole. When he was cast in it, Worthington was living out of his car. He wasn\u2019t a complete unknown \u2013 he\u2019d been working for the better part of a decade in his native Australia (where he had lived since he was six months old, after his British parents moved there from Surrey). But it was still a huge adjustment, zero to 90 without so much as a seatbelt.<\/p>\n
![\"Sam](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Avatar_Racism_NY121-jpg-jxa5phef.jpeg\")
Sam Worthington meets his avatar body in the original \u2018Avatar\u2019 (20th Century Fox)<\/p>\n
While much of the film would see him transformed, with CGI, into a towering blue-skinned alien replica, the first Avatar also featured plenty of Worthington\u2019s real human face \u2013 placing him squarely in the spotlight. \u201cDude, I was a 29-year-old dude from Australia,\u201d he says. \u201cIf you told me I was going to be in the biggest movie of all time, I would have just laughed. It doesn\u2019t make much sense.\u201d When it comes to Avatar\u2019s phenomenal success, he still doesn\u2019t know what to make of it. \u201cI don\u2019t play it down, because it means so much to me and it\u2019s given me my life. But at the same time \u2013 what? I\u2019m gonna walk around wearing a red chinchilla and driving a limo?<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery time I try to overthink it or if I just bring it up to my wife, she just looks at me like I\u2019m crazy and goes, \u2018Why are you saying this?\u2019 Like, I don\u2019t care, my kids don\u2019t care what I did or how big the movie is. It doesn\u2019t work that way.\u201d <\/p>\n
At the time, the sudden fame was destabilising: Worthington has spoken about his worsening alcoholism in the years immediately post-Avatar. With the support of his wife, Australian model and TV personality Lara Worthington (n\u00e9e Bingle), and with a renewed relationship to his own Christian faith, he has been sober since 2014. The pair have three children together, Rocket, Racer and River.<\/p>\n
They think Avatar is this big solid machine where Jim is the didactic director. And he\u2019s not<\/p>\n
Sam Worthington<\/p>\n
The 2010s were a period of professional adjustment, too. Worthington dabbled in more big-budget endeavours (2010\u2019s Clash of the Titans was a smash hit; its 2012 sequel less so). \u201cIn my thirties, it was a lot of blockbusters and action movies, and people assumed that that\u2019s what I wanted to do,\u201d he says. Then, when he reached his forties, he started being inundated with \u201cdad roles\u201d.<\/p>\n
Of course, Worthington\u2019s finest work is very much a \u201cdad role\u201d. Cameron\u2019s two Avatar sequels, The Way of Water (2022) and last year\u2019s Fire and Ash, were a leap forward for the franchise artistically, improving on the original in most every way. The action was bigger, the effects more spectacular, but \u2013 crucially \u2013 it also carried a far greater emotional potency. Jake Sully, no longer the ideologically conflicted marine, was now a patriarch, with the weight of a society on his shoulders. <\/p>\n
![\"Feeling](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/05_AvatarTWOW.jpeg\")
Feeling blue: Worthington as Jake Sully in ‘The Way of Water’ (Fox)<\/p>\n
Cameron talked through his plans for the Avatar sequels with his cast \u2013 \u201cand the complexities and nuances come out of those discussions,\u201d says Worthington. \u201cBy that time, me and [co-star Zoe Saldana] had become parents, so he knew he could push us down those paths. You\u2019re not using your family, but you definitely have different instincts than you had when you were single and 29.\u201d He has, he adds, \u201cknown Jim a long time. I know what he wants and I\u2019m the soldier who will give it to him.\u201d<\/p>\n
For someone who has always been less comfortable with the \u201cbiz\u201d side of showbiz, Worthington says the Avatar cast were \u201cprotected\u201d by Cameron and producer Jon Landau. \u201cWe\u2019re unlike Marvel movies, in the sense of\u2026 it feels like an independent movie when we make it,\u201d he says. \u201cWe don\u2019t have outside pressures, or expectations from the press, or the studio, or the community. It doesn\u2019t affect what we do. And that\u2019s why we can take more risks.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not like we have to get scenes completed by today or the studio is going to be upset. We just play and create. People don\u2019t understand that,\u201d he continues. In the same vein, he disputes Cameron\u2019s reputation for being, to put it politely, something of a perfectionist. \u201cThey think it\u2019s this big solid machine where Jim is the didactic director. And he\u2019s not. He\u2019s a painter.\u201d<\/p>\n
Worthington has worked with other auteur filmmakers, notably Mel Gibson in the Oscar-nominated war drama Hacksaw Ridge, and, more recently, Kevin Costner in his passion-project western Horizon (split over four films, two of which remain hypothetical). \u201cWhen an actor is your director, they impart knowledge without actually knowing they\u2019re imparting it,\u201d says Worthington. \u201cKevin, he\u2019s a very particular director, and he\u2019s very traditional. So that was a challenge for me, considering I want it to be about freedom and creativity. He had lived with that story for 10 years, and was very specific about what he wanted.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Costner](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Film_Review_-_Horizon__An_American_Saga-Chapter_I_38030.jpg\")
Costner doing business: Worthington in \u2018Horizon: An American Saga \u2013 Chapter I\u2019 (Warner Bros)<\/p>\n
Increasingly, he is drawn to leftfield material. Among his forthcoming films is a faith-based movie titled Zero AD. \u201cI just think the Bible has some great stories, man, and this is one of them,\u201d he says. The story in question is the Slaughter of the Innocents, in which King Herod, afraid of losing his throne to a child, goes out and massacres thousands of babies. \u201cThat\u2019s a pretty incredible story,\u201d he says. \u201cI think you can only get away with that by saying it\u2019s a faith-based film. Imagine if that was the pitch to Paramount or Warner Bros as a normal movie. They\u2019d look at you like you\u2019re insane.\u201d<\/p>\n
Also coming up is The Exiles, already shot in Taiwan. Half the film is in Taiwanese; Worthington plays a gangster trying to break into the Taipei crime scene. \u201cIf the movie works, who knows what that\u2019s going to open up?\u201d he asks. \u201cBut it was a hell of an experience, probably one of the best I\u2019ve ever had. Even though I\u2019ve got no idea what they said half the time. The director was just crazy enough to embrace me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Worthington smiles. When he talks about not having a plan, he really seems to mean it. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m now about to turn 50,\u201d he says. \u201cThat\u2019s a long career. And what\u2019s happened is I\u2019m now starting to understand what the f*** I\u2019m doing, in the sense of what kind of actor I am, and where I can fit into the puzzle.\u201d Whether that\u2019s Avatar 4, or Henchman Number Three, Worthington is all for it.<\/p>\n
\u2018Fuze\u2019 is in UK cinemas from 3 April<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":364015,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[458,146,85,46],"class_list":{"0":"post-364014","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-il","11":"tag-israel"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=364014"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364014\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/364015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=364014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=364014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=364014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}