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The ensemble cast of actors in HBO miniseries “The Pacific” all have a similar look…dirty.
“In my memory I was dirty for a year. I could not get the dirt off of me. The entire time I was in Australia I had dirt in some part of my body. I was dirty and damp and soiled. It was just disgusting,” says Ashton Holmes, the actor who plays Marine Sidney Phillips.
To play the members of the 1st Marine Division that fought in the Pacific theater during World War II, the actors spent more than ten months shooting in the jungles of Northern Australia at a price tag of $195 million. Producers Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman wanted to capture the isolation and physical demands of jungle warfare so they kept actors as uncomfortable as possible. They all went through a ten-day boot camp taught by a retired Marine captain. Special-effects bombs, mortars and gunfire may have been written into the script but it still came as a shock to many actors.
“If we looked scared it’s because we were,” Holmes says. “It’s all choreographed and blocked out but when there’s an explosion ten feet from you it’s scary and it’s jarring.”
Holmes had an advantage since he grew up hearing stories about his grandfather who served in the Army during World War II. He passed away in December and did not get to see his grandson in the finished movie. “He shared a lot of his experiences about the war and it helped define who he was,” Holmes says. “He shared with me that the war really defined his generation and, in turn, defined the generations to come.”
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