Actors often don’t get the credit for the pure emotional weight they put on themselves.
For every film you have bawled your eyes out, imagine what it was like for that actor to have played that character for months and months.
There are few films where that is truer than The Iron Claw, the Sean Durkin film starring Zac Efron, Jeremy Allen White, Holt McCallany, and Lily James.
Many felt the film was robbed of Oscars at this year’s Academy Awards, particularly Efron as Kevin Von Erich – with the movie receiving zero
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nominations.
The plot is based on the heart-breaking true story of the Von Erich brothers, a family of wrestlers from Texas in the 1980s who were ‘cursed’.
Spoilers ahead for those yet to see the film!
Throughout The Iron Claw, the ‘curse’ of the Von Erich’s led to every one of Kevin Von Erich’s brothers dying one by one, whether through illness, accident, or suicide.
Kevin and his brothers were raised by the patriarch of the family, Fritz Von Erich, to never show any weakness or emotion.
The film ends on a devastating scene of Kevin crying in front of his kids and telling them ‘I used to be a brother and now I’m not a brother anymore’.
Sobbing.
Efron rewatched the scene for Vanity Fair, and looked close to tears just sitting
there.
He went on to say: “Sean Durkin had a very carefully drawn out plan for the execution of this film and of course on purpose put this scene very much last up in this film and I think for good reason.
“Kevin von Erich was never meant to be seen crying because the family was not allowed to show weakness, and I thought that was a really fantastic note from Shaun and a really brilliant thing to guide me through the movie, and there were a lot of scenes earlier in the film that warranted tears.
“I wanted to cry a lot during this movie, he was just saying ‘no hold it back,
hold it back for the right moment’.
“Then this day came along, it was the last day of filming, I couldn’t hold back tears.
"All I’m thinking here is ‘don’t cry dude, you’re going to have to do it again,
Shaun’s not going to go for this’.
“When they said ‘we’ll be your brothers’ I just lost it. I thought I’d ruined the take at that point but I decided to stay in it and when we finished … I looked up at
Shaun, I was about to apologise and he was like ‘no, that’s it’.
“This was the first time I think that he wanted Kevin to experience this emotion.”
Just when you thought that The Iron Claw had stopped tugging on your heartstrings, it finds another way.
Topics: Film and TV, Oscars, Wrestling, Zac Efron, Mental Health
Michael Slavin