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Spy kid: Alex Pettyfer brings a popular teenage undercover agent from print to screen
(Sacramento Bee, The (CA) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Dec. 17--SAN FRANCISCO -- A rumor is making its way around the posh Market Street hotel that Alex Pettyfer, who plays the daring teenage spy in "Alex Rider: Operation Stormbreaker," is, strangely enough, afraid of heights.
That explains why he refuses to do press interviews on the hotel's 14th floor, but some folks find it odd that an acrophobe would be comfortable sleeping on the seventh floor.
It turns out that young Mr. Pettyfer is a jokester.
"I just didn't want to go up the lift (elevator)," he says, flopping dramatically onto the bed.
"Alex!" his mother cautions from the doorway. Because he's a minor, she's accompanying him on the coast-to-coast U.S. tour to promote the British-made independent film. (It bypassed Sacramento theaters but will be released Tuesday on DVD.)
Also in the room is Anthony Horowitz, the English-born author of the six-book Alex Rider adventure series for teenage readers. (A seventh is in the works.) "Stormbreaker," published in the United States in 2001, was the first in the series and the first to be made into a movie.
Horowitz shakes his head in mock horror at Pettyfer's histrionics. "He's like a son to me."
In fact, Pettyfer, 16, has become close friends with Horowitz's older son, 17-year-old Nicholas, and spends a great deal of time at the Horowitz's home.
Horowitz, 51, spotted Pettyfer making his acting debut last year on British television as the title character in "Tom Brown's School Days." The producers of "Operation Stormbreaker" already had auditioned 600 teenagers in their search for someone to play Alex Rider, and Horowitz knew instantly that he finally had his young man.
"What he had that I thought would be so great was vulnerability, so you want to empathize with him. He has great looks and a great physical language, and when he fights and moves, he's easy to look at at," says Horowitz. "And he's a very good actor. In England, that's hard to find.
"I remember calling to my wife and kids, 'You have to see this kid. This is Alex Rider.' "
In "Operation Stormbreaker," Pettyfer plays 14-year-old Alex, an orphan being raised by his uncle Ian Rider (Ewan McGregor) and looked after by an American housekeeper (Alicia Silverstone). The movie also stars Mickey Rourke, Bill Nighy, Andy Serkis, Sophie Okonedo and Robbie Coltrane.
Alex is told that his uncle has been killed in an automobile accident because he was not wearing a seat belt. The boy doesn't buy it. And when he investigates and finds bullet holes in the windshield of his uncle's car, he begins to unravel a slew of lies.
Alex soon discovers that his uncle was not a traveling banker after all but a spy for MI6, Britain's top-secret intelligence agency. The boy himself is recruited by MI6 to go undercover and find his uncle's killers.
"He's not a superhero," Horowitz says of the movie's young protagonist. "He doesn't fly or have super powers. He's an ordinary kid in an ordinary school with a happy life, who doesn't realize that he's been trained by his uncle all of his life to be a spy.
"When he's in danger, his latent abilities come to the surface, and he surprises himself. He is the sort of kid who 'finds' himself, and that's what being 14 is all about. That's the age when you realize what you want to be. When I was 14, I learned I could write."
Horowitz, who also wrote the screen treatment for "Operation Stormbreaker," has written the screenplay for "Point Blank," the second Alex Rider book. "Operation Stormbreaker" may lead to a movie version of "Point Blank" and perhaps the whole series.
Meanwhile, he's working on "Nightrise," the third book in his "Power of Five" series of horror novels for teenage readers. It will be published early next year.
His research brought him within 40 miles of Sacramento.
"It's about American twins called Scott and Jamie Tyler, who are performing a mind- reading act in Reno, and a huge corporation, Nightrise, tries to kidnap them. One gets away and spends the rest of the book trying to find the other. He finds him in the end in the city of Auburn."
Last spring, Horowitz rented a Mustang convertible and drove along Highway 49 from Nevada City, eventually making his way to Lake Tahoe and Reno and back down to Placerville.
"I stopped at a few places and described to people what I was looking for, and people said, 'You should try Auburn.' So I drove to Auburn. The eeriest thing was that it was like driving into my own head.
"It is central to the book that there should be a very scary statue in the middle of the town. And there in Auburn, kneeling in front of me, was the statue, huge and very scary indeed, the old gold miner Claude Chana."
The statue, located in the old section of town and visible from Interstate 80, is that of French-born Chana, who once panned for gold nearby. Since no one was certain what Chana looked like, the local dentist who created the sculpture more than 30 years ago used a modern-day Auburn gold miner as his model.
"I am perhaps the only British citizen in this country who would know the name of the man in the sculpture," says Horowitz, beaming.
Thrillers for all ages
Published by Penguin Young Readers, all of Anthony Horowitz's Alex Rider books are available in paperback except "Ark Angel" and "The Gadgets." The titles are:
"Stormbreaker," 2001, $7.99, 256 pages. Alex becomes the first 14-year-old MI6 intelligence agent after his uncle is assassinated.
"Point Blank," 2002, $6.99, 304 pages. Alex goes undercover to investigate the murders of two of the world's wealthiest individuals.
"Skeleton Key," 2003, $7.99, 352 pages. The teen spy faces a desperate man who has a nuclear weapon and a grudge.
"Eagle Strike," 2004, $7.99, 352 pages. When the family of Alex's girlfriend is nearly killed in the south of France, Alex takes the case on by himself.
"Scorpia," 2005, $7.99, 400 pages. Alex learns that his late father might have been an assassin for a terrorist group.
"Ark Angel," 2006, $17.99, 326 pages. Hospitalized after an attempt on his life, Alex foils the kidnapping of the boy in the next room -- only to be drawn into a terrorist threat.
"Alex Rider: The Gadgets," 2005, $15.99, 56 pages. An overview of the devices Alex uses in his first five missions.
-- Kathy Morrison, Bee staff writer
Copyright (c) 2006, The Sacramento Bee, Calif.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
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