A Quote by Stephan James
I've had some experience in track and field in school, but I did have to train to be able to play Jesse Owens - to be a runner, to be an Olympian.
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I knew there was no money in track and field unless you were unbelievable. So I stopped it when I was 13. I just really wanted to focus on soccer and with soccer training and high school, it would have been too much if I did track and field as well.
I knew [Jesse Owens'] name, but I really didn't remember what it is he had done, so I felt like I had to get refreshed. So I read the script and I realized like, wow, this is an incredible human being. I told my manager, however I had to do it, let me see the director; I got to play him.
I met Jesse Owens once. He was a remarkable individual, and I have tremendous respect for what he did in the Olympics under the circumstances.
My mom is an elementary school gym teacher and a track and cross-country coach, so she really wanted me to be a runner. But I was not a runner. I was horrible at running.
He was highly annoyed by the series of triumphs by the marvelous colored American runner, Jesse Owens. People whose antecedents came from the jungle were primitive, Hitler said with a shrug; their physiques were stronger than those of civilized whites and hence should be excluded from future games.
I boxed. I did track and field; I did basketball, football, any sport I was able to sign up for.
As a kid growing up in Latrobe, PA, I could dream about being an Olympian like Jesse Owens or Johnny Weissmuller. I could also dream about being a great golfer like Bobby Jones or Byron Nelson. But the idea of being an Olympic golfer never occurred to me.
'Long Black Train' was inspired by a vision that I had of a long, black train running down this track way out in the middle of nowhere. I could see people standing out to the sides of this track watching this train go by. As I was walking, experiencing this vision, I kept asking myself, 'What does this vision mean and what is this train?'
In high school, I did a little track and field and ran on my own. In college, I would run every now and again, but I didn't have enough time to be devoted to it.
That was my goal in portraying Jesse Owens: bringing that level of humanity so people could understand who he was as a person.
It was wonderful to be able to play a character who had so many colors and who was able to play comedy, to play incredibly vulnerable, which he did a lot of the time, to play the love story, and to play the relationship with the son, which is quite unusual. That's a gift to me, as an actor.
Jesse Owens had to be a very strong person. There were a lot of protests, but I think that he knew, despite the pressure on both sides, the pressure to go and the pressure not to go, he had to do it for himself. Unknowingly, he changed the world and broke so many barriers by doing so, by being a leader.
Being able to play sports in a school or public environment was everything for me - basketball, soccer, track.
I've been going to school, did theater for a long time, been plugging away for 10, 15 years. I was told earlier in my career, it's all laying track... one day, all that track is going to come together in some way, and it has.
After high school, I earned a scholarship to play Division I soccer at a small school in North Carolina, but I didn't get much playing time, which forced me to determine who I was beyond the field, something I had previously never had to do.
I find in America, actually, I actually prefer it because it's all about energy. It's all about making everyone feel happy and smiling. In the U.K. sometimes people are a bit too concerned about, 'Did you play that track? Did you play that track?' It's not so much about the music in the U.K.
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