Samuel Henry J Worthington was born in Godalming Surrey, England on 2nd August 1976. But his parents moved the family to Warnbro, a suburb of Rockingham, about 1 hour’s drive from Perth, Western Australia when Sam was very young.
Having dropped out of school (John Curtain College of the Arts) at 17, he kicked around his native country before settling in Sydney. There, he took on odd jobs as he worked towards a career in construction, before finding his way to the prestigious National Institute of Dramatic Arts (NIDA).
Sources vary as to how he joined its ranks; some say he had no intention of becoming an actor, but followed a girlfriend to an audition, while others say he went there to support a friend. Either way he made the impulsive decision to audition and it proved successful as Sam found himself accepted to the prestigious school. He was in the same class as Matthew Newton, the son of TV personalities Bert and Patty Newton.
After learning the ins and outs of the acting craft, Sam graduated from the NIDA in 1998 at the age of 22, emerging hungry for work and subsequently began auditioning for roles.
During this time, Sam received critical acclaim for his portrayal of Arthur Wellesley in his first professional role in the Belvoir Street Theatre production “Judas Kiss”, which was directed by Neil Armfield.
He spent the first few months of his fledgling career appearing in various local stage productions, with his onscreen debut coming in 2000 with roles on Australian television shows such as ‘Water Rats’ and ‘Backburner’, followed by a small part in the 100th episode of the American TV show ‘JAG’.
Also in 2000, Sam made his first movie appearance in the highly acclaimed Australian flick ‘Bootmen’, about a pair of brothers (Worthington and Adam Garcia) who leave their work in steel mills to perform in a tap dance competition. The role, which required Sam to study tap for a half year, earned him an Australian Film Institute nomination for Best Performance by an Actor in a Lead Role.
Sam’s days of toiling in low-budget Australian cinema are clearly over, given that he’s clearly come a long way since making his cinematic debut.
For the next several years, Sam appeared in a variety of television shows and movies, including the 2002 WWII action movie ‘Hart’s War’ with Bruce Willis and Colin Farrell, ‘Matter of Life’, and the Toni Collette/John Goodman period crime drama ‘Dirty Deeds’
… The following year he starred in yet another Aussie film ‘Gettin’ Square’, opposite David Wenham. The director of the film, Jonathan Teplitzky, originally tested actors who were up to 8 years older than the then 27 year old Worthington. Teplitzky wasn’t sure Sam “could convincingly play a tough guy and also have elements of the leading man about him”, but in the end he decided Sam was “fantastic”, and had “David playing the older, slightly more streetwise accomplice” proclaiming “it worked”.
In 2004, Sam received considerable praise for his turn in the unique and greatly acclaimed Australian drama ‘Somersault’, playing Joe, a sexually confused young man who becomes entangled with a teenage girl (Abbie Cornish). Written and directed by Cate Shortland, ‘Somersault’ took 7 years to make, and naturally Shortland wanted to cast the perfect actor in the role of Joe. The film did amazingly well, making a clean sweep of the Australian Film Institute awards in 2004 to win in all 13 film categories – the first time this has ever occurred in the award’s history. It beat the previous record of eight AFI awards shared by Lantana (2001) and Newsfront (1978). Sam won the AFI for best male actor.
After this performance, Sam finally began receiving some recognition for his work.
In the midst of steady film work in Australia, Sam also found time to play a recurring role on the critically-lauded drama, ‘Love My Way’ (Fox8/W/Showtime, 2004-07), about the emotional ups and downs of an extended family.
And s if he was not busy enough, Sam also found time to direct, write, and compose the music for a short film, ‘Enzo’.
In 2005, he returned to American movies with a supporting role in ‘The Great Raid’, another WWII drama, this time about the liberation of American POWs from the Cabanatuan Prison Camp in the Philippines.
2006 proved to be a particularly lucrative year for Sam, as the rising star took on the title role in a modern retelling of William Shakespeare’s ‘Macbeth’ and landed a starring role opposite Radha Mitchell and Michael Vartan in the 2007 horror flick ‘Rogue’, a suspenseful, ‘Jaws’-style thriller about a boat tour’s gruesome encounter with a king-sized crocodile. Sam played Mitchell’s rakish boyfriend, whose rescue attempts lead to a gruesome end.
Sam was also a finalist in the auditions to play James Bond in Casino Royale, a role for which Daniel Craig was eventually cast.
His reputation as one of Hollywood’s most promising up-and-coming performers brought him to the attention of several high-profile directors, though it was James Cameron who ultimately cast Sam in his biggest production to date, and his first movie in over a decade, the science fiction epic ‘Avatar’ (2009).
‘Avatar’ is an action drama that blends groundbreaking CGI techniques with 3D technology in its storyline about humans in conflict with the inhabitants of a newly colonized world. Sam’s character, a paraplegic ex-Marine, undergoes an experiment to become an “avatar,” an alternate version of himself, designed to exist more cohesively in the new environment.
The massive project required the actor to split his time between location shoots in the United States, Australia and New Zealand. The role in ‘Avatar’ afforded Sam the opportunity to share the screen with such familiar faces as Sigourney Weaver, Michelle Rodriguez and Zoe Saldana.
Cameron was so impressed with Sam’s work that he suggested him to director McG for a role in ‘Terminator Salvation’, the fourth in the long-running and successful futuristic action franchise, and he soon found himself working side-by-side with Christian Bale and Bryce Dallas Howard.
In ‘Salvation’, Sam was cast as another modified human – this time, a death row inmate who is altered by the ruthless corporation Skynet into the hulking T-800 cyborg in order to hunt down the now adult resistance leader, John Connor (Christian Bale).
Sam’s sky-rocketing profile continued to reach new heights as 2009 progressed, with starring roles opposite Keira Knightley and Eva Mendes in the infidelity drama ‘Last Night’ (2009) and “The Debt” (2009), about Israeli agents hunting Nazis.
Sam Worthington has clearly established himself as one of his generation’s most prolific and flat-out talented performers.
Fans of Sam’s fantasy efforts were cheered by his casting as Perseus, hero of Greek mythology, in a big-budget remake of the Ray Harryhausen spectacular, ‘Clash Of The Titans’ (2010).
In 2009 he got his first Teen Choice Award nomination for Choice Movie Fresh Face Male in ‘Terminator Salvation’, and he won the ‘GQ Man of the Year’ award in Australia over ‘Eric Bana’ and Russell Crowe.
Sam also signed on the dotted line to both star in and produce a movie based on the Radical Publishing comic book series ‘Last Days Of American Crime’, a series which impressed a great many people in the business.
The year was capped with the “Australians in Film Breakthrough Award”, which he shared with fellow Aussies Anna Torv from “Fringe” (Fox, 2008- ) and “Lars and the Real Girl” (2007) director, Craig Gillespie.
2010 was another busy year for Sam, with promotional appearances for Clash Of The Titans, and then three premieres for the movie, the World Premiere taking place in London, followed by Los Angeles and Tokyo. On top of the promotional tour for Clash , he spent a good while on set, filming another two movies, ‘Texas Killing Fields’ and ‘Man On A Ledge’.
Two of Sam’s earlier movies, ‘The Debt’ and ‘Last Night’, (both of which had been held up because of the ownership problems plaguing Miramax), finally had their premieres at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival, both being well received.
And as if that wasn’t enough, he managed to find time to officially set up his new production company, Full Clip Productions. He and his Full Clip partners Michael and John Schwarz signed an imprint deal with their new friends, Radical Publishing, a relatively new comic book publishing house. This done, Sam helped his friends and Full Clip partners Michael and John Schwarz to bring their ideas for a comic book series called ‘Damaged’ to the stage where Radical Publishing were more than happy to add take it on and add it to their impressive and exciting list of publications.
It seems that having one comic book in the works wasn’t enough to start with, so Sam and Michael Schwarz worked on a project of their own called ‘Patrios’, the first edition of which Radical Publishing is also to bring to us, hopefully within the year.
Because Clash Of The Titans was such a great box-office success, a sequel was planned, and filming took place in early-to-mid 2011. Soon after finishing that, Sam was again on the promotion merry-go-round, this time for ‘The Debt’ as it was finally given a release date, ‘Last Night’ already having had a (sadly) limited theatrical release during the Tribecca Film Festival and elsewhere around the world.
During August 2011, Sam was happy to head back home to Australia to film a movie called ‘Drift’, an independent project which gave him the opportunity to work with more of his old friends and colleagues including Myles Pollard and Steve Bastoni.
