Dominic Cooper plays villain in Need for Speed

MANILA, Philippines - “A hero is only as great as his villain,” says Scott Waugh, director of DreamWorks Pictures’ gear-grinding thriller Need for Speed. “We searched really hard for our bad guy and found Dominic Cooper. He’s an incredible actor and ideal in this role.”

Previously seen in Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and Captain America: The First Avenger, Dominic stars in Need for Speed as Dino who is extremely competitive and does something extraordinarily detestable to the film’s hero, Tobey (Aaron Paul) in order to benefit himself. He comes from a very privileged background and was a Formula One driver. He’s obsessed with money and success.

Acknowledging that he’s been infatuated with cars since he was a young boy, Dominic says that while other kids his age were outside riding their bikes, he was in his room polishing models of Ferraris.

Based on the eponymous video game series, Need for Speed is a visceral and evocative return to the great car-culture movies of the ’60s and ’70s. The film captures the excitement of the game in a real-world setting while bringing a level of intensity and authenticity to the action on-screen.

Below are excerpts from Dominic’s interview.

Talk about the cars you’ve been driving in this movie.

“Well, my character Dino gets to drive a few nice ones. I’ve had a couple of Lamborghinis, the Maserati and a Koenigsegg Agera R that goes to 270 miles per hour. She’s a Swedish car. It’s beautiful.”

What kind of training that you went through to prep for this role.

“We went to Willow Springs, which is this incredible racetrack just outside Los Angeles. We arrived on this incredible circuit and then we got in one of the cars with a race driver and a stunt driver, and I learned a lot of techniques so that I would have the ability to control the car safely and stop in front of the camera at an exact moment.”

Is there a correlation between what you have to go through driving and acting?

“For both, you have to be very focused. Although it’s a very different part of your brain that’s being accessed. It’s like when I do go-karting. You can’t think of anything else, which is why I think people love sports and because we love getting lost in that space where actually we cannot think about other things that fill our heads. And it’s exhilarating to be that focused for that long.”

(Opening today in theaters, Need for Speed is distributed in the Philippines by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures International.)