Riding 5th Wave to stardom

MANILA, Philippines – Young British actor Alex Roe stars as the conflicted Evan Walker in the hotly anticipated sci-fi adventure-drama The 5th Wave, opposite Chloe Grace Moretz.

The film is an adaptation of Rick Yancey’s hit novel, published in 2013. It focuses on a young girl, Cassie Sullivan, played by Moretz, who is bidding to survive in a world that has been decimated by four waves — huge, earth-shattering events, from tidal waves to pestilence — which are unleashed upon the planet by some unknown force. The likes of Nick Robinson (playing Ben Parish) and Liev Schreiber (Colonel Vosch) also star in the movie.

The story tells how in the midst of the wreckage, as one of earth’s last survivors, Cassie must fight to save herself, and her brother, as the fifth wave looms. She teams up with Evan, who may be her final hope, if she can learn to trust him. Trust, says Roe, is one of the key themes in the film.

“Evan is definitely conflicted. He’s a real contradiction,” says the actor. “All of us are contradictions to some extent but he’s a contradiction in a really extreme way. His whole view on life is completely turned upside down when he meets Cassie.

“Sometimes, people walk into your life and do that. That makes it sound like it’s about a romance between them, but it’s really not. They don’t trust each other at all. They don’t give into any of the feelings that two human beings in a normal situation might give into.”

The complexity of the character and his situation appealed to Roe, who made his name in the UK with the teenage TV shows The Fugitives and The Cut before he moved to L.A. and bagged his role in The 5th Wave. He says that he connected with the Evan Walker character the moment he read the script.

“I read this character and went, ‘I know this guy,’” he says. “That happens sometimes because you agree with what the character says or what they believe in, or you understand why they’re like they are, maybe because of their background.”

He relates to Evan in a number of ways. “I think I’m quite physical in the way that he’s quite physical. He grew up on a farm and I grew up doing manual labor and things like that.”

Opening across the Philippines on Jan. 20, The 5th Wave is distributed by Columbia Pictures, local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International.