The young actors playing the tributes came from many places and many backgrounds. Some were seasoned actors, with
experience in television or commercials or smaller films, while others were complete unknowns. What they had in common
was an enthusiasm for the film as well as a sense that this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Alexander Ludwig was excited to get the role of Cato, a Career Tribute from District 2. He remembers really connecting
with the role. “When I finally met Gary and he offered me the role of Cato, it was a no-brainer, because I was just
such a big fan.”
Isabelle Fuhrman, the actress who plays Clove, was passionate about the books long before getting cast in the movie.
“The Hunger Games is my all-time favorite book series, and I was the biggest book buff that you would ever possibly
meet. I turned all my friends on to reading it. When I heard it was being made into a movie, I freaked out. I thought, I
have got to be in this movie.”
Fuhrman originally auditioned for Katniss, but was told she was too young for the role. “I got a call a week later.
They wanted me to audition for Clove. I read with Debra Zane, who’s the sweetest person I’ve ever met.” Fuhrman didn
’t have to wait long to find out if she got cast. She was at lunch with her mother when her agent called with the good
news. She was so happy that she burst into tears. “People are staring, and I’m trying to make it seem like it’s not a
big deal, and I’m crying my eyes out, I’m so excited. Everyone was like, ‘Who’s this crazy little fourteen-year-old
girl crying her eyes out at a vegan restaurant?’”
Jack Quaid, who plays Marvel, recalls, “The audition was kind of weird because it was the first audition I’d ever
walked into where the first thing they said to me was ‘Choose your weapon.’ They had a box — there was a crossbow-y
type thing, a big knife, and a gun. So I just picked up the big knife and I did the audition and, right about then, I
knew this was going to be something cool. I go to NYU and I was in this class a few weeks later when I got the call that
I got the part and I was flabbergasted. So . . . I’ll have a unique story to tell about what I did with my summer
vacation.”
Twelve-year-old Amandla Stenberg’s audition was a little different. “I went to Gary’s house, and for the audition I’
d actually dressed up and I’d been rolled around in dirt, like Rue in the Games. So I was all dressed with all my dirt
and my leaves in my hair and everything, and when I got to Gary’s house — well, he has a really nice house. I didn’t
want to sit on anything, because I didn’t want to get anything dirty! I went in and I felt really good about it, and
then I got a call from my agent saying, ‘What are you doing this summer?’ and I was like, ‘Not much. Why?’ and she
said, ‘Because you booked The Hunger Games,’ and I was screaming and squealing, ‘I’m Rue!’ and it was so exciting.
”
Jacqueline Emerson, who plays Foxface, remembers, “The Hunger Games was my all-school read at school, and I read the
first book, and I just fell in love with the whole series. Then I found out there was gonna be a movie made of it, and I
actually spent a whole day with my friends looking up those possible casts on YouTube. I was looking at people, being
like, ‘Oh, Emma Stone would make a great Foxface’ — and now it’s me!”
She continues, “I came in and I did an interview for Gary, because he was interviewing kids that had read the books.
And I did that probably in the fall, and that was taped. And then, a couple of weeks later, he asked me if I wanted to
come in and read for the role. I just completely freaked out!”
While the cast was still coming together, the central actors had already begun training — and training hard.
Nina Jacobson gives an overview of what Lawrence needed to do: “Obviously Katniss is a hunter. She’s an archer, she
has to be agile. You have to believe that this person could win the Hunger Games, and so we wanted her to have the
skills, we wanted her to feel at home doing all of the things that Katniss does.”
Katniss runs through the woods outside District 12.
Lawrence grins, describing her regimen. “I did every kind of training you can possibly imagine for this role. I had a
running coach and I did stunt training so, you know, I did wall climbs and vaults and jumps and all sorts of stuff. I
had archery for many weeks . . . it was rough, but it was fun. Archery is such a mind game. You have to just focus on
one thing and if you get it wrong you get whipped with a string going over a hundred miles an hour. And it is painful,
believe me.” Before filming began, she was driving some fifty or sixty miles around Los Angeles every day, from stunt
training to wardrobe fitting to archery practice, getting in shape for the movie.
Once her physical training was over, there was still more. Lawrence admiringly recalls working with T-Bone Burnett, the
twelve-time Grammy Award winning musician who has worked on movies such as Crazy Heart and O Brother, Where Art Thou? “
T-Bone Burnett is producing the music, which is still unbelievable to me. So he trained me a little bit with the
singing. I have the worst voice in the world, so that was probably one of the hardest things he’s had to do, but I sang
the melody, the lullaby, in my big scene with Rue.”
Josh Hutcherson remembers, “Everyone else was learning how to do the weapons and things like that. And in this film,
Peeta doesn’t do a whole lot with the weapons. So for me it was all about getting to the right physical condition,
which was bigger than I was. They wanted me to put on about fifteen pounds of pure muscle for the role, so I had to eat
a lot of food and I was working out five days a week — it was very rigorous.”
Liam Hemsworth had the opposite challenge. “I’m not in the Games, so I didn’t have to do any fight training. But it
was more just not eating as much as what I was eating. I wanted to look hungry.”
Filming in the arena. Left to right: Clove (Isabelle Fuhrman), Peeta (Josh Hutcherson), Marvel (Jack Quaid), Cato
(Alexander Ludwig), and Allan Poppleton, the co-stunt coordinator
The Hunger Games book became the actors’ guide to the interior life of the characters they were about to play. Jennifer
Lawrence recalls, “After I got the part, I read the first book over and over. It’s great when you have a movie based
on a book, because you can read the inner monologue of the character and that’s incredibly helpful.”
Gary Ross gives feedback to Jennifer Lawrence (Katniss)
and Liam Hemsworth (Gale) while working on the District 12 scenes.
The actors playing the tributes had some further exploration to do. Gary Ross was instrumental in asking probing
questions to figure out who these characters really were.
From left to right: Clove (Isabelle Fuhrman), Cato (Alexander Ludwig),
Thresh (Dayo Okeniyi), Rue (Amandla Stenberg)
For instance, Jack Quaid came to understand Marvel like this: “I’d say if he were in high school, he would be good at
one thing and one thing only, and he’d let academics and everything else kind of slide. He is totally vicious. He doesn
’t care what he’s cutting up — he just goes for it.”
Alexander Ludwig began to see his character, Cato, as somebody even more brutal. “I like to think that Cato, before he
gets into the Games, is kind of popular and charming, but he’s always had that violent anger inside of him. When he
gets into the Games he gets lost in this whole sick game and he almost goes insane toward the end.”
Amandla Stenberg says, “My character’s fighting style is to evade, because she knows that she can’t fight the big,
tough guys. She knows that if she tries, she’ll lose. So what she does is she climbs in the trees and she eats eggs
from birds, and that’s her style — to outlast everyone else.”
And Dayo Okeniyi, who portrays Thresh, came to see his character as a sort of gentle giant. “There’s not too much of a
backstory for my character, so that was great, because I got the chance to make it up. He’s very family-oriented and he
’ll do anything to make it back to District Eleven to see his mom and his brother again. Thresh is a large character,
and a presence to be reckoned with. But he doesn’t want to get in anybody’s way; he’s not out for blood. He just
wants to survive.”
The tributes, also, were changing their looks and sharpening their skills.
Dayo Okeniyi says, “I was put on a rigorous diet of just protein, and a lot of chicken, a lot of vegetables, because I
had to gain weight but I had to gain good weight.”
Jack Quaid also had to bulk up for his role. “They got me a personal trainer and I put on about sixteen pounds of
muscle. It’s good to do something you love for a living and then, at the same time, get in the best shape you’ve ever
been in. That’s just nice.”
Meanwhile, stunt coordinators Allan Poppleton and Chad Stahelski were preparing to teach the tributes the fight skills
their characters would need to know for the scenes in the Training Center and in the arena. They’d had about eight
weeks to put the sequences together, and were eager to see them in action.
Jon Kilik notes, “Safety in a movie like this was a paramount concern for us. With all the stunts, action, fights and
weapons, the welfare of the actors and crew was a big priority. Some of those swords and daggers are real, and we
constantly had to be aware of the dangers.”
Before teaching the cast each sequence, Stahelski and Poppleton tried to have a few days alone with the stunt
performers. That way, when everyone trained together, some of the group was already familiar with the choreography.
Chad Stahelski says, “We took them into the gym and kind of had Romper Room. We trained them to do certain things and
to get certain performances out of them. Everybody was game to do everything, but some of the exercises were done with
stunt tributes only, for time restraints and, of course, for safety reasons.”
“We did some very intense fight training. That’s what I was focusing on the most, because that is what Cato is,
really,” says Alexander Ludwig. “Cato’s weapon of choice is a giant steel sword. I like to think I’ve become very
skilled with the sword. . . .”
Isabelle Fuhrman, who plays Clove, adds, “I will say I do know how to throw a knife properly now, which is kind of
creepy and a skill that I probably won’t use, but it’s just fun to say, you know? ‘What’d you learn this summer?’
‘Oh, I learned how to throw knives.’ Just casually.”
To prepare for the fight sequences, the stunt coordinators looked to the actors themselves. “It’s not like we took any
of the tributes and started training them in karate or kickboxing or jujitsu or anything like that,” Stahelski points
out. “We just took Isabelle or we took Zander [Alexander Ludwig] or we took any of the other ones and found out what
they were good at, what character they had. We just kind of took that and ran with it during the big fight sequences,
like at the Cornucopia. When you see the struggles between them on film, they’re wild and emotional — they feel like
kids fighting on the playground. That’s the concept Gary wanted, and we took that to the next level when we added the
weapons.”
All of these preparations were about to come together with the vision of the design team to create one unforgettable
film.