Alexander Ludwig

Alexander Ludwig is not the kind of guy that sits still. Talking to us after a day of surfing in Hawaii, the 19-year-old actor is looking forward to taking to the slopes of his native Canada in the next few days. “I’ve been skiing since I was 17 months old. When I get back to Whistler I do tonnes of extreme skiing on double black slopes, out to the back country – or heliskiing.” His life may sound like something from an action movie, but this only helped for his role in the eagerly anticipated The Hunger Games. Based on the hugely successful novel by Suzanne Collins, the film stars Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss who is selected to compete in a televised fight to the death against 23 other contestants where only one can survive. As Cato, Ludwig is as close to a villain as any of these “tributes” can be and – as anyone who has read the novel will know – is certainly the most formidable.
“When I got the part I immediately started training with a US Navy SEAL doing tonnes of workouts and learning fight scenes,” he says. As if battling for survival in the futuristic drama wasn’t enough, Ludwig is also enrolled at the University of Southern California, is writing his own scripts and is working on music material with The Fray’s producer, Aaron Johnson. How does he have the time? “I really don’t,” he laughs, “but Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp, those guys are my idols and I would love to base my career on what they have done and see what happens.”

[Originally published in Wonderland Magazine, February 2012. Photograph Aingeru Zorita.]