'PETER PAN' New film finds right boy for the job

A 12-year-old brings a new level of realism to the story.
By ANTHONY BREZNICAN
ASSOCIATED PRESS
LOS ANGELES -- "Peter Pan" is about a boy who never grows up, but usually he's played by women who are old enough to be his mother.
In previous live-action films based on the J.M. Barrie story, the mystical flying troublemaker was played by Mary Martin, Cathy Rigby and even Mia Farrow. But in the latest version, he finally is being played by an actual 12-year-old -- Jeremy Sumpter.
"The director, P.J. Hogan, told me that, 'Jeremy, you are Peter Pan. Just go in there and be yourself.' So I just went in there being Jeremy," he said.
So how does Jeremy describe himself?
"Energetic, funny and going all over the place," he said. "And hyper."
Faithful
The new film, which its makers describe as the most faithful to Barrie's original 1904 play and later novel, emphasizes the puppy-dog romance between Peter and Wendy, the daydreaming young girl who ventures with Peter to the mythical world of Never Land.
Amid the mermaids, Indians and swordfighting, Wendy and her two brothers -- bookish John and baby Michael, encounter the grumpy, embittered Captain Hook (played by Jason Isaacs), who represents the worst in grown-ups.
Like almost any kid, Sumpter, now 14, talks a little fast, fidgets like he has ants in the pants and sees life as full of exclamation points.
His family brought him to Los Angeles when he was 9 for some open casting calls. His first role was in director-star Bill Paxton's 2001 horror thriller "Frailty," as the youngest son of a man who thinks the world is filled with demons.
Sumpter said his favorite part of making the movie was hanging on wires for the flying scenes.
"Sometimes they shoot you straight up four stories high, then they would drop me and I shoot out like this -- Whoooosh! -- and I'd fly around the whole stage," he said, rising from his chair. "I did all my own stunts except for one," he added, raising his index finger.
Which one?
"That, I'm not going to say. I even did one that could have killed me if I didn't do it right ... well, not kill me, but it could have broken my ribs."
Tradition
In Barrie's time, a woman played the part of Peter Pan because child-labor laws prohibited youths from working onstage beyond a certain hour of the evening. To maintain the character's childlike voice and physique, petite and tomboyish women were hired for the role instead. The tradition stuck -- even in the 1924 silent movie with Betty Bronson -- in part because it's a demanding role, one that carries the entire play or movie and often requires stunt work for the wire-flying scenes.
Disney hired 15-year-old Bobby Driscoll to voice the prankster for the 1953 cartoon classic "Peter Pan," but that screen character was, of course, ultimately rendered in ink-and-paint.
The middle-aged Robin Williams played Peter Pan in "Hook," but that modern-day interpretation had little to do with the original Barrie story.