Believe it or not, Twilight star Peter Facinelli has much bigger ambitions than starring in one of the biggest blockbuster film series of the last several years. Now that he’s finished filming his role in the series — the final film The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2 will be released in November — Facinelli is tackling his own projects.
He wrote and stars in Loosies, a film set in his native New York City. Facinelli spoke to the Wall Street Journal about that experience, and whether not he plans on leaving acting behind.
Facinelli spent seven years trying to securing financing for the film — but oddly it only took him three weeks to write the script. He explains, “The writing part was easy. I had thought about this story for so long until I couldn’t think about it anymore. Even sometimes I just rode the subway and wondered what it would be like to do a pick-pocket film here. I daydreamed. And then I had to pour it out on paper. That’s the process I go through when I write. I’ve written four scripts and we’ve made two of them now. The producer hat was a little bit harder to wear than the writer hat. I had the film set up three times with different actors and a different director and it would fall apart. A financier would get antsy and would take his money someplace else. So it was a great lesson in patience and perseverance.”
After his experience on Loosies, does Facinelli envision himself in more roles behind the camera? He says he loves acting too much to let it go, but relishes the ability to control his own projects. He says, “I love acting and I’ll always act. I’m never going to just want to produce. But as an actor you have very little power. You come in and you are part of someone else’s puzzle. For me to be able to write and create the world and produce, hire the people I want to work with, and then be able to oversee the film from start to filming to finish in the editing room, [it] gives me more control over the project. Now if it fails it’s all my fault.”
