"We all have bullies in our lives and we just assume they're evil, but largely I think that kind of behavior comes from somewhere," says Jason Ritter, who plays a neighborhood tough who commits an almost psychopathically vicious act in "The Education of Charlie Banks." "Certainly the bully in my life, as far as I could tell, the house he grew up in was completely devoid of any love. He had all the money in the world, but you walk around his house and it was cold like a museum. So the only reaction he could get out of people was fear. It made him laugh."
With neat, close-cropped hair and a scruffy in-progress beard like a cross between G.I. Joe and the Unabomber, the 29-year-old projects an inoffensiveness in person that makes his transformation in the movie all the more impressive. The brutal act perpetrated by his bulldozer-in-a-china-shop Mick is witnessed by sheltered uptown boy Charlie (Jesse Eisenberg). Mick then turns up years later in Charlie's dorm room, insinuating himself into a life of privilege amid the well-to-do students.
"The challenges were consistent with my worst nightmare of how I'm perceived," he said at his publicist's West Hollywood offices. It wasn't that the character was so objectionable but so unlike him: "I generally care very much what other people think of me. I'm not proud of that trait.
"I had to start from the very beginning and ask, 'What kind of man ends up so out of control that he can't help but ruin his own chances at being anything?' This was definitely one of my most challenging roles."
The son of the late actor John Ritter acknowledges he's known for playing "innocent, nice guys"; his background was a lot closer to Charlie's than Mick's.
"When the script first was circulating, I auditioned for Charlie," he admits. Years after that production fell apart, the screenplay came around again. Thinking himself now too old for Charlie, he took a furtive stab at Mick. To his surprise, he got the part. "There was a huge part of me that was terrified and thought, 'Oh, my gosh, I tricked them!' "
To pull off the guise of a guy who never questions his actions but moves with a shark-like decisiveness, Ritter had to face down a couple of demons.
"I had to find a whole lot of confidence somewhere," he says with a slightly nervous laugh. "I'm always second-guessing myself. He never apologizes and I never cease apologizing."
