Actor Mickey Rourke has revealed he travelled to Russia to brush up on his language skills for his latest Hollywood role.
The star, whose films include Diner, 9 ½ Weeks and The Wrestler, played Russian technology ace Ivan Vanko in Iron Man 2, the action movie released this week.
"It was quite challenging learning to speak Russian, because the language is very hard to wrap an English tongue around," the 57-year-old actor told the Press Association. "I had a Russian teacher for three months, five days a week for around three hours a day. To learn two lines would take three weeks."
He lamented that his Russian girlfriend, model Elena Kuletskaya, added to the challenge by making fun of his accent.
While the 2009 Oscar nominee struggled to master Russian, an American from Scotland was mastering the fictional language created for the blockbuster movie Avatar.
Richard Littauer, a student in Edinburgh, paints himself blue and dresses himself to look like one of the aliens in James Cameron's science-fiction epic. He has learned the Na'vi language, invented by US linguist Paul Frommer.
Littauer confesses he knew the film was going to "take over my life," as soon as he saw it. As a linguistics student, he was particularly impressed by Na'vi, and even wrote a dictionary of the language for fans.
"Strangely, I haven't got a girlfriend at the moment. It's hard to find someone 14ft and blue," he said. "But if I could find a girl who speaks the language and lives in my area that would be a dream."
02 May 2010
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