Putting Alex Meraz of 'Twilight: Eclipse' to the wolf test

Putting Alex Meraz of 'Twilight: Eclipse' to the wolf test



To win the role of Paul, a prominent, toned and (naturally) often shirtless member of Jacob's wolf pack in "The Twilight Saga," actor Alex Meraz had to audition. But surprisingly, the good people at Summit Entertainment never bothered to give the guy a werewolf quiz.

During a recent telephone conversation with Meraz -- part of the promotional and media blitz behind "The Twilight Saga: Eclipse," a movie that, frankly, probably doesn't need much promotion at this point -- I convinced Meraz to answer a series of five werewolf-related questions, some trivia and some personal.

It quickly became apparent that I should have considered his age before crafting these questions. Nevertheless, Meraz, 25, was a very good sport about the whole thing. (For the record, he also was very complimentary of his uber-in-demand co-stars, Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner: "What I love seeing is that they're always the same. The madness aroud them changes, but they're the exact same Rob and Kristen and Taylor that I work with.")

See how he fared in the hairy beast pop quiz below.

Jen Chaney: First question: Who played the wolf man in the original “Wolf Man” movie?

Alex Meraz: Aw, geez. That’s --

JC: That’s too hard?

AM: Hold on. Give me a second. I can imdb it.

JC: That’s cheating!

AM: (Laughs) All right, I failed that one.

JC: That was Lon Chaney -- Lon Chaney, Jr. Maybe I should have thought about your age when I wrote these questions.

AM: (Laughs) Yeah, you should have.

JC: I think you might know this one. What is the name of the song that Warren Zevon sings in which he claims to have met a werewolf having a piña colada at Trader Vic’s?

AM: Oh my God. I don’t know that song.

JC: You don’t?

AM: No.

JC: Did you ever see “The Color of Money”?

AM: No, I haven’t.

JC: Okay. Tom Cruise dances to that song in that movie.

AM: That sounds hilarious. Wait – a werewolf drinking a piña colada at Trader Vic’s?

JC: Yes. Okay, now you’re going to have to look up the song. The name of the song is “Werewolves of London.”

AM: "Werewolves of London." Okay, I’m looking that up. I’m looking that up.

JC: Okay. Now, do you follow sports at all?

AM: I don’t, I’m sorry, If it’s MMA, mixed martial arts, then yeah. But if it’s like football, basketball, anything else? No, I don’t.

JC: Well, let me say this. When I ask you this next question, bear in mind that this is a wolf-oriented quiz.

AM: Okay

JC: What is the mascot for N.C. State University?

AM: Oh, it’s a wolf.

JC: It’s the Wolf Pack. But I will allow that.

AM: All right, I got one!

JC: These next two are not trivia so they should be easier for you to answer.

AM: Just opinions. Great.

JC: Just opinion. There are no wrong answers! Who is your favorite onscreen werewolf of all time, not counting yourself?

AM: {Laughs} You got me there. There’s some pretty cool classics that I remember watching, but it wasn’t until Michael Sheen in “Underworld” that I was like, man, there’s a lot of substance that he creates. He’s an incredible actor. I have to give it to Michael Sheen.

JC: I’m trying to think: you didn’t really have scenes with him in “New Moon,” did you?

AM: No, I didn’t, but I met him quite a few times last year for “New Moon” during the press junket. We had five days where we were doing tons of interviews and I‘d see him in the elevator or at lunch and at the premiere. I got to tell him he’s just an incredible actor. He’s such a humble and polite – he’s just a total gentleman.

JC: Well, he’s British. They breed them that way over there.

AM: I guess so. Not always. You catch them at a pub, you’ll be surprised.

JC: True. This is the last question of the quiz, and this is controversial: if you were forced to become a vampire or a werewolf – like you had a no choice, you had to choose one – which one would you rather be?

AM: If I had no choice?

JC: Yeah. You had to be either one or the other.

AM: Right. I’d be a wolf.

JC: You kind of have to say that, don’t you?

AM: No, think about it. I would hate to be immortal forever. At least there’s a mortality to being a werewolf, which I think is great. And also there’s, I still preserve being human, until, whatever, depending on what story we’re going for. You know, if it’s the full moon, if that’s what going to make me pop and change, I can try to avoid that and lock myself in a cellar or something. But once you’re a vampire and once you’ve been bitten, that’s it.

JC: Why is immortality something you wouldn’t want?

AM: It’s like this – because I travel so much, I crave certain foods or certain things, like from certain places that I’ve been. “Oh, I used to love going there. I’m going to go there.” And then I go there and it’s, like, turned into a parking lot. Or I miss eating food – this happened to me recently. I was shooting a film in Peru for five weeks and I was craving this little café that I always was eating at. And I come back and it’s closed. And it just does something to me, just knowing that it’s never going to be there again. It kills me.

Thinking on the extreme side of that, seeing everyone – even the world, the landscape – just changing and having to live through it all. I don’t think I’d want that.


JC: So you would want to die because you couldn’t bear seeing all these other things you care about die.

AM: Yeah, that’s right. Because I think there’s a direct connection. It’s part of the human experience. It’s part of just being connected with things. I think that’s what makes our journey enjoyable, connecting with other people, connecting with things that they produce, you know, like films or whatever. Things are, they’re not meant to last. And I like that, that that’s how we’re built.

JC: I didn’t expect things to get so deep, Alex.

AM: I’m sorry. We’re all “Inside the Actors’ Studio” here.