Chris Evans Covers Details, The Avengers Premieres In Los Angeles

Lumping these together because it’s all gearing up for the release, Chris Evans covers Details May 2012 and promotes The Avengers which premiered yesterday afternoon in Hollywood, CA.

First, Evans. This follows less-interesting features in Prestige Hong Kong and similar profiles about rejecting the Captain America role and requiring therapy for what was originally a nine-movie deal that could have typecast him and swallowed over a decade of his life (this was lowered to six movies, after which he accepted the role he’d rejected several times over).

Post-therapy Evans is noticably more relaxed and introspective in interviews without reading like he’s going to have a meltdown. Although he’s still honest about his persona, shortcomings, and mostly past anxiety issues. His interview’s below, heavy on the wearing psychobabble-laced ranting if you read the whole piece. Included are the observations of The Avengers co-stars Robert Downey Jr. and Scarlett Johansson who were among the well-attended Los Angeles April 11 premiere.

On his loving, if slightly-enabling, mother: “Our house was like a hotel,” Evans says. “It was a loony-tunes household. If you got arrested in high school, everyone knew: ‘Call Mrs. Evans, she’ll bail you out.’”

On being more theatrically-inclined than one would think looking at him: “We all act, we sing,” Evans says of his family. “It was like the f**king von Trapps.”

On his anxiety: ”I get very nervous,” Evans explains. “I s**t the bed if I have to present something on stage or if I’m doing press. Because it’s just you… Do you know how badly I audition? Fifty percent of the time I have to walk out of the room. I’m naturally very pale, so I turn red and sweat. And I have to literally walk out. Sometimes mid-audition. You start having these conversations in your brain. ‘Chris, don’t do this. Chris, take it easy. You’re just sitting in a room with a person saying some words, this isn’t life. And you’re letting this affect you? Shame on you.’”

On how he’s dealing with it, and how it doesn’t often affect him on set: “You do your neuroses beforehand, so when they yell ‘Action’ you can be present,” he says.

On being an Italian-Irish Buddhist: “My sister Shanna dates meatballs.” And, more to the point: “When I do interviews, I’d rather just be the beer-drinking dude from Boston and not get into the complex s**t, because I don’t want every meatball saying, ‘So hey, whaddyathink about Buddhism?’ I love acting. It’s my playground, it lets me explore. But my happiness in this world, my level of peace, is never going to be dictated by acting. My goal in life is to detach from the egoic mind.”

On coping with fame by detaching, he moved from Los Angeles back to his native Boston and stays close to friends from school: “I think my daytime person is different than my nighttime person,” Evans says. “With my high-school buddies, we drink beer and talk sports and it’s great. The kids in my Buddhism class in L.A., they’re wildly intelligent, and I love being around them, but they’re not talking about the Celtics. And that’s part of me. It’s a strange dichotomy. I don’t mind being a certain way with some people and having this other piece of me that’s just for me.”

On women: “I love wet hair and sweatpants,” he says in their defense. “I like sneakers and ponytails. I like girls who aren’t so la-di-da. L.A. is so la-di-da. I like Boston girls who s**t on me. Not literally. Girls who give me a hard time, bust my chops a little.”

On being a sensitive soul, talking to the interviewer about childbirth: “I weep at everything,” he says. “I emote. I love things so much; I just never want to dilute that.”

More on over-sharing with his mother: “The first time I had sex,” he says, “I raced home and was like, ‘Mom, I just had sex! Where’s the cl*t?’” Wait, did she ever tell you? “Still don’t know where it is, man,” he says, then breaks into a smile composed of equal parts s**t-eating grin and inner peace. “I just don’t know. Make some movies, you don’t have to know…”

Robert Downey Jr. on Evans: “He just hates the game-show aspect of doing PR,” Downey continues. “Obviously there’s pressure for anyone in this transition he’s in. But he will easily triple that pressure to make sure he’s not being lazy. That’s why I respect the guy. I wouldn’t necessarily want to be in his skin. But his motives are pure. He just needs to drink some red-carpet chamomile.”

Robert Downey Jr. on Evans’ Dudebro personality: “It’s complete horses**t,” Downey says. “There’s an inherent street-smart intelligence there. I don’t think he tries to hide it. But he’s much more evolved and much more culturally aware than he lets on.”

Scarlett Johansson on Evans: “Basically every actor,” she says, “including myself, when we finish a job we’re like, ‘Well, that’s it for me. Had a good run. Put me out to pasture.’ But Chris doesn’t strike me as someone who frets about the next job. He has this obviously masculine presence, a dude’s dude, and we’re used to seeing him play heroic characters, but he’s also surprisingly-sensitive. He has close female friends, and you can talk to him about anything. Plus there’s that secret song-and-dance, jazz-hands side of Chris. I feel like he grew up with the Partridge Family. He’d be just as happy doing Guys and Dolls as he would Captain America 2.”

Mark Kassen, who co-directed Puncture, on Evans: “If you want to have a good conversation with him, don’t talk about the fact that he’s famous. He’s a blast, a guy who can hang. For quite a long time. Many hours in a row.” – via Details Magazine.

On to the Los Angeles movie premiere. As Johansson already admitted in Empire Magazine, the movie’s just left of a sausagefest and her incessant jiggling is what saves it from being too bro, bro. You can see said jiggling in last week’s Black Widow preview; it’s a mix of Drew Barrymore in Charlie’s Angels and Mariah Carey in 1997′s Honey music video.

Photos from the movie premiere include Downey Jr. and wife Susan Downey (who just gave birth in February), Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Jeremy Renner, Alexander Skarsgard and father Stellan Skarsgard, Tom Hiddleston, Stan Lee and Johansson. Also below is Evans’ Details Magazine May 2012 photo shoot.