~NOAH HATHAWAY~
Boy Hero

The youngest survivor of the "Battlestar Galactica" embarks on a new quest into fantasy...once upon a time in "The Neverending Story."

By Randy & Jean-Marc Lofficier

Noah Hathaway, who portrays Atreyu, the young hero of Wolfgang Petersen's The Neverending Story, is no stranger to science-fiction fans. At age seven, he appeared as Boxey in Battlestar Galactica. And even now, he comically blames the show for creating his interest in fantasy. "Battlestar Galactica was my first taste of science fiction," he says. "It developed into this huge monster you see in front of you!"
Hathaway, the son of actor-turned-producer Robert Hathaway, started his career- at the age of two!- in TV commercials, selling products ranging from hamburgers to toys. His break on Battlestar Galactica came while he was being considered for the part of Jon Voight's son (later played by Ricky Schroeder) in The Champ.
Following his two years aboard Battlestar Galactica (STARLOG #22), Hathaway appeared in several motion pictures: Separate Ways (1979), as the son of Karen Black and Tony Lo Bianco; It's My Turn (1980); and Best Friends (1982), in which he portrays Burt Reynolds nephew.
Hathaway's role in The Neverending Story (based on Michael Ende's bestseller) developed when his parents found a casting notice for the film in a Hollywood trade paper, Dramalogue. They had a videotape made and sent to Germany. The filmmakers were interested and flew young Hathaway to Munich for a screen test. The actor explains: "My mother saw this tiny article, which didn't even mention the film's title, and she told my agent, "Get Noah on that!"
"I read the book only after I had done the film, because it wasn't available in English at the time. So, I didn't really find out too much until I got to Germany. But I had read the script, and I thought it was fabulous. I felt that Atreyu was a part I couldn't miss. I would have died!"
"After they cast me for the film, I saw an artist's conception of the character, done more than a year before, and it looked just like me!" However, unlike the book, Atreyu is not green on the screen. "They tried to paint me green," Hathaway admits, "but it didn't work. It wasn't believable. I looked like fungi!"
A trip to England for further testing followed, combined with an evaluation of Hathaway's ability to ride bareback. "I rode for six months before the film. I took about two months of actual lessons to learn how to ride well bareback, without a saddle, clinging to the mane..." the actor recalls.
The NeverEnding Story is a tale told on two levels, a story within a story. A young boy named Bastian lives alone with his uncomprehending father, Bastian is persecuted by a trio of bullies and finds refuge from their taunts in a book entitled The NeverEnding Story. It tells of a bizarre, mythical country called Fantasia (Fantastica in the American edition), which is gradually being overtaken by large patches of The Nothing. The strange denizens of this land flock to their ruler, the child-like Empress, for assistance. But she is dying of a mysterious illness.
The onlu person who can save her is the mighty warrior, Atreyu: a legend though only a twelve-year-old boy! Bastian eagerly reads Atreyu's adventure filled quest for the cure for both Fantasia and the Childlike Empress, discovering that the only hope for Fantasia's survival lies in his own intervention. Once Bastian makes a "leap of faith" into Fantasia, he gains self-confidence, retrieves his self-esteem adn saves the fantasy world.
Filmmaker Petersen found in Hathaway a quality of fearless determination which he felt was the essence of Atreyu's character. Young Barret Oliver, who appeared with Hathaway on one segment of Battlestar Galactica, plays Bastian. Ten-year-old Tami Stronach is the Empress.
Becoming Atreyu was a challenge for Noah Hathaway. The role required that he ride a horse expertly, fly on a dragon's back, struggle through a swamp, clamber over rocks and fight the Gmork, a ferocious vampire wolf. And such heroic action was accompanied by its dangers. "For instance, one of the horses trampled me," Hathaway remembers. "It took off really fast, and then turned abruptly, I fell under it, and it ran right over me. I had to have my head, my hips, and my ribs X-rayed! After that accident, I didn't ride that horse again. Instead, we used other horses. They gave me one at the film's end, and a beautiful saddle, but I couldn't take the horse back from Germany to England. It was a lovely gesture."
The young actor performed most of his own stunts during The Neverending Story- by choice. "I had to fall off from a two-story height, almost a 50-foot drop. They built rostrums so I was only hanging from about 10-feet above that," he says. Stuntman Bobby Porter, with whom Noah had worked on Battlestar Galactica, executed the more dangerous stunts.
Principal photography lasted a year, with Hathaway spending nine months in Germany for his role. Special FX work, supervised by two-time Oscar winner Brian (ALIEN) Johnson, took almost another.
Although many effects illuminated the travels of the Battlestar Galactica, this film marked the first time that Hathaway worked directly with the process. "It was tedious," he candidly admits. "On Galactica, I never did the blue screen or anything. With the blue screen, you must be right on your mark, and have to keep doing things again and again. It gets boring after a while. Sometimes, I would do my school work, then we would wait the whole day and wrap, not doing anything because they couldn't get the blue screen right."
The film's most difficult scene took place in "The Swamp of Sorrow." Hathaway spent four weeks covered in mud, during one of Germany's hottest summers in 200 years. During the scene, Atreyu's horse, Artax, must also be buried in the mud. The horse used in the shot had to be trained for several months, to prevent its panicking while buried up to its nose in mud. To celebrate the end of filming under such harrowing circumstances, the actors and crew engaged in a giant-and messy-mud fight.
Hathaway is aware he's doing something special in The Neverending Story. Child actors rarely have the opportunity to play truly heroic figures. "They should do it more often," he says. "Kids can dream of being Indiana Jones when they grow up, but with me, they think, "Wow, he's so little! They're amazed, because Atreyu is like a grown man. They can identify with him. I've never seen a film where a little boy has been the hero."
Indeed, when he first read the script, he immediately identified with the character. And his parents were impressed with the similarity of Noah Hathaway's personality to the fictional hero of The Neverending Story. "He's just me," the actor says. "I am Atreyu."

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