Director Mark Kemble’s Bad Hurt doesn’t simply just hurt — it bleeds and aches.
An adaptation of his play, Bad Hurt on Cedar Street, and based on true events, Bad Hurt is the big screen actualization of the Kendalls, a Staten Island family plagued with difficulties.
Elaine (Karen Allen) and Ed Kendall (Michael Harney, whom you may recognize from Netflix’s Orange Is the New Black) are the parents of three children — and two of them prove to be a struggle to care for daily. Their adult daughter DeeDee (Iris Gilad) is mentally challenged; their eldest son Kent (Johnny Whitworth) suffers from PTSD after the Gulf War; and their youngest son Todd (Theo Rossi) struggles to gain his father’s affection and approval. It’s an arduous feat, given the two extremes of his siblings’ afflictions taking priority above all else in the Kendall household.
Whitworth as Kent, in particular, is accessible in his vulnerability, which is etched into the soul of his performance. The South Carolina native shines with his acting in Bad Hurt, a penchant that’s proven true throughout the run of his acting career in well-known TV shows and films such as Empire Records, Party of Five, The Rainmaker, Limitless, The 100 and Ghost Rider 2: Spirit of Vengeance.
Currently, Whitworth is working on a film titled Finding Her by Romanian director Vlad Feier. The film looks into how one investigative journalist in New York gets caught up in the drama of a girl gone missing and how the justice system fails poor communities.
“I’d been studying the craft in every city that I lived in until I moved to Los Angeles to pursue acting,” Whitworth says. He made the move when he was almost 16 and hasn’t shied away from Hollywood since. He’s worked with the likes of Nicholas Cage, Christian Bale, Claire Danes and more.
GALO was able to get on the phone with Whitworth in April, where the 39-year-old actor spoke about how he tapped into emulating Kent in Bad Hurt, his shooting of the NBC pilot Blindspot and insight into the craft of acting, a passion that’s been with him since the age of six..