Playing Professor Avi Loeb on a Movie Set About Extraterrestrial Life
Today was my first experience as a professional movie actor. Shortly, I will be boarding an airplane back to Boston from New-York City — where I appeared in a cameo role, playing myself on the movie set of “Sol Hershowitz’s Guide to Extraterrestrial Life”. This is a great privilege that is not offered often. I had never seen Brad Pitt play himself in a movie.
I was amazingly lucky to be featured on a movie set while lacking basic skills to play other characters. People who know me well, including my wife, would tell you without hesitation that the only role I know well is how to play myself. I had not changed much since I was a curious child on a farm, wondering about the world. The only change was the scale of what I consider to be the world, extending from the 1.3-light-seconds distance of the Moon during my childhood at the time of the Apollo program and up to 46.5-billion-light years cosmic horizon today.
On the car ride to the movie set, I was joined by the professional actor, Brandon Routh, who played Superman in 2006 and acts as the main character, Sol Hershowitz, in the new movie. Sol is an unconfident nerd, in contrast to the physically-fit Superman model. I confessed to Brandon that I am a nerd during my day job but am also physically fit — as I jog 3 miles every morning at sunrise. Both Brandon and I have these dual qualities in us, but he takes advantage of them to diversify his roles as an actor. The only reason I joined him on this car ride is because the movie script calls for Sol to seek advice about extraterrestrial life from Professor Avi Loeb.
Upon my arrival to the movie set area, a makeup artist worked on my face for 15 minutes, in what appeared to him as a light touchup. I told him that I usually avoid any makeup and do my best to stay true to my natural colors. He messed up my hair in an attempt to add texture to it and make it visually appealing. This comes with the territory of a movie set and is a compromise I was willing to make. Speaking about natural colors, I told the makeup artist that he would be out of business near black holes, because they have no hair and when left on their own — they are purely black with a tiny glow of Hawking radiation.
The entrance was arranged to reflect winter time, with artificial snow falling on my shoulders as I came out of the filming scene over and over again in multiple takes. Altogether we had about seven takes of our scene over a period of several hours.
The set was arranged in the form of an interview that Sol arranged with Professor Avi Loeb — who he calls a genius after encountering aliens. Brandon (Sol) sat in front of me inside a comic book store and asked me questions about aliens and extraterrestrial life. On occasion, I deviated from the script that was written by Zachary Donohue and Charles Scharfman, and explained the astrophysical context for life in the Universe. At the end of the scene, I hugged Brandon (Sol) and wished him good luck in interpreting his encounter with aliens.
During the breaks from the shoot, three young members of the filming crew asked for a selfie with me and told me how much they appreciate the scientific research that I am doing. One of them recognized me through my voice which he heard on podcasts and television interviews.
Playing in a movie for a few hours was a delightful experience. After the shoot, Brandon had many follow-up questions to me about my day job as an astrophysicist and I told him about the Galileo Project’s search for technological artifacts near Earth. There is no doubt in my mind that playing the scientist in real life is far more exciting than in a movie. A few years ago, Steven Spielberg asked me to inform him first in case I discover experimental evidence for alien technologies. And a year ago, I had the fortune of discussing my research with Margot Robbie who asked many insightful questions about it. They both know very well that alien intelligence could be far more imaginative than script writers in Hollywood.
So far, humanity played an unscripted role on the cosmic stage. This makes sense since humans are not lead actors on cosmic scales. Earth is not located centerstage and terrestrial life arrived late, only in the latest third of cosmic history. Our next act could be highly consequential for us or for our cosmic neighborhood, but we did not receive an authoritative script for it. Some earthlings have the tendency of recommending scripts to us, but we should all check if there are extraterrestrial actors who have been around longer and know better what the cosmic play is about. I call this recommendation: “Avi Loeb’s Guide to Extraterrestrial Life”.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Avi Loeb is the head of the Galileo Project, founding director of Harvard University’s — Black Hole Initiative, director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and the former chair of the astronomy department at Harvard University (2011–2020). He is a former member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and a former chair of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies. He is the bestselling author of “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth” and a co-author of the textbook “Life in the Cosmos”, both published in 2021. The paperback edition of his new book, titled “Interstellar”, was published in August 2024.
Professional website:
https://lweb.cfa.harvard.edu/~loeb/
Social media:
https://avi-loeb.medium.com/
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfessorAviLoeb
https://open.spotify.com/show/1zhndXkvSY2b8FdjspFpCd
https://x.com/ProfAviLoeb
