Icelandic security guards hired to secure the privacy of Hollywood actor Tom Cruise where he is staying at the villa Hrafnabjörg in the rural Eyjafjörður region in northeast Iceland, have not made fans among local farmers.
The rural Eyjafjörður region. Photo by Geir Ólafsson.
Farmers were returning from driving their sheep to highland pastures as they’ve always done at this time of year but were barred from entering a public road on Vaðlaheiði. They were surprised and angry at this reaction, dv.is reports.
Ómar Örn Jónsson, marketing director of Öryggismiðstöðin, told Jón Bjarki Magnússon of DV that the company responsible for Cruise’s security in Iceland, said the guards can only ask people not to enter certain areas during the actor’s stay in the region but not close them off.
Cruise is currently in Iceland to shoot scenes for his new movie Oblivion; one seventh of the movie will be filmed in Iceland and half of the film’s 300-person crew is Icelandic, as revealed by the project’s press representative Claire Raskind.
Among locations is the crater Hrossaborg in Mývatnsöræfi, close to Lake Mývatn. An earlier story made it sound as if the filming there was for a different project but now Fréttablaðið states that it is indeed Oblivion that will be shot there.
Cruise arrived in Iceland on a private jet with his wife Katie Holmes and daughter Suri on Friday. The family stayed in the suite of Hotel Hilton Reykjavík Nordica and it is assumed that Cruise will return to the capital on weekends. It isn’t known whether the rest of the family traveled with him to Eyjafjörður.
Cruise’s 50th birthday is coming up on July 3 and according to earlier reports, he will celebrate his big day in Akureyri. The villa where he is staying lies opposite the town.
The luxury country retreat, which includes a swimming pool, used to be owned by Icelandic businessman Jóhannes Jónsson and was bought by Swiss magnate Thomas Martin Seiz in April, as stated in akureyrivikublad.is.
Oblivion’s director Joseph Kosinski is said to have fallen for the Icelandic landscapes when he came to the country scouting locations one year ago.
The film, also starring Morgan Freeman, Melissa Leo and Andrea Riseborough, features a soldier who is sent to a distant planet to terminate hostile aliens but a stowaway interrupts his plans.
Shooting is expected to finish in Iceland in mid-July; other locations are Louisiana, New Orleans, New York and California. The film is scheduled to premiere on April 26, 2013.
Click here to read more about Oblivion and other film projects in Iceland.
ESA
