Sam Worthington’s next step is a doozy

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Sam Worthington “was sweating a lot and breathing hard” during his high-up scenes in “Man on a Ledge.”

Updated: January 29, 2012 2:32AM

Sam Worthington has a condition that isn’t exactly vertigo.

“I guess my fear of heights is really a fear of falling and landing in a splat,” says the 35-year-old Aussie hunk, who stood some 200 feet up, out the window of New York’s Roosevelt Hotel, to play the title role in “Man on a Ledge.”

“That’s why I was so pleased that the first time I went out on the ledge, I didn’t burst into tears crying, ‘I don’t want to do this movie! Somebody call my agent!’ ”

In the movie, now showing, the “Avatar” star is a cop who is framed for a jewel heist. Sent to jail for 30 years, he gets a day pass for his father’s funeral.

He ditches the police and checks into a luxury hotel, where he orders his “last meal” and gets out on the ledge. A police pyschologist (Elizabeth Banks) is sent to talk him down.

“You just couldn’t do this in a studio, or it would look fake,” Worthington said. “The audience would see through it in a minute.”

He didn’t really worry about his safety. “I had on cables, and there were safety measures,” he says. “Still, I was sweating a lot and breathing hard.

“I was told, ‘Just trust us. We have you if you slip.’ Every now and then, I’d slip on the ledge or stumble. When you slip off, it was like hanging there like a puppet, and then the stunt team just drags you back up.”

Wait — you really slipped? “Oh, it’s easy to lose your footing,” he says with a grin. “The ledge is only 17 inches wide.

“The problem is you look down, and it’s not like a swirling Hitchcock vertigo. Your brain still can’t really take it in. The people below look like a portrait, and it gets blurry.

“Then you have the people yelling, ‘Jump, jump, jump!’ I guess those were some of my disgruntled fans from my last movie. They really meant to say, ‘Jump, Sam! We’ve had enough of you!’ ”

He also had to deal with the NYC weather.

“We shot in December, and it got icy up on the ledge,” Worthington says. “You also have to worry about the pigeons. Basically, you’re the intruder because the ledge is the birds’ home.

“I guess my head looked like one big egg to them. I looked like a nest, too.”

Banks backs that up. “The day he showed up for rehearsal, he was late, and his hair was a disaster,” Worthington’s co-star says. “He wore a ratty T-shirt that looked like he pulled it out of a laundry bin. He carried his script to the set in a Walgreens plastic bag. He looked like a homeless man.”

Worthington knows when he’s making lofty movies — and when he’s not. “This is unashamedly a popcorn movie,” he says of “Ledge.” “That’s why I wanted to do it. It’s like ‘The Negotiator’ or ‘Phone Booth.’ ”

Worthington didn’t always speak from such lofty perches. He grew up Down Under in Perth and graduated from Australia’s National Institute of Dramatic Art. By age 22, he was on stage and then Aussie TV with the series “Water Rats” (1996).

Between roles, he worked as a bricklayer. Eventually, he received big-screen notice for his 2002 film “Hart’s War.”

His career breakthrough came from playing Jake Sully in “Avatar” (2009) after Jake Gyllenhaal and Matt Damon reportedly turned down the role.

Since then, Worthington has had “Terminator Salvation” (2009), “The Debt” (2010) and “Texas Killing Fields” (2011).

After defeating the Kraken in “Clash of the Titans” (2010), Worthington returns to the role of Perseus for “Wrath of the Titans,” out March 30.

“When I look back in hindsight, I think [‘Clash’ is] too generic and bland,” Worthington says. “I’m the shaved-head action guy in that film. For the sequel, I sat down with the director and mapped out who Perseus is as a man and as a hero. I wanted to show a character that garnered empathy from the audience rather than people saying it could be played by anyone.

“Frankly, I f---ed up on the first one, but I have more leverage now as an actor,” he says. “I got lucky where I could do a sequel where I had a say and could rectify the mistakes I made the last time.”

He won’t be offering suggestions to James Cameron for the “Avatar” sequel that’s in the offing. “It’s not like I will say, ‘I’ve got some idea for the sequel,’ ” Worthington says with a laugh. “I can imagine him saying, ‘Oh, you do, Sam? You can easily be replaced.’ ”

In his spare time, Worthington avoids action-star behavior. “I don’t really like the gym. I try now to put that fact into my characters,” he says. “It’s like Perseus hurts his bum and complains.

“In fact, my girlfriend watched ‘Wrath’ and said, ‘Sam, you run really funny. You look out of breath and out of shape. It’s so real.’ I said, ‘In reality, I was just exhausted.’

“I’m a Method actor by fluke.”

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