Noah Hathaway Had To Win His Role In The NeverEnding Story Twice
Few scenes get me as much as that scene in "The Neverending Story" where Atreyu and Artax attempt to cross through the Swamp of Sadness. "Everyone knew that whoever let the sadness overtake him, would sink into the swamp," reads Bastian (Barret Oliver) in the film. Of course, anytime a scene begins with that kind of narration, you know things are not going to end well for at least one of the characters on screen. And it's true. Artax, that beautiful, beloved white stallion, lets the swamp get the best of him. The horse refuses to take one more step and slowly begins to sink into the mud while a panicked Atreyu (Noah Hathaway) desperately tries to get his horse to move. "Please," he pleads. "You're my friend!" And there I go again crying into my dog's fur as I hold him close to my chest and sob. This scene is the fantasy nerd's equivalent to Jack and Rose at the end of "Titanic," I swear.
But it's not just the fact that Artax lets the sadness get to him or that, in the end, even the love of Atreyu isn't enough to rescue him from his despair. It's also that Noah Hathaway does a fantastic job tugging at the horse, as well as our heartstrings. Throughout the entire film, Hathaway is perfect as Atreyu, the confident, self-assured boy tasked with the near-impossible quest of saving Fantasia and its Empress from the threat of The Nothing. As a child watching the film, no one was as cool as Atreyu, which means that no one was as cool as Hathaway. It might be surprising to find out then that Hathaway's journey to "The Neverending Story" wasn't an immediate one. Instead, he had to really prove himself before getting cast in the film.
A hero two times over
In an oral history about "The Neverending Story" for Entertainment Weekly, Noah Hathaway talked about getting cast as Atreyu. He told EW, "My casting has a whole backstory because there was a different director attached before Wolfgang [Petersen]. They did one of those worldwide searches to cast the role and they saw something like 50,000 kids [laughs]." Because the movie ended up changing directors partway through casting, this meant that Hathaway had to audition many times before getting the part. In fact, even though he had been cast as Atreyu by the initial director, when Petersen came on board, he still had to re-audition.
"They let me go and started the whole casting process again and I had to audition for Wolfgang and two producers. Finally, after like three or four more [auditions], I got hired again," explained Hathaway. To some, this might seem like fate that both directors saw him as the perfect fit for the part, but Hathaway resisted giving in to that idea. He said, "I don't want to say it was 'meant to be' because I really worked my ass for it. I must've read the script three dozen times and knew every line."
Hathaway certainly feels that he was the right kid for the role, though. "I was a really sensitive, ballsy, great kid growing up, pretty much like Atreyu was in a lot of ways. And so, it was a perfect fit," he said. Even Petersen admits that Hathaway was perfect, saying, "Noah had this attitude from the very beginning, he was Atreyu. He walked his own walk and he had his own style, and that was good. [...] He held his head up high and he was a hero."