Copley sings Jan Pierewiet in $0m film

South African actor Sharlto Copley says his favourite scene from his new movie Elysium is singing the Afrikaans children's song Jan Pierewiet.

Speaking to the Breakfast Xpress team on Tuesday morning, he says he never thought the song would actually make it into the film.

It's probably my favourite scene in the film because what are the odds as a South African that you can sing an Afrikaans nursery rhyme in a $110 million science fiction movie. I say people should just go and see it because it might never happen again in their lifetime.

The film is South African-born director Neill Blomkamps follow-up to the hit District 9 and was released in South Africa on 30 August.

The movie, which also stars Matt Damon and Jodie Foster, is set in the year 2154, where two classes of people exist.

The first are the very wealthy who live on Elysium, a man-made space station, and the rest live on an overpopulated, ruined Earth.

Copley compared Elysium to living in an ultimate gated community in Sandton.

It's sort of like a Sandton in the sky and everyone else is on earth and wants to try and get in there.

He said the big-budget film was fun to shoot, specifically because his character in the film is just entertaining and different.

With more money you have an easier time. I also opted to play the villain. When I read the script, I told Neill it would be interesting for me to play the villain. Its something different from what we did the first time together.

But Copley says he was a bit nervous about playing the bad guy.

I was a bit nervous about making him South African which we ended up doing. Neill and I were always joking about the fact that if we made a South African villain we are sort of undoing all the good work we did for white South Africans with Wikus.

He joked that it's the first time a typical Johannesburg South accent has been done in a Hollywood film.

Copley said he had an amazing time working with Damon in the film.

You end up going through a lot together when you are promoting the film. Sometimes on the movie you don't have as much time to hang out. But even during filming we went fishing, played poker and spoke about films constantly. It's useful to have friends or people in the business who share similar perspectives.

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