Young Astin Toughened Up by Boot Camp for Part in ‘Memphis Belle’

Sean Astin jokes that he started acting “straight out of the womb.”

Well, not exactly. But as the son of actors Patty Duke and John Astin, the 19-year-old says it was a “natural evolution” for him to follow in their footsteps. He grew up on movie sets and began acting at 7, when his mother asked him to co-star with her in the ABC after-school special “Please Don’t Hit Me, Mom.”

Astin is appearing with Matthew Modine and Eric Stoltz in producer David Puttnam’s new movie “Memphis Belle,” which chronicles the famed U.S. B-17 bomber’s 25th and final mission over Nazi Germany. Astin plays Richard (“Rascal”) Moore, the wisecracking, womanizing ball turret gunner.

The actor didn’t have much knowledge about World War II. “I had no intensive education,” he says. “I got that firsthand when I did the film. They provided us with reading material.”

He and his co-stars also met the surviving members of the crew of the real Memphis Belle.

“I think it must have been the highlight of the experience,” says Astin. “We sat in a little pub and they told us stories. It was a wonderful chance to relate to these human beings.”

The cast also took a grueling two-week tour of boot camp before filming began in England. “That was amazingly physically straining,” Astin says. “There was a lot of food and sleep deprivation. It was wild. They gave us food you would have gotten in the ‘40s, like powdered eggs and whatever gloopy gop they ate. We also put in 18-hour days of training.”

Astin, now on location in Virginia on the action thriller “Toy Soldiers,” also is an aspiring filmmaker. He recently directed a short film, “On My Honor,” that is making the rounds at film festivals.

After completing “Toy Soldiers,” Astin hopes to start college. Initially, he was going to major in film, but now is thinking of literature. “I think I have a real good understanding of the nuts and bolts of filmmaking,” he says. “It took six months to make my film, and I put up most of the money myself. It was a thorough education. Now I want to learn how to write.”