Nick Stahl is best known to audiences for his moody and intense performances in festival and art-house films such as “Bully,” “The Sleepy Time Gal” and “In the Bedroom.” Which makes it rather surprising to find him taking over the role of predestined rebel leader John Connor (previously played by Edward Furlong) in the new “Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines,” opposite Claire Danes and, of course, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Acting since he was 14 (his feature debut was in Mel Gibson’s “The Man Without a Face”), Stahl, 23, doesn’t seem to be waiting around for bigger roles and paychecks from the ephemeral “heat” of his connection to the “Terminator” institution. It’s almost as though he sees his turn as an action hero as more a résumé item than a shot at mega-stardom. Stahl will also be seen in two coming independent films, “Bookies” and “Twist,” the latter shot after he finished principal work on “Terminator 3″ about a year ago. And this fall, he stars in the new HBO series “Carnivale,” about a Depression-era traveling carnival. He describes it as ” ‘Grapes of Wrath’ meets ‘Twin Peaks.’ ”

Was there something on the first day of shooting “T3″ that let you know this wasn’t like the kind of films you had done before?
I knew from the get-go. I knew what it was before I got there — a well-known franchise, elaborate sets, larger-than-life effects. Leading up to it, there was so much pressure because I had built it up so much in my mind. That first day, to see Arnold with the glasses and the wardrobe, I had to walk off set originally to collect myself and try to get centered. During filming, one of the bigger changes from anything else I’d done — besides the fact people would actually see this movie — was that it seemed so set in stone. There was no veering from any lines and, in a sense, this very volatile, free character was confined by the shooting. I had to really stick to the script exactly. I’m used to being able to throw in words here and there, to be more free with the material.

Was that the biggest adjustment for you in moving from character-driven independent films to a big-budget action movie?
Even more so the pace of the movie. The goal of any commercial movie is to appeal to as many people as possible, so I think there’s a real obsession now with speed. You might have an emotional beat, but it has to keep moving. [Director] Jonathan Mostow certainly understood the value of the characters and the emotional +through lines, but you still have to move it along. That’s something I wasn’t used to. I definitely felt the pressure of, “OK, let’s get on to blowing up that cop car.”

If “T3″ is a success, would you be up for another one?
I’m actually signed on for two more. But I can’t even think a week into the future, much less like that.

The ending of the new film certainly feels like it’s setting up another movie. Do you have any hints on what happens next?
I wouldn’t find out until a couple months before they filmed it. I barely knew where the movie I was in was going, to a degree, until the last second. It was such a secretive thing. I read a script, but it was under lock and key. Once I was going to screen-test for the role, I came in and I was kind of sealed into a room with this guy standing there, the script keeper guy, who waited until I finished the script. It was intense.

Since being picked out by Mel Gibson over thousands of other boys for a role in “The Man Without a Face”, Nick Stahl has put together an impressive and diverse CV. His films include “The Thin Red Line”, “Bully”, and “In the Bedroom”. Now he takes over from Edward Furlong to play potential saviour John Connor in “T3″.

What was your impression of the first two movies?

I was a huge fan of the second movie; I saw it about six times as a kid. I was a bit young when the first one came out.

Did you audition for the role, as you were replacing Ed Furlong?

I did. It was actually quite extensive. I had maybe five or six lengthy sessions working the scenes, which was pretty exhausting.

Do you know when you’re doing it, who you’re up against?

I knew there was me and like two other guys.

Who were the other guys?

Er… Shane West and Jake Gyllenhaal.

What were your first impressions of doing the film and Arnold?

Initially I was pretty intimidated by the scale of the whole movie, but also him, and just being part of this larger than life world. I’ve never done anything a fraction the size of this scale. [Arnold] very much puts you at ease, because he’s very calm with his work. He’s a very hard worker but at the same time doesn’t seem to take it too seriously. It was such a long shoot, it was pretty imperative that we had some laughs to get us through it.

You’ve just taken up golf. Did you play with Arnold, because he’s a good golfer?

I can barely hit a ball, so I held off. He’s also a big chess player and he loves to play chess on set. He said we should play, because I play a bit, but I was a bit scared to play him. So I never did.

Did Arnold encourage you to get on the weights?

He had this 20ft gym trailer, and he said I could use it any time. He invited me in, but after one look at all this gym equipment, I declined and went outside for a cigarette.

TORONTO — In a west-end warehouse/studio, I’m standing to the side as Gary Farmer and Nick Stahl rehearse a scene from Twist. Stahl is made up to look as if he’s beaten to a pulp. Gary Farmer, twice his size and age, is dabbing at him, treating “cuts and bruises.”

As director/writer Jacob Tierney stops to assess the scene, I realize there’s something squishy on the floor beneath my foot. It’s a still-wrapped condom.

“Well what do you expect?” says Cynthia Amsden, the unit publicist. “It’s a movie about male hustlers.”

Truly, this is not your father’s Charles Dickens.

Yes, this is that Twist. Stahl — best known as the murdered son in In The Bedroom — is “Dodge,” an updated version of The Artful Dodger, and the protagonist in the 23-year-old Tierney’s gritty update of the dark Victorian novel that earlier became a jolly musical. (That Oliver guy, played here by Joshua Close, has been reduced to the status of key supporting player).

And Farmer? The veteran Canadian aboriginal actor is Fagin, no longer a Jewish caricature or the mentor to mischievous pickpockets. Large and malevolent, with almost incongruous attacks of compassion, he’s the pimp and protector for a pack of young adults who make their living servicing the rich — including a repeat client known only as The Senator.

“I came up with the idea watching a production of Oliver the musical a few years ago,” the Montreal-born Tierney (TekWar, This Is My Father) said just before the feature production wrapped at Christmas. It was a longish writing process, but I decided I wanted to tell the story from the point of view of The Artful Dodger. He’s a mysterious character in the book. He doesn’t come from anywhere and he doesn’t go anywhere. He’s kind of abandoned in the novel.

“In the book, the central character (Oliver Twist) was the character who never belongs with this working-class crowd, and he gets out and gets the life he deserves, which is kind of a fallacy. Our Artful Dodger is the rich kid who’s slumming it, if you will, and Oliver is the kid who grew up in foster care.

“Beyond that, it’s still the same themes as the book, the exploitation of children and the commodity of youth. I wanted to explore themes of sexual abuse, that’s pretty well what this is about. This man, Fagin, runs a brothel of young boys, sends them to work and brings them home and takes care of them. It’s an identical structure, except they’re hustlers.”

As he was banging out the script, Tierney was rooming with Stahl, who, as luck would have it, is now on the cusp of becoming a big enough star to sell a movie. Following the Oscar fuss of In The Bedroom (for which Tom Wilkinson won best supporting actor), this year moviegoers will see Stahl as the older John Conner in Terminator 3: The Rise Of The Machines.

“We were roommates in L.A.,” Stahl says of Tierney. “We had a friend in common and we all ended up living in this house in Santa Monica with a bunch of guys for two and a half years. It was like a big actor frat house.” (Castmate Tygh Runyan is also an erstwhile member of the “actor frat house.”)

It’s an interesting experience for Farmer, who is so much bigger and older than his fellow cast, that he looks like he was dropped in from another planet. Farmer sees the movie — particularly the off-camera Senator and the mysterious “Bill” to whom Fagin answers — as a metaphor for an upper class that commits crimes without getting its hands dirty.

“Bill, who we never see, represents that mysterious corporate world that we’re all supposed to respect for some reason,” says Farmer, who also just finished filming Deepa Mehta’s The Republic Of Love.

“The whole theme of the corruption of innocence is very timely. Stories like the abuse at Maple Leaf Gardens, the underworld and the corporate world, it kind of mirrors what’s happening to us as a society.”

By Rebecca Murray
Source: About.com

Stepping into a role created by another actor is never an easy task. In “Terminator 3,” Nick Stahl fills the role Edward Furlong occupied in “T2.” Questions about the casting change are inevitable but one look at Nick Stahl’s performance in the critically acclaimed relationship drama, “In the Bedroom,” put aside any doubts the filmmakers had about his ability to express Connor’s internal battle.

“Connor is very preoccupied with the existential dilemma in which he finds himself, so I needed an actor who could convey all that pathos, that emotion, that gravitas. It’s difficult to find an actor who is 22 or 23 years old, and yet feels in some sense they’re carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders. That’s what I thought was so compelling about Nick Stahl. He gives you that sense,” explains director Jonathan Mostow.

NICK STAHL (’John Connor’)

What is one little tidbit or surprise about your character that you can give away, without giving away too much?
I would say that John Connor is a little bit more hardened by his experiences and he’s a little more cynical now. So he’s coming from a different place than he did in the second movie. When he was a kid, the world was a little more wide open and now he’s a little more grounded and a little more closer to reality.

Did you ever meet with Edward Furlong?
I actually never did. I watched the second movie a lot – and the first movie for that matter – but I think he did a great job with the role in the second movie. I didn’t nessarily emulate but certain qualities you naturally pick up from a performance.

Are you feeling any pressure?
Tonight I’m just trying to have fun. I’m trying to rub the pressure off a bit. This is exhilarating, you know? I didn’t expect this big of an event. Now I just want to have fun and see the movie and see the crowd’s reaction. It’s going to be fun.

Have you seen the movie yet?
I have actually seen it once but not with a crowd. I want to see it with a whole crowd.

What’s happening with your movie, “Bookies?”
I don’t know. I know it went to Sundance Film Festival and hopefully it will be distributed. I don’t know but we’ll see.

Like the hapless drifter he plays on “Carnivale,” actor Nick Stahl is not exactly brimming with self-confidence.

When he watches his performance in “Terminator 3,” he picks himself apart. “All you see,” he says, “is the inconsistencies, the negative things.” And in parallel to his “Carnivale” character, Ben Hawkins, Stahl, a 23-year-old Dallas native, isn’t much into big scenes. He’d rather be alone.

Stahl lives by himself and says he can go a day without speaking to anyone. “I don’t like crowds,” he says, sitting on a wooden bench at the HBO party with a carnival theme. As festivities swirl around him, Stahl easily steps aside from it.

An impatient publicist is near his side, listening to every word and counting the moments until the interview is over. Behind him is a stage where novelty acts, such as a man who eats fire, are performing. Stahl doesn’t give it a glance. He says Ben is the same way, “an extreme loner,” but his “Carnivale” persona has secrets to keep.

Among them is the ability to heal and transfer energy from the life around him and direct it into something _ or someone _ else. After his mother refuses to let him use his talents to keep her alive, dies and refuses his talents, Ben hooks up with a strange carnival passing through. The freak show only makes him feel more out of place. When nosey co-workers aren’t prying at him, he’s getting probed by a mind reader.

“Carnivale,” a 12-part series debuting tonight at 9:35, centers on Ben’s new life in the carnival while also documenting, in another story, a minister and his mysterious visions of doom. Ben would rather deny his gifts and keep a low profile, but the carnival makes it increasingly harder to do.

“Carnivale” also stars Clancy Brown, Adrienne Barbeau, Clea DuVall and Amy Madigan. The drama is touted as HBO’s new buzz show, a signature series that the pay channel is hoping will be water cooler fodder like “The Sopranos,” “Sex and the City” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”

Critics are giving it mixed reviews, saying the show is too slow and unwilling to spill its many secrets early on. Stahl has faced tough critics before. He has been acting since age 10, but didn’t make the move to Los Angeles until age 16. He says the city is a tough place to make friends and build a personal life.

“It’s a place built on this industry, and that’s hard to get used to,” he says. “Whenever (your career) is not on your mind, then there is always something there to remind you of it.

“Early on, it was very competitive in that way, and I am not an extremely competitive person. I had to find ways to enjoy it. I had to do my own thing and not get caught up in that kind of rat race.”

Stahl says his insecurities are “more normal things,” such as relationships. Rarely does he find himself fretting over career problems.

He was so confident, in fact, that he was not looking to do a series when “Carnivale” landed in his lap. And why should he? Stahl starred as John Connor in “Terminator 3,” one of this year’s biggest films.

Airs Tonight “Carnivale”:
Nick Stahl stars in this new 12-part drama, set during the Depression, as a man who can heal others. He joins a carnival traveling across the Dust Bowl. It debuts at 9:35 tonight on HBO.

Tonight’s episode:
In the opener, “Milfay,” Ben (Nick Stahl) reluctantly joins the carnival after being run off his family’s Oklahoma farm.

Leaning against a brick wall, the actor Nick Stahl suffers one lost layer of blush to the tip of his snub nose, gently administered by a seasoned professional. Most noses hovering amid the heavy bags and jump ropes of the La Brea Boxing Academy this morning haven’t enjoyed such a tender fate. The tough old trainers and Golden Gloves alumni wear their twisted, flattened monuments to past pain and cruelty right between the eyes. At 23, Stahl stands 5 feet 11 inches, nearly as tall as Mike Tyson, but he’s slender enough to be a welterweight. He crouches beside the academy’s center ring, where an ex-rugby player is smashing the head of his sparring partner. Turning a sensitive gaze toward the camera, Stahl seems in need of the kind of protection Arnold Schwarzenegger will be providing him in this month’s Terminator 3, in which he plays the latest incarnation of John Connor, humanity’s ultimate savior against the evil machines.

Stahl’s love of boxing is a love of beautiful wounds. The first Mike Tyson-Evander Holyfield fight–the one free of ear mutilation–hooked him on the sport. While he has more respect for Holyfield’s career, he’s attracted to Tyson’s pathos. “When Tyson lost to Lennox Lewis, he was like a child. He was truly humbled,” he says. “He gave Lewis a hug, and he was like, ‘Please let me fight you again.’ I see Tyson as an innately smart guy, but it’s filtered through this mask of problems that he has, so that’s what people see.” Stahl is at least as captivated by the punishment boxers endure as by the pain they inflict. “Some people are born with this ability to get hit, and it doesn’t faze them,” he says.
“Some guys, you hit them once and they’re done.”

In the movies, Stahl is usually done in. In Terrence Malick’s 1998 film The Thin Red Line he lasted just long enough for the audience to glimpse, in languid succession, his terrified face aboard a ship, his terrified face on a battlefield, and his corpse riddled with rifle fire.

For In the Bedroom, his breakthrough film of 2001, Stahl fared worse. The sweetness, the guilelessness, the androgynous fragility he lent to his role as a love-struck New England college student made his murder by a jealous husband something worse than horrifying. “It seems more times than not I die in the movies. I’ve died something like ten times,” says Stahl, now smoking a cigarette in the gym’s parking lot. “It’s odd–it’s kind of my forte or something. I moved here when I was 16. That’s when that whole teen craze was around. Those roles were just a celebration of teenage idiocy. Coming into the room and jumping around and being a crazy, zany guy–I never did well at that. I feel like I’m much more suited to pain than pleasure onscreen. It’s much easier for me to do something like cry or be upset than to have fun.”

As a ten-year-old in the Dallas suburb of Richardson, Texas, Stahl landed the role of one of two sons led to the slaughter in a production of Medea. “I don’t think I had a line,” Stahl says. “There was me and a white kid with this giant Afro. Medea follows us. We’d go offstage and scream as if she was stabbing us, and then we would be carried out covered in corn syrup.”

The stage violence insulated him for a time from other afflictions. When Stahl was two, his father left him, his mother, and his two sisters. “I actually met him twice as a kid in kind of weird roundabout ways, but he wasn’t around,” Stahl says. “I didn’t have a happy childhood. I always wanted to be an adult. I felt that I was missing out on something. I feel like I’m in therapy right now. But I never linked it directly to my father. It might have more subconscious weight than I realize, but it was never a burden on my shoulders.” Searching memories of his hometown, Stahl singles out the drinking and the drugs, the pointless physical confrontations and frustrations, the time he was loitering on a street corner when a good friend had a 40-ounce beer bottle broken over his head–”a gruesome occurrence,” he calls it.

In a few of those films where his life has been spared, Stahl plays fatherless boys redeemed by male guardians: the forlorn Latin student uplifted by a mutilated Mel Gibson in 1993’s The Man Without a Face, and now John Connor taking cover behind Schwarzenegger in Terminator 3.

In Stahl’s own extracurricular art, the father-son dynamic rarely works out happily The actor is also an amateur painter who is drawn to tragedy, mythology, and the Bible. He considers only two of his canvases to be completed works. One that he’s still working on is a scene of Abraham taking the knife to Isaac at the altar. “Which is ridiculous,” he says, “I know.” Stahl finished a screenplay a few years back that has yet to be produced. He wrote in no less than three father figures to torment the antihero he created with himself in mind. There’s the absent biological father who’s just escaped from a mental institution and may or may not be coming home. There’s the unhinged stepfather who chases Stahl’s character around the family trailer with a baseball bat. Then there’s the flamboyant cockfight promoter who takes the boy under his wing like Fagin in some latter-day Oliver Twist and orders him to kill his best friend in a test of loyalty.

The mental institution escapee, for his part, does eventually show up as his son’s would-be rescuer. “He wants to take the kid,” Stahl says. “He kind of claims that he’s reformed and he is a changed person. He wants to give this kid a better life and take him out of this world, but it’s too late really, and the kid is too far gone into this situation. So it ends kind of tragically.” Not with the best friend’s murder, of course. In this, as in many other films, the corpse at the grim conclusion is Nick Stahl’s.

One of the fresh faces appearing in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines is Nick Stahl, veteran of such acclaimed films as In the Bedroom and The Thin Red Line.

With Edward Furlong officially entering into the drug-addled, self-destructive phase of his E! True Hollywood Story, understandably skittish producers booted the troubled child actor from the project and offered the role to Stahl. Seeing Stahl in the role of John Connor is a little odd at first, but the feeling fades quickly. It’s kind of like when your favorite rock band changes bass players – it’s not nearly as big a deal as one would think.Joblo.com interviews Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines star Nick Stahl

One of the fresh faces appearing in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines is Nick Stahl, veteran of such acclaimed films as In the Bedroom and The Thin Red Line.

With Edward Furlong officially entering into the drug-addled, self-destructive phase of his E! True Hollywood Story, understandably skittish producers booted the troubled child actor from the project and offered the role to Stahl. Seeing Stahl in the role of John Connor is a little odd at first, but the feeling fades quickly. It’s kind of like when your favorite rock band changes bass players – it’s not nearly as big a deal as one would think.

Stahl, looking a little bit like a rock star himself (unshaven, mussed-up hair, untucked shirt), talked about stepping into the blockbuster Terminator franchise.

Do you consider yourself more of an “In the Bedroom” or more of a “T-3” actor?
I always respond to good material, good roles and stories. I can see the importance of doing a movie that’s a little bigger, that more people will see, just to create more opportunities.
But that was the furthest thing from my mind. It’s not that I didn’t want to do a blockbuster, but I just always was cast in smaller movies. More people will see this than any other movie I’ve done, by far. That’s a positive thing, I guess.

Were you a fan of the Terminator movies?
I was. Mostly the second movie, because I was really young when the first one came out. I watched the first one once I was cast in this. But I loved the second one – I saw it multiple times.

Can you talk about meeting Arnold?
I met him when we started rehearsing for the movie. I quickly discovered that he likes to sort of give you a hard time. That’s his sense of humor. He said, “You know, I saw your audition tape.” I was all nervous, and he said, “It was…all right.” (Laughs)

That’s sort of his sensibility. But it was great. He has a really strong work ethic. It was evident that he really wanted to make this movie as good as possible, so he really wanted to collaborate with the director and worked really hard.
That was definitely something refreshing to see, from someone of his stature.

What’s it like stepping into a movie franchise that you were such a big fan of when you were a kid?
I didn’t know what to expect from it. There was some initial pressure I felt, I guess, just because the role had been done before. I know that there were a lot of fans that wanted to see that again, to see that formula repeated. But I realized that I really couldn’t think about that and I had a responsibility to make it my own.

This was a pretty intense role, from a physical standpoint.
Yeah. I’ve done physical roles before, but not as physical throughout as this one is. There’s such a furious pace throughout the movie – we never stop running. There were times in the movie when I felt like my role consisted of looking over my shoulder and saying, “Come on!” And Claire’s role consisted of saying, “Oh my God!” (Laughs).

I also did some weapons training for the film. It was as if I got to do everything I wanted to do as a kid. I got to learn to ride a motorcycle, too, which is something I’d wanted to do anyway.

But it really doesn’t matter how much you work out – you still have to face Arnold each day.
Right. It’s definitely an uphill battle. Arnold has a gym housed in this huge truck – an 18 wheeler that followed us around wherever we went. He told me I could use it whenever I wanted to, but I never did. I was a little freaked out by the notion, I guess, but I looked inside a few times. It’s a nice setup.

What was the audition process like?
When I found out they were doing the movie, they didn’t have a script or anything. But they did say they were going to focus more on John Connor as a protagonist. I felt like it was an interesting idea, to explore what he’s like 10 years later. The one thing that struck me with the second film was that, despite the fact that it is a commercial movie with all this action, there was a really strong story. That really intrigued me.
I knew I wasn’t really an action star or whatever, but if it’s a good role, then maybe I’ll have a shot.

So I went in for the first audition, which led to five or more auditions and two or three screen tests. It was pretty intense – each time it was one or two hours, really hatching it out.

Was Arnold involved at any point in the audition process?

No. There was just a couple of readers who tried to do Arnold. It was like two or three USC students reading opposite me. And they could not help doing at least a mild impression of him. But I didn’t meet him until rehearsals started.

When did you get to see the script?
I didn’t get to read it until after I got the role. I went to an office and had to go into this room, where some guy was standing there. I think he was the “script-keeper” or something. It was very much under wraps. I sat in the room – I felt like I was sealed into a vault – and read it. But I couldn’t take it with me.

Are you signed on to do a sequel?
Yeah I am. But, it’s all speculative, I guess – depending on the success of this movie.