Sunday, March 9, 2008

The Ides of March have yet to arrive, and already it’s been a tough year for former child stars. Before Heath Ledger’s accidental drug death, Brad Renfro was found dead. Substance abuse is the suspected cause.

Nick Stahl, who already was a stage veteran when he made his first movie at age 10, worked with Renfro on “Bully.”

“There was a lot of recreational drinking and things like that going on during the shoot,” Stahl said. “For someone like me, who has been through drugs and drinking, it was pretty easy to spot that Brad had problems.”

He says he didn’t try to help Renfro “because we didn’t have that kind of a relationship. We weren’t that close.”

At 28 and with leads in “Sleepwalking” this month and “Quid Pro Quo” in April, Stahl appears to have escaped the demons of other child actors. He arrives right on time for an interview at the St. Regis, his hair freshly washed and sticking up in the fashion of the day and wearing a crisply ironed checkered shirt.

Stahl has given a great deal of thought to what pushes young people over the edge when Hollywood beckons and decided part of it comes from living in two worlds and not belonging in either.

“It warps your ability to find a certain identity. You are in a strange limbo. You are working in an adult world but being very young, you are not a part of it. You can’t be included in it really. Then you go home and because you’re with your friends not all that often, you’re not fully a part of that, either.”

He was impressed by AnnaSophia Robb, 14, the actress who plays his niece in “Sleepwalking.”

“She is much more well adjusted then I was at that age. She has more of a solid foundation and is more together,” he says of the young star of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and “Because of Winn-Dixie.”

Charlize Theron handpicked Stahl to play her brother in “Sleepwalking,” which she also produced. She told him she had seen some of his work.

“It was very nice not to have to audition,” Stahl said.

The brother is a little strange – one of the other characters tells him, “You creep me out.” Stahl said he didn’t see him that way.

“He’s a pretty complex character who has suffered trauma at the hands of his dad,” played by Dennis Hopper. Although Theron disappears through the whole middle section of the film, her face is still prominent on the poster.

“Of course she’s prominent. I mean, it’s a business, and given that much space, she will sell some tickets. She’s a movie star.”

Stahl’s movie career began playing opposite another movie star, Mel Gibson, in his directing debut. He had seen an audition tape Stahl did for another movie and asked him to do one for “The Man Without a Face.”

“I was kind of overwhelmed being in every scene,” said Stahl, who considers himself fortunate to be directed by Gibson so early in his career – he was just 13. “Mel was not demanding in the least bit. He has the energy of a kid, so he was really suited to directing. He made it fun.”

A few years later, Stahl, his mother and two older sisters moved from Dallas to Los Angeles. His mother gave up her jobs as a brokerage assistant and part-time seamstress – she did the costumes for the children’s theater where her son got his first taste of acting – to help him with his career. Stahl, who grew up without a father, suddenly found himself the breadwinner of the family.

The move to Los Angeles can be rough on fledgling actors.

“When you are young and you move to Los Angeles, you have time on your hands and you might have some money,” Stahl said. “But you still have the same problems in your life you had from before you moved there.”

This was the period when Stahl started experimenting with drugs and alcohol.

“It is very easy to happen,” he said. “Like I said, everybody has a share of family problems. Just because you have some success and you make some money and people start to know who you are, your problems are still there.”

Sometimes the fame makes it worse.

“There are certain superficial elements of the business – kind of putting on a good face even though you might be in pain,” he said. “That’s suppression to me.”

The requirement of three hours of school work on every movie set “was just getting really hard to keep doing. It kind of became a nuisance,” said Stahl, who satisfied the requirement by earning his general equivalency diploma.

The move to be closer to casting agents didn’t immediately pan out for him. As a teenager, he did “a whole handful of awful TV movies just to make money.”

He thought his luck had changed when maverick director Terrence Malick tapped him to be in “The Thin Red Line.” His role started out bigger than it wound up after Malick’s editing.

“Everyone seemed to get cut. Next to Adrien I can’t complain,” Stahl said, referring to Adrien Brody, whose starring role ended up almost completely cut.

Stahl’s character in the prestige art film “In the Bedroom” gets killed fairly early on. He landed a continuing role on HBO’s “CarnivÀle,” only to have the plug pulled on the series after two years.

He caught a break when Edward Furlough, the actor who originated the role of John Connor in “Terminator,” had to be replaced. But in the easy-come-easy-go trajectory of Hollywood, Stahl found out that he is to be replaced in “Terminator 4″ by Christian Bale.

“I would have loved to have done the next one,” said Stahl, who would have made big bucks compared to the salaries he gets for the indies he often does. “But they changed the franchise. My character is older in this one. I think it is more of a futuristic thing.”

He can look forward to “Sleepwalking” and, almost immediately afterward, “Quid Pro Quo,” in which he plays a paraplegic NPR reporter who investigates a strange subculture of people.

His most recent films were completed a while ago, and Stahl has had a lot of free time since. With no significant other at the moment, he lives alone in Southern California.

“It’s pretty nice. I’m just selfish and enjoying my own time,” he said. “I’ve never been a worrier. I’ve always found work when I really needed to, so I have faith.”

SLEEPWALKING (R) opens Friday at Bay Area theaters.

E-mail Ruthe Stein at rstein@sfchron icle.com.

The Daily Helmsman
By: Johanna Edwards
Arts and Entertainment Editor
Issue date: 11/28/01 Section: Arts & Entertainment

Actor Nick Stahl likes to do things differently.

While many stars his age — Freddie Prinze, Jr., for instance — go for teen comedies and big budget fare, actor Stahl has chosen to avoid popcorn flicks, sticking with smaller, more critically praised films.

“I guess I have a different idea of success,” Stahl said in a phone interview. “I mean, I just haven’t really been that into a lot of these commercial scripts that come along because they seem to be really repetitive. It’s just nothing new or interesting. It’s a story that doesn’t really need to be told.”

Luckily for him, that hasn’t been a problem.

“I’ve been really fortunate in the past couple of years to get some good quality film work. I’ve been pretty lucky in the roles that I’ve been getting I just hope to continue that. I don’t really have a set pattern for myself,” Stahl said. “I really like variety and just doing something completely different than the last thing I’ve done. That’s really one of the biggest things that I look for.”

A native Texan, Stahl jump-started his film career at the age of 12 with a starring role in the Mel Gibson film The Man Without a Face. He followed that up with roles in The Thin Red Line and Disturbing Behavior. Though both films were ill-received, they gave Stahl some much needed publicity, and helped him land future gigs like his lead part in the dark drama Bully.

Stahl can be seen next romancing Marisa Tomei in the acclaimed drama, In the Bedroom, which opens Friday.

“It was a lot of good people coming together for a good script,” Stahl said of In the Bedroom, which is already drawing Oscar buzz. “I guess it might have given me some kind of hope that really good films can be made. “

Sometimes they have trouble getting made, if the studio doesn’t think it’s going to make a ton of money — that stuff. The relationships with the cast and crew were really great. I keep up with all of them.”

In the Bedroom gave Stahl the chance to work with some of Hollywood’s most celebrated actors, including Academy Award-winners Sissy Spacek and Tomei.

The film centers around a doomed love story between Stahl’s character, Frank, and an older woman, Natalie (Tomei). In the beginning, Stahl found his love scenes with Tomei to be a bit daunting.

“It was a little intimidating at first,” he admitted. “She’s not only older but she’s an extremely beautiful woman and quite talented. My voice might have dropped a couple of octaves.”

But in the end, Tomei — as well as the rest of the cast — put him at ease.

“It was intimidating until you actually meet these people, like Sissy who’s the coolest, most normal person you’ll ever meet,” he said. “They were all really great people. It was a great working atmosphere. With that type of cast it really puts you at ease.”

Stahl said the strength of the script attracted him to the project.

“I felt like there was a real transformation to the character, which I really liked. It seemed like it could be somewhat challenging for me, something different,” he said. “I’ve never done a role like that before. It was more of an adult role than I’ve done before. I think really the biggest thing for me was just that the script was so good, the story as a whole. I think it kind of took precedence over the character itself.”

Stahl took full advantage of working with such skilled actors, and tried to soak up as much advice from them as possible.

“I really just spent as much time with them as I could,” he said. “I just listened to these people’s stories. I don’t think you could go in and not learn from people who have been doing this for so long. They’re just real professionals.”

A native of Texas, Stahl said he really hasn’t been influenced by his origins.

“I grew up in the suburbs of Dallas. You’ll find in Texas this real pride for the state, which I for some reason seem to lack a little bit,” he said. “Perhaps because the suburbs I grew up in were just generic really. I didn’t grow up out on the plains or anything. I love the State and I love stories that take place in the state, but I don’t think it really dominates my pursuits.”

While Stahl didn’t have a laundry list of whom he’d like to work with, he summed it up: “I’d like to work with people who are serious about film and want to do something interesting.”

What he isn’t as keen on doing is television.

“I definitely like film more than television. I haven’t done that much TV, just a couple of guest-spot things when I was younger,” he said. “Acting in film is a great job; you’re able to travel. It’s a real sort of creative outlet for me. I love theater as well. Sometimes it’s kind of tough to pay the bills when you do theater. Film pays quite a bit more,” he said with a laugh. “I guess that would be another plus as well.”

He may not have been the original John Connor, but up until recently Nick Stahl was the most recent version of mankind’s only hope. Now, Christian Bale is the newest “Terminator” star, Thomas Dekker is the kid brooding all over “The Sarah Connor Chronicles,” and the “T3” actor has a message for the fans wondering why he…ahem…won’t be back.

“I don’t care really, to be honest,” admitted the 28-year-old actor, at Sundance recently to promote “Sleepwalking” and “Quid Pro Quo,” two upcoming indies with decidedly smaller budgets than “Rise of the Machines.” “I don’t have much interest.”

In regards to the soon-to-shoot “Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins,” Stahl said he had been told some time ago that his considerable talents would not be required for the fourth movie, although he is scratching his head over rumors that Bale will be 30-years-old in the flick.

“They said it would be a 50-year-old man, but I guess they reduced the age a little bit,” Stahl said of how the franchise producers had explained the plot to him. “That’s what they told me very early on [in development of the 'Salvation' script]. That it was gonna take place further in the future, and I probably wouldn’t be on.”

Discussing the man who will step into Stahl’s role, much as he once did for the legendary Eddie Furlong, the actor said: “I like [Bale] a lot…he’s a little older, and they wanted someone a little older, and also he’s got a name. He’s a big guy now. So, God bless.”

“I love the franchise, and I love the movies,” he continued, “so I’ll probably be seeing the fourth one.”

Stahl feels quite differently, however, when it comes to the newly-launched TV show on Fox. “That I won’t be seeing,” he said of “Chronicles,” which focuses on the years leading up to Stahl’s film. “I don’t watch much TV; I’m not a big TV guy.”

“I’m not a big fan of the ocean,” says Nick Stahl. “I’m sort of a land creature.” And yet, the soft-spoken young actor has been swimming in Los Angeles’ coastal capital – Hollywood – since roughly age 10. First there was a pair of TV movies, and then came his breakout role in The Man Without a Face alongside Mel Gibson at the mere age of 13. The fact that he stills lives in L.A. but longs for his land-locked home of Dallas suggests Stahl’s current conflicted state as a sought-after rising thespian: industry vet at only 21, but ready to try something different.

Indeed, Stahl is taking on new challenges: this summer, he plays the sick title character of Larry Clark’s killer Kids redux flick Bully, and in the fall, two stunning family dramas – Todd Field’s In the Bedroom and Christopher Münch’s Sleepy Time Gal – will solidify Stahl’s unique up-and-comer status. Before 2001, Stahl’s most memorable screen time came in his cutesy roles of pre-adolescence, an “evil brain-sucking preppy kid” in the teen flick Disturbing Behavior, and as a dying soldier in Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line. “In the past few years, it seems that there is more content that I can relate to in the smaller films,”Stahl says of his recent journey into indie-land.

Bully may be the biggest stretch, however. Based on actual events, the film tells the story of Bobby Kent (played by Stahl, with menace and charm), a seemingly mild-mannered college-bound Floridian teen who beats and pimps his best friend and rapes his friends girlfriends, and is then murdered for it. “I was a bit intimidated by the character,”Stahl recalls. “All I could do was just let go. I was never an angry kid growing up, but I definitely witnessed kids like that. All I could do was just try to give in to that anger and let it out.”

In Sleepy Time Gal, Stahl is son to a single mother dying of cancer (Jacqueline Bisset). “I grew up with just my mom, so I could connect in that way,” he says. And for In the Bedroom, Stahl plays another collegiate-type with a bright future “who is blindsided by love,” he explains. “Before Nathalie [Marisa Tomei] comes along,” Stahl continues, “he was just a kid who had things figured out, then he becomes confused, a bit baffled, by his next step.”

Stahl’s own next steps are uncertain as well. He’d like to work with British director Ken Loach because, he says, “his movies don’t follow any particular formula,” just as Stahl himself rejects a formula life. “There’s definitely pressures in this town to do things a certain way,” he says. “I’m glad I went through that stuff. I had a publicist when I was younger and I don’t have one now and I don’t want one. I’m glad I went through that, saw what it was, and now I can say I’m doing things in my own way.”

While most people in their early-”20s face a very difficult time in their lives, usually involving college and deciding their future profession, 22-year-old Nick Stahl, who is co-starring in the film “In the Bedroom” with Marissa Tomei, also leads a challenging life that of an up-and-coming new actor.

Stahl began acting as a young child, doing theater in his home state of Texas before moving onto commercials and then films.

“For me, (my childhood) was sort of a dual life. I was, like, a normal kid in Texas, and then I would fly off and do a movie and come back,” Stahl said. “It was different wasn”t what the rest of my friends were doing.”

Stahl earned the breakthrough he needed when he was hand-selected to star opposite Mel Gibson in “The Man Without a Face.” Stahl was 12 during its filming, and has since endured the obstacles of overcoming childhood success in the film industry.

“It was difficult at times. You have, like, a certain set of roles that you”re up for as a kid, and as you age it really changes. When I was (around the age of) 14, I didn”t work for almost two years, just because that”s a really awkward age to begin with.”

With a recent surge of roles, including the films “Disturbing Behavior” and “Bully,” he feels like he is finally playing more mature characters, especially in Todd Field”s upcoming “In The Bedroom.”

“It”s definitely tricky for me still, but this movie, I feel, is one of my first more adult roles.”

Stahl acknowledges that there were many factors in his wanting to be a part of Todd Field”s directorial debut. “I think there was a real transformation in the character that was interesting. And really, I just loved the script and the writing.”

Stahl portrays Frank Fowler, the only son of a seemingly perfect couple, who spends his summer before college on a lobster boat, while also engaged in a relationship with a much older woman (Marisa Tomei). Stahl actually prepared for the movie by being a real lobster fisherman for a few days.

“It was really great. I wish I had had more time to do it actually. We got to go out a couple days, but it was a real discovery for me, because it”s a real different world. And it helped me physically to sort of acclimate to the role, and I came away with a real respect for the profession as well. I mean, these guys that do this for a living it”s a real tough job and sort of a lonely job as well.”

Stahl admits being “really excited” at the early Oscar buzz for the film, as he also responds to the claim that “In the Bedroom” is not for the emotionally squeamish.

“If people don”t want to go to a film to experience emotion then I guess they should just go see the newest teen flick. The film attempts to make a statement that is more than a lot of films that I have seen attempt to do.”

Stahl is currently in Germany shooting a movie called “Bookies,” about three friends attending college together, which is due out sometime next year.

As for Stahl”s own personal education plans, he is just enjoying his acting career right now.

“Its kinda hard to say what I”ll be doing down the road. I really like what I do now. I don”t know if I will go to school or anything like that, because that”s really not my goal right now it”s to keep working.”

By Sarah Goldsmith

Producers wanted a fat kid to play Gavin, the resident head-banging outcast of this month’s thriller Disturbing Behavior. At 5′10″ and 130 pounds, Nick Stahl was hardly a shoo-in. He wanted the part but wasn’t about to start stuffing his face to get it. “It’s not that I’m vain,” he says. Still, Stahl, 18, did a screen test; when he didn’t hear anything, he was convinced he was out of the running. “I was sure I didn’t get it,” he says.

In the end, the extra baggage was not an issuethe part was hisbut when Stahl was getting into character, he found that Gavin’s personal style clashed with his own. “He was into heavy metal and dressed in rags, kind of a Whitesnake look,” says the soft-spoken actor. “I hate that kind of music, but I had to learn to like it.” Stahl’s taste leans toward artists like Sarah McLachlan and Björk. As for clothes, his self-described style is “nothing very distinctive, just Texas casual.”

The Texas influence comes from Stahl’s hometown of Dallas, where he started acting in school plays at age four. He made the giant leap to films at age 13. And what a debut. He played opposite Mel Gibson in the 1993 drama The Man Without A Face. Gibson’s ultrarelaxed on-set attitude had a significant impact of Stahl. “We were filming this scene on the beach and there were these sand crabs crawling around. Mell asked me, “Do you like crab?” and then he reached down and popped one in his mouth and crunched it up,” Stahl says. “After that point there was no anxiety.” Stahl continued to work with Hollywood’s finestat 14, he costarred in Safe Passage with Susan Sarandon, and this December Stahl can be seen playing a naive soldier in The Thin Red Line (with ER’s George Clooney). Perhaps it was these steller credits that prompted Stahl’s Behavior costar, James Marsden, 24, to admit, “I wish I had what Nick has when I was 18,” he says. “He’s a real talent.”

Despite his experience in mainstream movies, Stahl still felt it was difficult to work on Disturbing Behavior because box-office expectations are so high. “There is a lot of pressure when you have to appeal to millions of brains,” he says. The Stepford Wivestype thriller tells the story of a town where parents are resorting to surgery to control their wayward teens. Gavin teams up with his friend Rachel (Katie Holmes) to try to persuade fellow student Steve (Marsden) that they must do something before another kid ends up on the operating table. Stahl felt he related to Gavin’s rebelious nature on a deeper level. “I put a lot of what I’ve been through into Gavin, you know. We both had not-so-great high school experiences.” Holmes, 19, on the other hand, who attended an all-girls Catholic school, had a little help from the director, David Nutter. “He drove Katie around to some rough neighborhoods so she could get a better feel for her role (as a tough girl),” says Stahl. “She really wanted to get it right.”

Although their characters are closely involved in the movie, Holmes and Stahl didn’t see each other off the set. “Katie was usually gone with her boyfriend,” says Stahl. And when was his last date? Stahl scratches his head, trying to remember. “I haven’t been on a date in a while because I’m busy. Yeah, that’s it, I’m really busy,” he adds with a coy smile.

Marisa Tomei, star of In the Bedroom, had no idea what she was getting into.

“I didn’t really think it was going to be as much as a challenge as it was when I got there,” Tomei said. “I would do a scene where it was emotional and would require a lot of concentration and think, ‘Okay, that’s out of the way, the hard scene is out of the way,’ but the next day there would be another hard scene. I didn’t really realize how much I immersed myself in that world.”

While the Academy award-winning actress has had plenty of practice preparing for roles in major movies such as My Cousin Vinny, What Women Want and Untamed Heart, Tomei had to spend time with a woman from Maine who was similar to her character, Natalie, in background and personality. Tomei spent several days learning new habits, speech and body language.

“I didn’t have anything or anyone to really draw from personally,” Tomei said. “I had asked [Director Todd Field] if there was someone that he knew, if he could find somebody who might be similar to my character’s background … he found someone who was willing to befriend me.”

Tomei’s co-star, Nick Stahl, last seen opposite Katie Holmes in Disturbing Behavior, also spent days at sea as a fisherman to prepare for his role as Frank. While he grew a deep respect for the way of life, he admits it was grueling work.

“[Fishing] is a really different world,” Stahl said. “I came away with a real respect for the profession. It’s a really tough job, kind of a lonely job as well. I had really done nothing like that before.”

Stahl started acting as a child and has had to adjust with changes in roles as he matured, while juggling a normal boy’s life and acting.

“It was difficult at times. You have a certain set of roles that you’re up for as a kid, but as you age, it really changes,” Stahl said. “When I was 14, I didn’t work for almost two years. It’s an awkward age to begin with.”

Despite Tomei and Stahl’s combined experience in film, they both said working with director Todd Field was rewarding.

“I’d say it’s exciting to work with someone who has no preconceived ideas, with a lot of fresh energy, clean point of view, ready to express himself or herself,” Tomei said. “I only had the script, which I thought was really good, and a couple of conversations with Todd which showed that we approached work the same way.”

Stahl said he was not only drawn to the film by Todd Field, but also by the script.

“Todd Field did an amazing job but it was more the story as a whole that was kind of the dominating force in wanting to do [the movie],” Stahl said. “If people don’t want to go to a film to experience emotion, I guess they should just go see the newest teen flick out. [In the Bedroom] really attempts to make a statement, which is more than a lot of films that I’ve seen attempt to do.”

While the film’s full plot was a secret, In The Bedroom won the Special Jury Prize at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival and several nominations for Best Film by numerous film associations, including the 2002 Golden Globes.

In the Bedroom gave Tomei a chance to work with Sissy Spacek, one of her favorite actresses, as well as an entire cast of experienced actors.

“I was blown away (by each actor),” Tomei said. “It was like a certain trust that we had with each other. We knew we all cared very much about our craft.”

Spacek, who plays Frank’s emotionally-charged mother, has also been nominated for several awards.

Spacek was voted Best Actress by the 2001 American Film Institute, 2001 Los Angeles Film Critics Association, 2001 New York Film Critics Circle and 2002 Broadcast Film Critics Association.

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 JANE STEVENSON

The transition from fighting alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger in a big Hollywood action flick, to street hustling and shooting heroin in a small Canadian independent film posed no problem for actor Nick Stahl.

A good role is a good role.

“I feel like the roles that I play are separate from the commercial aspects of movies,” said Stahl, 24, during an interview at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival.

“And that’s why to me, the budget of a movie has always been sort of secondary, I guess. Really, I just look for good stories and good characters, because that’s what I feel I can do.”

The Texas-born, L.A.-based Stahl, best known for playing John Connor in 2003’s Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines and the tragic murder victim in 2001’s In The Bedroom, currently stars in Twist, a modern retelling of Oliver Twist, which opened yesterday.

Stahl plays Dodge, a.k.a. The Artful Dodger, a Toronto rent-boy and junkie who takes the innocent runaway Oliver (newcomer Joshua Close) under his wing.

“I read the book when I was a kid, and so I remembered the character, and there were certain elements from the book that remained true in this adaptation,” Stahl said.

“Just his sense of sort of being the ultimate kind of hustler, the ultimate shifty character guy that keeps moving. Once the script was done it was like a new story to me and I made it my own as much as I could.”

Stahl and Montreal-born director/writer Jacob Tierney — real-life best friends who met in L.A., where they were housemates for three years — observed male prostitutes in Toronto.

But they never spoke to them or asked any questions. Stahl also didn’t go “method” and live on the streets or stop showering.

“Like the prostitution and the drugs, I didn’t feel like that was what the movie was,” he said. “It’s no big deal to him, to the character. The prostitution, the selling sex as a commodity, it’s become a small thing. Sex is not an intimate thing to the character. There’s nothing special about it or sexy. So to try to get to the root of that was really what I wanted to do — the reasons why that happened.”

Stahl, who’ll admit to reading what is written about him in the press, says he tries to not place too much importance on reviews. But getting positive feedback is often necessary to keep going.

“Sometimes you need affirmation, maybe, that you’re in the right business or you’re doing kind of the right thing, ’cause sometimes it’s hard to know or be objective,” he said.