Nick Stahl now the ‘old’ guy

March 14, 2008
By KEVIN WILLIAMSON – Canoe – Sun Media

Nick Stahl won’t be back for more Terminators, and at age 28 suspects he’s already yesterday’s model.

“I’m not a studio poster kid, you know. Studios want the popular actor of the moment. That’s all there is to it, regardless of what you’ve done in the past,” says the Texas-born Stahl, who starred in 2003’s Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines a decade after his breakthrough role in Mel Gibson’s Man Without A Face.

“Maybe in the long run the fact I’ve done it so long is good, but in the day to day, I’d say it’s a hindrance I’ve been around so long. I’m not the newest thing. I’m not the new guy on the block.”

So with the role of futuristic messiah John Connor in next summer’s fourth Terminator out of the question — Christian Bale will star instead — Stahl is focusing on Sleepwalking, an indie drama with a budget that probably couldn’t pay T4’s catering tab.

Shot in Saskatchewan, which convincingly doubles for Utah and California, it stars Stahl as the dysfunctional uncle of a recently abandoned 11-year-old girl played by AnnaSophia Robb. Dennis Hopper turns up as a monstrous figure from Stahl’s past while Charlize Theron portrays Robb’s deadbeat mother.

The Oscar-winning actress, who is one of Sleepwalking’s producers, was the driving force behind the no-frills project and, from all accounts, the talent magnet.

“I just got a call from Charlize and she said, ‘I have a part for you’ and I said, ‘Great, I’ll do it,’ ” Hopper tells Sun Media. “She said, ‘You have to read the script first.’ And I said, ‘No, if you’re doing it, I’ll do it.’ It didn’t matter. She has integrity. Especially after seeing her performance in Monster I knew she was willing to go the distance.”

And going the distance for the cast and crew meant traveling to Regina and surrounding outskirts in the dead of winter for the story’s harrowing farm-based scenes.

“Charlize always made sure we had on extra, extra long underwear,” Hopper says.

“She was a great producer. She was there every day for us. It was extreme conditions. We did our scenes in 25 degrees below zero.”

Adds Stahl, “I don’t think a lot of producers are qualified to put creative input forward. The best kind of producer can deal with schedules and money and time, but also is creatively invested and has something creative to say … Charlize being an actress herself, she had to balance a lot.”

As for filming on a farm, Hopper enjoyed the return to his rural roots.

“I was raised on a wheat farm in Kansas — so it was like going home for me.”

Less so for Stahl.

“I had to learn to ride the tractors. That was hard. I’m not very good, so luckily they only show it for five seconds. But I’ve been around horses on sets before. You know, any extracurricular skill I know is because of a movie.”

Which brings us, full circle, back to Stahl’s already-lengthy career and its placement in the Hollywood food chain.

“I’ve been lucky to get to do good films. That’s all I’ve ever asked for. Acting is the only thing I’ve ever done. A studio film would be great to do. I’m not opposed to any genre or budget. A lot of times the smaller films happen to be the better ones — that’s just the way it is. But I’m not opposed to doing bigger films, as long as they’re not god-awful.”

Then again, he can always look to the enduring example set by his legendary co-star.

Notes the 71-year-old Hopper, “Most of my life I haven’t been bankable.”

Eyes Wide Open

By Terry Keefe
VENICE MAGAZINE – MARCH 2008 (Source)

No one in Hollywood plays a tortured soul better than Nick Stahl. But, thankfully, despite whatever places he needs to go to bring to life the likes of the Yellow Bastard in Sin City, Bobby Kent in Bully, Ben Hawkins in Carnivale, and even John Connor in Terminator 3, Stahl seems to be able to leave them behind at the stage door. Although he’s been in Hollywood since he was a child (starring as an adolescent opposite Mel Gibson in 1993’s The Man Without a Face), the now-28 Stahl has rarely been seen in the tabloids as part of the ever-burgeoning celebrity industrial complex, but he could certainly have been milking that publicity gravy train for all it was worth next to the Lohans and the like, if he chose. He’s been on the verge of major studio film stardom seemingly forever, but appears just as happy playing interesting characters in lower-budget indies. It’s a bit of a cliché to state, but the quality of the work is obviously very important to him. This writer didn’t know what to expect from Stahl in person, when we met for lunch on Abbot Kinney at the end of February. Actors are sometimes very close to the types they specialize in and, just as frequently, couldn’t be more different. To answer my own question here, Stahl comes across as an affable guy, with a lot going on underneath the surface. Speculating on more than that regarding his personality would be useless and presumptuous after just an hour talking together. But what was obvious is the determination that drives his career and that he’s here for the long haul as an actor. When all the current flavors-of-the-month have burned up and disappeared from the covers of gossip magazines, Stahl will likely still be pushing himself to the limits of his considerable talent.

This spring brings us two new Stahl features, Sleepwalking and Quid Pro Quo, which really allow a nice showcase of his range, so far apart are the two stories from each other in terms of plot, although they share some thematic similarities. Sleepwalking was directed by William Maher and produced by Charlize Theron, who also co-stars, but it’s really Stahl’s film to carry as an actor. He plays a very average guy named James Reedy, a fellow who works construction, not very well, and stumbles through a painfully average life. That’s until his much-wilder sister Joleen (Theron) shows up and asks to move in temporarily with her 11-year old daughter Tara (AnnaSophia Robb). Temporarily for Joleen, but more permanently for Tara, as Joleen takes off one night and leaves Tara with her uncle James. While James can barely take care of himself, he slowly rises to the occasion of becoming the father that Tara never had. This is no lighthearted Big Daddy-style surrogate father-kid buddy story though, as James and Tara have to brave a harrowing time with James’ own father, played by Dennis Hopper, before James is able to come to a number of painful realizations which enable him to move his life forward. In Quid Pro Quo, written and directed by Carlos Brooks, Stahl inhabits a character who is ostensibly much more together than James, a successful Public Radio journalist named Isaac Knott, but who is not without his own challenges to overcome, as he is confined to a wheelchair. While James in Sleepwalking has to discover who he is, Isaac seems to know at first, but his sense of self is challenged by the arrival of a mysterious young woman named Fiona (Vera Farmiga), who is part of a bizarre subculture of “Wannabes,” able-bodied people who desperately wish to be paralyzed themselves in order to feel whole. While investigating the Wannabes for a story, Isaac becomes involved with Vera, who will shine light on parts of his past that he has buried deep in his subconscious. There’s a nice, albeit unintended, symmetry to the fact that both of Stahl’s characters, Isaac and James, are sleepwalking through life, and have to essentially wake up and confront demons they’ve long avoided.

Obviously, some of the backstory of James in Sleepwalking is revealed as the story progresses. He’s a complicated guy though, while simple at first glance. Did you create any additional backstory to use in the role?

Nick Stahl: I actually didn’t have to do a lot of that, because I do think it was all on the page. It was a really cool character. If there was any danger, maybe, in how the character read…it was that he might’ve been misunderstood as being kind of slow, or something, which I didn’t want to play. I thought it was more interesting that he was someone who has just been wounded, by life, and as a result of that, kind of retreated from the world a little bit. And settled for a simpler life. Then his niece comes into his life, and that’s when his kind of transformation starts, you know? I think he finally has like some sort of a purpose or something to work towards, something to take responsibility for. He starts to come into his own at that point.

AnnaSophia Robb as your niece has one of the more confident onscreen presences I’ve seen in a child actor. Is this your first time starring opposite a child, other than when you were a child actor yourself?

Yeah, I’ve never really worked with younger kids or anything before, but it was interesting because I myself was acting, you know, when I was around her age also. I was doing movies as well – so it’s funny…it kind of, it mirrored the film’s story in some ways because I just sort of instinctively had this kind of like protectiveness with her, you know? And then when I was young and I was doing films, there are producers and people who, you know, they’re exploitive – they will try to get as much out of you as they can, and they’ll tell you and your parents that working a fifteen-hour day is normal. And if you want the movie to be finished, you need to stay for fifteen hours, or whatever. And just really….I mean, luckily, you know, there was none of that on this movie, and she had a really solid family, and really – and she’s a lot more, I would say, balanced kid than I was, I would say, at that age. And I think she’s more secure and level-headed and confident as well.

You also got [SPOILER ALERT]…

…to kill Dennis Hopper in this film. He’s usually the one who’s doing the killing onscreen in most films.

I know, and I hated to have to do that. I mean, I was so nervous about it. This was, you know, the legend, Dennis Hopper. And I had to beat him up, and then, you know, do more than that – and I just didn’t want to do it! Plus, I like him so much personally – he’s such an amazing person, but I think he understood that I didn’t have a choice [laughs]. He’s somebody that really cares a lot about what he’s doing, his work — and that was really cool to see, because I’m sure, you know, once you get to a certain age and you’ve seen so much, and you’ve done so many things—

You could sleepwalk through it if you wanted to.

Right [laughs] – you could. You might not care as much, I would think there’s the potential for just phoning things in. This guy would never do that. I mean, because he just is a real artist and he cares a lot about his performance, and he works….he just constantly is working very hard at it.
Charlize Theron and Stahl in SLEEPWALKING.

How did you get involved in the project?

I was approached by Charlize and Bill Maher, the director. I like to call him William Maher, so people don’t confuse him with the Bill Maher on television. There were actual reports when we started filming that the “Politically Incorrect” Bill Maher was directing this for us. It was literally on CNN or something, that he was directing Charlize Theron in a movie [laughs]. But they approached me about a year before it got its full financing. I was the first one cast. They just saw me in the role, and wanted me to do it, and it was pretty exciting because I’m used to having to fight for things a lot, and this I didn’t have to. I was the guy they wanted from the beginning.

You do still have to fight for things a lot? That’s somewhat surprising.

Oh, yeah, definitely. I mean, depending on the movie. Right now, I’ll get offered independent things occasionally – but most of them, I’d say 95% of them, are horrible.But with something that’s of any kind of quality, I definitely audition – and I like auditioning, I’ve always felt comfortable with doing it. I mean, I’ve always felt more comfortable in an audition than a meeting. I think it’s the same reason why I have such nervousness about public speaking and things like that. But as soon as I’m filming or onstage or something like that, I just never have. I’m kind of in that world, maybe, in character, and so I can do that, no problem. But having to meet some strangers and talk about myself for an hour, it’s a lot more difficult for me. So, I’ve never had a problem with auditioning, and especially if it’s for something that I really like. You know, all that I have ever been frustrated about, or wanted, was just the opportunity to do it, to audition, and actually have a fair competition. Because…it’s taken me a long time to come to terms with the politics of this, of the town, you know, and sometimes, it sucks to have to abandon a movie that you’re really proud of and then go on and have to do something that you don’t really believe in, because you need money. But I’ve also been really fortunate that I’ve never had to have…a job, a real job, in my life. You know, I’m twenty-eight years old, and that’s pretty amazing. And that feels good. What gets really hard to deal with sometimes, when it comes to the politics of the town – and by that, I mean if someone has a lot of popularity in the moment, they’ll just get offered something for that reason. But you know, if that [level of popularity] happens with me [laughs]….I’m obviously gonna have a different take on it [laughs]. But if I’m not able to even read, to even go in on something…that’s hard to deal with. Because if I’m up against someone who’s genuinely better for the role, that’s great, I can totally deal with that, that’s fine. It’s the lack of opportunity that’s really hard to deal with sometimes. It’s just part of the business end of things, which has never been my strength.

Let’s talk a bit about Quid Pro Quo. This must have been an interesting film to do your prep work for.

It was more unusual than Sleepwalking, I would say, sure [laughs].We filmed in New York – which I loved. I’ve worked there a few times, and I just love the city, and I love working there. But I had never worked there in a wheelchair, so that was obviously different. And essentially, as far as that goes, in terms of prep work, I just used a wheelchair for a few weeks and just kind of went everywhere in it and rolled around the city. I just wanted to experience what it was like: people’s reactions, the difficulty of doing it. First of all, physically…I mean, it’s hard, it’s really hard. And you can see I’m not, you know, the biggest – I don’t have the biggest upper body [laughs]. It takes a lot of strength. That was my first discovery. How physically demanding it is. But yeah, it was really interesting just to see people’s reactions to you, and how you’re treated. For the most part, people kind of avoid your gaze.

Just like your character describes in the film.

Yeah, it’s funny. People….I think that wheelchairs scare people. That was my assessment. People don’t want to look at injuries. Most people didn’t recognize me because they didn’t take the time to look into my eyes, or my face, you know? I didn’t really even have to worry about that most of the time, because I just kind of blended in. But then, you know, one day, someone said, “Hey man, aren’t you on that…weren’t you on ‘Carnivale’?” and I was like, “Fuck!” [laughs] So I wheeled away really quickly. I think he was horrified to think that, you know, this actor’s been in an accident. And so I had to watch out for that a little bit.

This the type of material that could be a disaster if the directing was off in any significant way.

Right, and by the way, even after we filmed it and it was done, it took many passes editorially to get it to where it was [quality-wise] in the script. We actually ended up re-shooting some stuff, and adding a couple of scenes. I think it was the kind of thing that, it was so clear on the page…the story, and the tone of it was so clear, but, for whatever reason, it’s such a different process once you actually film it and then you actually go to start editing it. It’s such a different process that it doesn’t always translate well from the script. I saw some early cuts, that actually weren’t all that great. Those cuts didn’t capture what was in the script, and a lot of people had problems with the film. A lot of people didn’t get it, and that was the reason why we had to go back and retool some stuff. [Director] Carlos Brooks worked endlessly for so long. He kept cutting it and working at it. But finally, I think what he got – what we ended up with was pretty close to the script, and I’m actually really proud of it, and I was really happy that it came together like it did.

Carlos mentioned in the press notes that he wanted the tone of the film to exist “somewhere between deep sleep and wakefulness.”

That’s exactly something he would say. Yeah. It does have sort of a dreamlike quality to some of it, and I think that it deals a lot with the subconscious, and the bearing of painful memories. Those are elements which are really intriguing to me. It’s amazing how your subconscious protects you against pain.

Let’s talk about a few of your previous films. How did you find the character of Yellow Bastard in Sin City?

Well, first of all, just to give you kind of the back story on getting that role, it was not a role I was supposed to do. I was just supposed to be in the beginning of the film, when it’s me without the make-up, before he later turned into [the Yellow Bastard]. And they had another actor who was set to do the Yellow Bastard role – and he fell out of the movie, he had a conflict or something, so Robert Rodriguez called me to and he just said, “Hey man, maybe you could do both, and maybe we can see that it’s you, kind of, through the makeup, and maybe it’ll be even better.” And I thought it was cool because, it’s a bigger role obviously [laughs], and I got to do more on the film. But I was intimidated by doing this theatrical cartoonish thing. It’s obviously drawn a certain way, and you can get kind of a voice of this crazy character through Frank Miller’s writing, but I was really intimidated because I still didn’t know completely what Frank had in mind. This character…when he actually speaks, and he moves around, and his physicality, and I was like, “I don’t know what to do. I have to – obviously this is really broad, and I have to make this into something big, and something scary.” But really I was kind of in the dark about it. I was just hoping that what I did synched up with what they wanted. They didn’t fire me, so I guess it was okay [laughs]. But I don’t ever want to wear that many prosthetics again in my life!

It must have been insane. It barely looked like you.

It was miserable. Not only grueling time-wise to put it on – but, you know, just sitting there in it. It’s stiflingly hot, you can’t move. You feel like you’re stuck together. Luckily we only did that character….I only had makeup on for, I think, five days. It was shot so fast on video, rapid-fire.

The first film I remember seeing you in as an adult was Bully, where you played the very disturbed teenager Bobby, based on a real-life individual. You weren’t far removed from high school age yourself.

Yeah, and I knew kids like some of the ones in that film. I had friends like that who were just, you know, young and had no sense of consequence and lived dangerously. And I kinda did the same for a while at that age. I mean, I had sort of a dual life in a way – I was going away and doing films, and then coming back, and hanging out with friends, and getting into trouble, and experimenting with drugs, and doing all that stuff, and so my teenage years had some darker times to them, that aren’t the fondest memories for me. So to go back to that world [for Bully], and to – and this obviously was a real extreme, this particular story – but it still really brought back a lot of memories for me, of that time, and that character was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done in a movie . You know, Sin City is one thing, when you’re playing someone who’s a ridiculous, over-the-top cartoon character. But if you’re playing, you know, a real guy who’s essentially looked at as kind of a monster…I mean, it was just so far from who I am and I was amazed I was even cast in that role, actually. So I guess I was just so worried all the time that it would not be convincing. That it was beyond my range of who I was and what I could pull off. And Larry Clark, too, the way he works….he’s very visual, and he doesn’t give a lot of direction, acting-wise. That’s kind of his style. He kind of lets people do their own things, and if something’s not working, he’ll tell you, but for the most part, you’re kind of out there on your own. So if he didn’t tell me not to do something, I just had to assume that it was okay. It was one of the most challenging films I’ve done.

Let’s go way back. Your bio says that you started acting when you were four. Was that in the typical manner, via school plays and such?

Yeah, but it wasn’t really school plays, but a children’s theatre group in Dallas. My mom was a seamstress as a side-job for the children’s theatre group, and so I just started auditioning for plays, and I really liked it a lot, and I thought that this was it. I’m talking like four or five years old, really young. I mean, I’m one of those weirdos that knew very early on what I wanted to do. I just always had a certain confidence about it. For whatever reason. I was decent in athletics, but I was not in the elite, and I wanted to do something where I could be. I grew up next to this athlete who was my best friend, and we would constantly compete at whatever sport – basketball or football or whatever. I was always competitive with him, but he would always edge me out at the end of the day. So I think he single-handedly probably turned me away from athletics and is partly responsible for getting me into acting [laughs].

Did a lot of opportunities follow The Man Without a Face?

I did a couple things, and then my next big feature film, when I was fourteen, it was a Disney movie called Tall Tale. It was a big movie, but it actually kind of tanked. I had a real tough period there, in the teenage years, of not working for a long time. It was really hard for me, because at that point I was supporting my family, and I was really dependent on work. And so I went through some really low periods of just not working for a year or two. It was probably two years max that I didn’t work, but that seemed like one of the longest periods of my life.

Okay, last question. Let’s say you’re that four-year old and you’re imagining your acting future, does the career you’ve had look anything like you expected?

I think I’ve been overconfident since a young age, and so I’m actually probably not as far along as I thought I would be [laughs], because I think I had a real inflated ego, as to my abilities [laughs]. I think I still do, sometimes.

Sleepwalking will be released this month by Overture Films. Quid Pro Quo will be released by Magnolia Pictures.

Nick Stahl peels back dark layers in Sleepwalking

STRAIGHT.COM – MARCH 13, 2008

By Ken Eisner
Source: Straight.com

Some of the most impressive actors have qualities seasoned over the years in quiet, low-profile movies, although that’s not always by choice. After Nick Stahl got raves for 2001’s Oscar-winning In the Bedroom, it seemed likely that the young actor would move up to big roles in A-list movies. That hasn’t really happened. Instead, he has continued to take larger parts in offbeat, little-seen movies, such as How to Rob a Bank and The Night of the White Pants.

The 28-year-old Texan, first noticed as the boy playing opposite Mel Gibson in The Man Without a Face, did get supporting work this decade in big-ticket items like Terminator 3, as Sarah Connor’s grown son, and Sin City, in which he was the biliously memorable Yellow Bastard.

More often, he has helped anchor grittier indie items like Sleepwalking, opening here on Friday (March 14), in which he plays a rural drifter forced to grow up when his ditzy sister dumps her precocious daughter on him and then takes off. The sibling is played by Charlize Theron, who also produced and helped assemble a cast that includes Dennis Hopper, Woody Harrelson, and AnnaSophia Robb as the daughter.

“We worked Nick pretty hard,” says Rob Merilees, a Vancouver-based producer also aboard the film, which is having its Los Angeles premiere when he calls. For the Canadian veteran of flicks like The Snow Walker, Air Bud 2, and Just Friends, it was a chance to work with Theron, who easily attached whomever she wanted to play the major roles in the tale, directed by film newbie Bill Maher (not the comic). Merilees helped secure the Saskatchewan locations, doubling for unstated U.S. locations, to provide Sleepwalking with its bleakly beautiful backgrounds.

“There’s an excellent tax rebate there. The only catch is that you have to shoot in Saskatchewan. It was cold out there! I think it hit minus 40 or less. We absolutely killed Nick, man. It’s 7 o’clock in the morning and, ‘Here, put your hands in this freezing water.’ He really brought it, too, I can tell you that.”

For his effort, the rangy actor is still shaking off the subzero experience.

“It was more chill than I’ve ever experienced in my life,” a shuddering Stahl recalls from L.A. “The temperatures were absurd. It was also a very tight shooting schedule. We did it in 30 days, and each day’s workload was pretty daunting. But that’s what you do when you’re making these smaller stories.”

On top of everything else, he spent almost the entire month in a light army coat.

“Oh, there were many layers under that thing,” he says, not necessarily implying anything metaphorical. And yet, any critic would, at some point, need to use onionlike images to describe the subtlety of his work.

When pressed, Merilees (who moves from the depths of Prairie winter to sets in Borneo and Colombia for his next projects) wonders if Stahl’s strength has also somehow limited his career.

“The thing about Nick is that even when he’s surrounded by people on the level of Charlize and Dennis Hopper, he’s so into it you almost don’t notice he’s acting. He sort of flies under the radar, and you need to pay really close attention to notice just how good he is. He really does pick off-the-wall pictures to do and just gravitates towards these meatier, more difficult roles. This part is particularly understated, too. There’s a lot going on, but it’s all internalized.”

The actor agrees that he’s inclined toward recessive parts, and that this one—an emotionally paralyzed abuse victim learning to nurture himself while caring for a thorny child—is exceptionally introspective. For many viewers, Zac Stanford’s script raises more character questions than it answers. For Stahl, this kind of sketchiness is an invitation to be even more creative.

“I’ve always been a less-is-more kind of guy. If something is kind of apparent to the audience and doesn’t need to be spelled out, I prefer that. I’m wary of scripts that are more about a writer showing off his skills as opposed to letting a character live and breathe.”

Which is not to say that Stahl would balk at romantic comedies or wisecracking action flicks.

“It’s not that I’m at all opposed to doing bigger, more mainstream movies—if they’re good,” the actor declares. “People see you in a certain type of films, and those are the parts that come to you. I think if there’s one thread that connects my work is that they tend towards the darker side. I’m often cast in heavier material, and that doesn’t tend to translate to bigger budgets.”

Next up, he’s already completed The Speed of Thought, a thriller shot in Uruguay. It’s a drama, but at least the shoot was warm.

“From now on,” he concludes with a laugh, “I’m picking films based solely on location.

The Performance: Nick Stahl

LOS ANGELES TIMES – MARCH 13, 2008

Source: LA Times

At first glance, Nick Stahl’s James Reedy – an aimless 30-year-old who serves as the central character of William Maher’s “Sleepwalking,” out in limited release Friday – doesn’t seem to do much of anything. He lives in a bleak industrial Northern California town, toils at a menial job and keeps his words to a minimum.

But Stahl says there’s more to James than meets the eye. “Some people read the character as being kind of slow or mentally deficient, but to me, he was someone who was really damaged, a victim of abuse,” says Stahl. “James ended up retreating from the world and was just kind of beaten down, learned to settle for things and accept a very simple role in life.”

That role changes after his tempestuous sister Joleen (Charlize Theron) blows into town and holes up in his apartment, 11-year-old daughter Tara (AnnaSophia Robb) in tow. Before long, Joleen takes off, abandoning Tara, and James has no choice but to care for his niece and come to terms with his own haunted past in the process.

Stahl says it was the realism in Zac Stanford’s screenplay that attracted him to the part. “I liked the idea of the family dynamic, that things weren’t black and white,” he says. “There was an opportunity to really comb through the layers of the character and expand what was on the page.”

A former child actor who appeared in his first film at 10 and moved from the Dallas area to L.A. at 16, Stahl credits a supportive mother and an intense acting focus for getting him through his more impressionable years. But he speaks with the wariness of someone who’s grown up in a sometimes harsh limelight.

“It was just very weird for me,” he recalls. “I never really had a stable group of friends, and then [in Hollywood], you’re around all these adults, and you can’t really be a part of that, either. It makes perfect sense to me why a lot of people who start out as kids in this business tend to have problems in their life. I mean, it’s a really unusual way to grow up.”

He admits that his own experience made him very protective toward his young “Sleepwalking” costar, Robb, during last winter’s shoot in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan: “I felt I could relate to Anna in a lot of ways.”

Now 28, Stahl has made the transition into adult roles, specializing in brooding, conflicted types, but he does have a lighter side.

“I’ve always done heavier roles; that tends to be what I’m cast in,” he says, adding that he’d jump at the chance to work with Paul Thomas Anderson. That said, “I’m not nearly as serious as a lot of the roles I play … . I would love to do comedy, just continue to do a variety of movies, to kind of switch things up.

Nick Stahl Talks About ‘Sleepwalking’

ABOUT.COM – MARCH 12, 2008

By Rebecca Murray
Source: About.com

Nick Stahl stars as a guy just struggling to make it to work each day and keep his head above water in Sleepwalking, directed by William Maher. Charlize Theron co-stars as his sister, Joleen, a single mother who does a lousy job of raising her only child, Tara (played by AnnaSophia Robb). When Joleen’s kicked out of the house she shares with her boyfriend, she drags Tara to her brother’s place and dumps her there.

Most actors claim characters with an edge, a troubled background, or serious demons to battle are the most interesting to play, and while Stahl’s character, James, is a real decent guy, he definitely had a traumatic family life that’s affected his ability to function as an adult.

Stahl claims his character’s troubled home life was something he found intriguing.

“You read the script, and it can read a certain way, and he can come off even as kind of slow or something like that,” explained Stahl. “I never saw him as mentally deficient in any way. He was emotionally deficient. When I first went up to Canada, I even had the costume designer tell me that it reminded her of Lenny from Mice and Men, and I was like, ‘Don’t tell me that,’ because that’s not at all what it was. He was a damaged [man] who was the victim of abuse and had learned to settle for a simple role in his life, not ask for anything, to just settle for something. And that’s the way he’s lived for a long time, and I think until Tara comes into his life does that start to change a little bit for him.”

Screenwriter Zac Stanford and director Maher don’t fill in all the blanks and allow the audience to figure out what motivates each character. The basics are there, but it’s left to the imagination of the audience to determine much of what keeps the adults moving forward on their chosen paths. Even though the script doesn’t spell things out, Stahl didn’t find it necessary to create his own detailed backstory on James. “I didn’t need to do much, and I’ve never been one to have a notebook of day one as my life as James Reedy. It’s just I’ve never really worked that way. I don’t think it helps me that much. I don’t think it makes it that much better for me. And least effort possible for me – that’s my philosophy.”

“I think a lot of it was in the script, definitely. There’s James’ and Joleen’s story,” said Stahl. “We spent some time talking about what their relationship was like and growing up. And I think I heard Charlize mention the other day that – I love the fact in the script that these two characters, these siblings, dealt with trauma in very different ways. They’re just completely different personalities. And part of the contentious relationship that they have is that sibling thing of she sees James get walked on, and to her it’s frustrating and it’s a reminder of the abuse that they’ve gone through. And she doesn’t want to look at that. She’s like an extrovert, aggressive. She’s always moving ahead and not looking back. And James isn’t necessarily looking back, but he’s got this apathy and he doesn’t stand up for himself as much. I think to her that’s a reminder of the damage that [Dennis Hopper as their father’s] done to us.”

Although the circumstances in the film – a mom dumping her kid at her brother’s so she can get a man, which is the only way she thinks she’ll be able to get her life in order – may not be a common story amongst the film’s audience, Stahl did think the characters were all very relatable. “I think everyone can relate somewhat to an unhappy childhood and to adversity growing up and kind of becoming an adult and moving past that and becoming your own person,” said Stahl. “I’ve been so lucky to always have acting, honestly. I knew what I wanted to do at a very young age, and that’s always been inspirational for me, honestly. I mean, when I was young, I sort of had a bad crowd that I ran with, and a couple of them are in jail now and they’re just doing whatever. I always had this. I always had something to pull me out of that, because I don’t know what I would do without it, honestly.”

Stahl’s career is a mix of larger budget movies and independent films, and he says preparing for a film of this size is really not that much different than getting ready to do a Terminator movie or Sin City. “I try to do the same thing that I have always done but just the context is so different,” offered Stahl. “On a bigger movie, you have so much more time and you can get kind of lazy. There’s just so much more luxury around you, and that’s kind of deceptive. It seems like it’s great and then you tend to get off track because you’re filming one scene over three days. We were filming six scenes in a day on this. And sometimes I think some real magic can happen when you have constraints, when you have time constraints or budget. Or, I think sometimes it creates a certain immediacy. Sometimes you get some great things out of the struggle or just even the elements where you’re filming. It’s 50 below, which just works so perfectly for the story. When I read it, it read like a cold story and the town, the industrial feel of where James is from, and it just lent itself so well.

Sleepwalking: An interview with Charlize Theron and Nick Stahl

SPARTAN DAILY – MARCH 13, 2008

By Liza Atamy
Source: Spartan Daily

I, along with three other journalists, had the opportunity to interview actors Charlize Theron and Nick Stahl, who star in the upcoming overture film “Sleepwalking,” which Theron produced as well.

The interview took place at the St. Regis Hotel in San Francisco on March 3, 2008.

Academy Award winner Theron, who won in 2004 for Best Actress for her role as female serial killer Aileen Wuornos in “Monster,” has portrayed her talent in a wide variety of performances ranging from comedy to action to epic-drama.

Her movie credits also include: “The Devil’s Advocate,” “The Cider House Rules,” “Sweet November” and “The Italian Job.”

Her co-star Nick Stahl can be remembered from the HBO series “Carnivale” and his roles in “Sin City” and “Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.”

Theron had a dual responsibility in “Sleepwalking”: producing the film and playing troubled mother Joleen Reedy.

“Screenwriter Zac Stanford submitted the script to my company,” Theron said. “We read it, and it stuck with me. I woke up the next morning and kept thinking about it.”

Theron said there was something about the script that captured her.

“It’s very hard to explain that creative choice when you read material,” she said. “At the end of the day for me, it is an emotional feeling that grabs me.”

Theron said she was very fortunate to have her “dream cast” sign on to the project.

For co-star Nick Stahl, it was the story that captured him.

“When I read it, it was a very simple story and very character-driven,” Stahl said. “Actors look for movies like that where we have the chance to drive the story.”

Stahl said his character, James Reedy, was very “introspective and was a creature of habit with his simple job.”

Stahl’s character has many demons to fight, but the underlying source of his problems and insecurities is his abusive father, who James finally comprehends and must learn to overcome.

“He’s a haunted guy,” Stahl said. “He is haunted by his past and goes back to see his father thinking things might be different.

“He sees for the first time the viciousness of his father by watching his niece go through the same thing his sister went through years ago.”

Stahl said the foundation of James’ and Joleen’s circumstances was the “pre-contentious family they were raised in” and they were “products of an abusive household.”

The viewer comes to understand that the persisting habits of Joleen and the self-conscious nature of James are embedded within them because of the physical and emotional abuse they had endured from their father for years.

“It affects both of their lives as adults and their actions are kind of born out of that,” Stahl said. “I think visiting his father was James’ transformation – breaking that cycle in a way.”

Stahl said his character is viewed as a savior to his niece, Tara, but ultimately ends up being the one who (unintentionally) puts her in harm’s way by taking her to see his father.

“I think (Tara) changed him, and I think he went back to see his dad because she provided him with certain inspiration,” he said. “She has given him an almost certain courage to face his fears and to face his past, and I think in a sense he is seeking redemption.”

Theron’s character, Joleen, had her own demons to face as well. Throwing herself into one unpromising and failing relationship after another, she, too, must come to terms with all of her fears and take responsibility for her daughter.

It was, at times, very hard to believe the careless choices Joleen made for herself and her daughter. One would inevitably think: “Would Theron make the same choices had she been in the same situation?”

“I don’t think she was irresponsible, and I’m not trying to give an excuse for the decisions she’s made,” Theron said. “As an actor, one very important thing to be aware of is the circumstances characters are coming from.

“When you start making choices for your character based on decisions you would make, it becomes unrealistic. I don’t have Joleen’s background and the issues she’s been dealing with. I don’t live in those shoes, so I try to walk away and not judge whether what she does is right or wrong,” she said.

Theron said that in order to stick to the road of truth with the characters she portrays, she avoids reaching for sympathy and instead sets out for empathy.

The film portrays a dark and desolate setting and similar emotions throughout, and it leaves the ending open and somewhat optimistic for viewers to interpret and conclude.

“This is the only reason why I wanted to make the film, because of the human condition it portrays,” Theron said. “I really do believe the one thing we always have is hope, even when we don’t have a penny in our pocket and when things get worse.”

Besides introducing herself to a character and morphing into the character’s mindset she would live with for months, Theron said detaching herself from her character has somewhat of a “mourning” period after filming wraps and there is no work the next day.

“The mourning is somewhat inclusive of leaving not just the character but a little family that you have with your crew,” she said. “Especially when you’re on location and no one gets to go home.”

Theron said her life is her priority, and it would be unfair to bring her work home and “drag everybody into whatever I’m working on at the time.

“I’m a very happy, joyous person,” she said. “I love my life, and I love the people in it.”

While filming “Sleepwalking,” Theron also found the time to appear in Stuart Townsend’s directorial debut “The Battle in Seattle.”

She is currently filming “Hancock” with actor Will Smith and will start filming “The Brazilian Job,” a follow-up to the movie “The Italian Job,” in which she also starred.

Stahl is promoting his second film release for the year, “Quid Pro Quo,” and is in post-production with upcoming “The Speed of Thought.”

“Sleepwalking” will be released nationwide Friday.

Nick Stahl, the smart kind of hot teenage actor

INTERVIEW – SEPTEMBER, 1998

By Laurence Dumortier
Source: FindArticles.com

Nick Stahl was twelve when he starred opposite Mel Gibson in The Man Without a Face (1993), as a fatherless boy who reaches out to a man hounded into isolation by people’s disgust at his badly scarred face. Poised and obstinate, Stahl’s character was the best thing about the movie, a kid who taught his superficial and loveless family a lesson about misleading appearances. Now eighteen, Stahl has continued in his own footsteps: In July’s teen thriller Disturbing Behavior, he was a lonely stoner bent on escaping the unnatural influence of a pack of computer chip-implanted high school jocks and cheerleaders. Even when the seemingly perfect clique succeeded at converting him to their robotic ways and Stahl’s character abandoned his reefer and army-surplus duds for milkshakes and loafers, he seemed out of place among the hunky boys and pneumatic girls next door. Stahl is too pale and skinny and his face reveals too much personality for him to blend seamlessly with the beautiful kids that Hollywood is now cranking out by the dozen.

Stahl says he was baffled by the aesthetically driven marketing of the film, which plastered every other billboard in L.A. with his airbrushed face alongside those of costars Katie Holmes and James Marsden. (”The poster made us all look alike!” he marvels.) But the actor seems determined to ignore the emphasis On physical beauty that actresses have always endured and that is now increasingly felt by their male counterparts. Stahl declares, “I try to avoid the sweet-ass roles. I don’t consider myself anything of the kind, and there’s no point in pretending I am.”

Later this year, Stahl gets gritty. In Terrence Malick’s much-anticipated World War II epic, The Thin Red Line, he plays an Iowa farm boy stuck in the battle of Guadalcanal and coming to terms with the reality of killing. Although he acted in the film with John Travolta, Sean Penn, and Nick Nolte, Stahl reserved his awe for the experience of working with the famously reclusive Malick: “He’s such an intriguing person. He can be quite abstract, but when he’s filming he’s incredibly acute. It wasn’t like any other film I’ll ever do, I’m sure.” Stahl has no fears of seeing his face on billboards for this movie, which is set for a holiday release. “I imagine the marketing will have to be more complex, there are so many characters and story lines,” Stahl says, then pauses. “I’m curious to see how they package this war flick under the Christmas tree.”

Actor Nick Stahl feels right at home with his HBO ‘Carnivale’

DAILY BREEZE – SEPTEMBER 14, 2003

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.

Nick Stahl comes of age with In the Bedroom performance

BOSTON HERALD – DECEMBER 22, 2001

Despite all the attention being given to “In the Bedroom,” its lead actor Nick Stahl is in danger of being forgotten. The film, which opens in Boston on Tuesday, already has won the L.A. Film Critics prize as Best Picture, the N.Y. Film Critics’ Best First Film award and, for leading lady Sissy Spacek, Best Actress honors from both groups.

Somehow, even with an actor’s healthy ego, the 21-year-old Stahl doesn’t mind. “It’s exciting to me to challenge myself with different kinds of roles and Sissy is just amazing to work with. You meet her and she’s incredibly grounded and unaffected. “She lives on a farm in Virginia with her family and there’s an innocence to her that’s amazing, and a workmanship. Just very inspiring I’d say, so normal and fun.

“I was really just trying to hold my own with these great actors, it was such an accomplished group. It wasn’t competition, I was just trying to survive.”

Stahl plays Frank, a promising collegiate destined to be an architect who finds a summer romance in his Maine fishing village with the slightly older Natalie (Marisa Tomei).

Ultimately “In the Bedroom” is not a warm romance but a wrenching study of a family – Spacek and British actor Tom Wilkinson as upright small town Maine parents – coming undone when a beloved son is murdered by his girlfriend’s out-of-control ex.

For Stahl, “In the Bedroom” is his second buzzed-about flick of the year, following Larry Clark’s “Bully,” in which he played a murdered sexual predator. “`Bedroom’ was pretty simple,” Stahl said. “Once I read it, that was it. Every movie is different in one way or another, but this was one of the better experiences I’ve had, I would say.

“Frank’s a great role for me, I was just fortunate. I saw him as old for his age, I don’t think he’s more than 21. He’s mature for his age and kind of wise.”

When it comes to acting, Stahl, too, has been mature for his age. “I’d been doing children’s plays since I was about 4,” he said. “At 10, I got a role in `Medea’ with a professional theater group as her son, so I started off with death at a young age.”

That was when he was growing up in Dallas, where he soon had an agent and did TV movies. At age 12, Mel Gibson changed Stahl’s life.

That’s when Stahl was cast to star in “The Man Without a Face,” directed by and co-starring Gibson. “He’s a good guy to be around,” Stahl said of Gibson. “He had his hands full with directing. He had a great sense of humor and fun, so it made it easy for me.

“I was just in awe, my first movie and such a big thing to start on. It kind of blew me away.”

Stahl continued to work, appearing in “The Thin Red Line” and “Eye of God,” but only now are his roles finally changing. “I look pretty young for my age, I have this baby face,” he said. “`In the Bedroom’ is the first role really where I’ve played an adult.”

The Victim: against the ropes with Nick Stahl

LOS ANGELES MAGAZINE – JULY 1, 2003

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.