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.

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.