Another Trip To The Dark, Strange Side For Nick Stahl

NATIONAL LEDGER – JUNE 12, 2008

Nick Stahl gained a whole new understanding of life as a disabled person while prepping for his role in “Quid Pro Quo,” opening tomorrow (6/13), in which he plays a partially paralyzed investigative reporter for public radio. “I went around the city in a wheelchair to see what it was like,” he tells us, referring to New York.

“My first impression was how hard it was, how physically taxing it was. You don’t really realize, the city is kind of on a slant. The sidewalks, you consider them flat, and they’re really not … I got to gauge people’s reactions as well. There were two kind of main reactions. One was just avoidance — not making eye contact … The other was people who were overly helpful.”

The actor known as savior-of-the-world John Connor from the “Terminator” series, and as the star of HBO’s eerie “Carnivale” series of a few years ago, found that the chair made him suddenly incognito. He was only recognized twice, he says.

“Quid Pro Quo” marks another trip to the dark and strange side for Stahl, whose character gets lured by a mysterious beauty (Vera Farmiga) into investigating the story of a subculture of people afflicted with a perverse desire to be disabled.

“I really didn’t (know) anything about this,” he says. “I read the script and thought it was so well written, and the character was so complex and interesting, and the twists in the script were so genuinely surprising and weird I was really caught off guard by it. These types of roles, complex roles like this, I’m always attracted to as well.”

However, “I’ve never shied away from the mainstream — ever,” says Stahl, who plays a telepath in the forthcoming thriller “Speed of Thought.” “If people see you in a certain light, they’re going to want you for other movies like that. The fact is that I tend to have done more independent, experimental, darker, edgy kinds of things since I was younger. But I’m open to any kind of story.”