Actors
Interviews - Actors
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Five Questions with Backwards Writer/Actress Sarah Megan Thomas
Sarah Megan Thomas recently returned to her hometown of Haverford, Pennsylvania, with a script and a camera crew in tow, to shoot her screenwriting debut Backwards, which she also produced and stars in. Thomas plays competitive rower Abi Brooks who, after she fails to win a seat on the US Olympic boat, must steer her life in a new direction, ultimately landing a coaching job for the rowing team at her old high school. Just as in rowing, Abi has to look backwards — to old places and ex-boyfriends — in order to move forward, with her sport and her […]
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Brooklyn Brothers Beat the Best Writer/Director/Star Ryan O’Nan
No one can say actor/musician Ryan O’Nan didn’t pull his weight in his directorial debut, Brooklyn Brothers Beat The Best, which makes its theatrical debut on September 21 via Oscilloscope Laboratories. Besides directing, writing, and starring in the film, O’Nan wrote and sang most of the songs on the soundtrack (album out 9/18 on ATCO Records). A 2011 IFP Narrative Labs project that premiered at Toronto last year, Brooklyn Brothers is the story of two ne’er-do-well musicians who make an unlikely alliance, embarking on the kind of quixotic journey that’s tailor-made for a buddy movie. But O’Nan’s film finds itself […]
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Actress Nathalia Acevedo on Post Tenebras Lux
Post Tenebras Lux, the film that won Mexican auteur Carlos Reygadas the Best Director award at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, has a story. But what it’s really about, first and foremost, isn’t narrative but texture: The grainy wetness of mud in an open field. The harsh bristle of matted dog fur. The wet steam of a tiled sauna. It’s also about sound, from the giggle of a boy being tickled by his father to the thunder of rugby cleats on a hard floor. Shot in a box-y 4:3 aspect ratio with intermittently hazy edges, Post Tenebras Lux (the title translates […]
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Juno Temple: Indie’s Ingenue
Juno Temple is on the move. For an interview regarding her loaded roster of new roles, in films as disparate as Killer Joe, Jack and Diane, The Dark Knight Rises, and Little Birds (released this Friday), the 23-year-old blonde Briton is calling from a car, which is shuffling her from one L.A. commitment to the next. “I’m sorry, I might lose you,” she says through a bit of static, shortly before the call is indeed dropped. But within moments, Temple is back on the other end again, her coo of an accent as beguiling as her onscreen presence. The whole […]
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Andrew Neel and Louisa Krause Talk King Kelly
While there have been many films riffing on reality tropes in the last several years, few have been as cleverly conceived and entertainingly executed as Andrew Neel’s debut fiction film, King Kelly. Set in the world of amateur webcam porn, the film depicts a monstrously fascinating Tracy Flick for our oversexualized social media age. Played ferociously by Louisa Krause, Kelly is a high-school student who runs a profitable one-woman porn empire from her suburban bedroom, with her parents none the wiser. Stripping on cam, uploading details of her everyday life and ruling over her chat room with a gonzo glee, […]
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Mission Accomplished: Lorrel Manning and Michael Cuomo on Happy New Year
I first met writer/director K. Lorrel Manning and actor/producer Michael Cuomo at the Santa Fe Independent Film Festival, where we found ourselves the fish-out-of-water New Yorkers in a sea full of Southwest cinephiles. Their SXSW 2011 (sold out) hit Happy New Year is grounded in star Cuomo’s nuanced portrayal of a fictional outsider named Cole Lewis, a sergeant who served in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and now finds himself battling demons both mental and physical in the psych ward of a veterans hospital. I spoke with the two about their veterans outreach effort, Indiegogo versus Kickstarter, and the best […]
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Five Questions with Safety Not Guaranteed Actor Mark Duplass
Mark Duplass is certainly having a banner year. The independent filmmaker’s work ethic is that of a rabid squirrel, frenetically jumping in between the lanes of acting and directing over the years, without ever getting hit with a dud. Since the 2005 indie hit The Puffy Chair, co-directed with his older brother, Jay, Duplass has managed to position himself in front of the camera as well as behind it. This year he has acted in a string of films: Your Sister’s Sister, Darling Companion, the upcoming People Like Us, and Safety Not Guaranteed, a recent hit on the festival circuit. […]
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Kate Lyn Sheil Discusses Acting at SXSW
With a focused, intense, and somewhat mysterious screen persona, actress Kate Lyn Sheil has stood out in a number of recent independent films, including Silver Bullets by Joe Swanberg and Sophia Takal’s Green. At SXSW this year she arrives with four titles, including Amy Seimetz’s Sun Don’t Shine and Bob Byington’s Somebody Up There Likes Me. Here I talk with Sheil about how she got into acting, being a movie fan, her influences and the particular pleasures of independent film.
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An Interview with Warrior Star Joel Edgerton
Actor, writer, and director Joel Edgerton (pictured) has a lot on his plate. He stars in Gavin O’Connor’s Warrior, which opens today, and in Baz Lurhmann’s The Great Gatsby, which is currently in production in Australia. Edgerton is also managing to develop a new film that he has written and is set to direct. He sat down with me to talk about Blue Tongue Films, the production company that he formed with his brother, Nash Edgerton, and four other mates, and how they all manage to keep the process fun. Filmmaker: How did you and your brother get started in […]
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Zeina Durra and Elodie Bouchez on The Imperialists Are Still Alive!
In the opening scene of Zeina Durra’s debut, The Imperialists Are Still Alive!, Asya, a young artist, poses naked for the camera. A hijab on her head, a machine gun in hand, she explains to an off-screen assistant her rationale for why the religious freedom fighter she’s portraying might have waxed her pubic hair. It’s a scene that is as funny as it is politically loaded, much like the movie that follows. Although its milieu — the young, privileged and the artistic — is the stuff coming-of-age movies are made of, The Imperialists Are Still Alive! is more than just another […]
