If I ever need to cry on cue, I can just picture the expression on Josh Hamilton’s face, in Eighth Grade, when Elsie Fisher hugs him. It’s a beautiful, wordless culmination of his incredible performance, which landed him a Spirit Award nomination this year. We discuss that scene, and he shares some of what he’s learned from jumping from the New York stage to the big and small screens and back again over the past 25 years. He talks about the importance of syncing with the director’s vision, being off-book before rehearsals, and why he’s a self described “take whore.” […]

We’re catching Alessandro Nivola at a very interesting moment in his career. A day before our talk, he was awarded Best Supporting Actor at the British Independent Film Awards for his incredible performance in Disobedience, and a few days before that it was announced that he will star in David Chase’s Sopranos prequel The Many Saints of Newark. He talks about the benefits of having time to prepare for the role of Rabbi Dovid Kuperman and facing the challenge of delivering that important climatic speech. And how, for him, inhabiting a character often starts with the voice. Plus he confesses […]

Melissa Leo has acquired a lot of acting wisdom. On this episode, she graciously shares some. She was nominated for an Academy Award for her incredible performance in Frozen River, and won one for playing Alice Ward in The Fighter. Recent notable performances can be found in Francine, The Most Hated Woman In America, and her latest, Unlovable, where she plays opposite Charlene deGuzman, who co-wrote the script based on her real-life experiences in a program for sex and love addiction. Leo talks lovingly about that production, and about how she sometimes gleans more substantial info from a dolly grip […]

We really get to know the brilliant actor Theodore Bouloukos in this hour. He lets us peek in on him as a child fascinated, perhaps to a peculiar degree, with design, typography, and channel logos. And then what led him to performance art with Brock Enright and others, and the “self training” of student film parts that led to feature roles and works exhibited and staged the world over. We learn the components that now make him a unique talent in the New York film world. I am thrilled and privileged that we get to take a journey inside the […]

There is, perhaps, no actor at the moment more synonymous with New York indie filmmaking than Keith Poulson. His uncanny comedic sensibilities first caught my attention in Bob Byington’s Somebody Up There Likes Me. He’s since honed his mastery of the low-key “throwaway” in dozens of low budget gems and appeared in nearly everything made recently by the prolific Brooklyn filmmakers Alex Ross Perry and Nathan Silver. He got to stretch his wings a bit in Zach Clark’s Little Sister, where he played a severely disfigured Iraq War veteran. We talk about the incestuous world of independent film acting in […]

Not every ingénue is deserving of the attention Zoey Deutch is about to get. But this 23 year old already has the miraculous and mysterious skill of a veteran actor. Since her brilliantly nuanced performance in Flower, I have wanted to find out the secret to her magic. Her natural talent shines equally bright in heart-wrenching dramas such as Before I Fall and wild comedies like The Year of Spectacular Men. And now she has delivered a rom-com-pantheon-worthy performance opposite Glen Powell in the Netflix film Set It Up. We talk about “process and not outcome,” being “right for a […]

Back to One is not a normal interview podcast. There is no greeting, no elaborate guest introduction, no banter, no small talk, no inane humor, no plugs, no closing. Just one actor every episode discussing their own approach to the craft, and one big (perhaps foolish) attempt at something pure. I love actors. As a filmmaker, I believe it is of the upmost importance to love them. But I am ashamed to admit that, at the same time, the filmmaker in me is kind of afraid of actors. Specifically, I am terrified that I am going to give an actor […]

One of the great joys of directing a film is to work with actors, and when you make an ensemble film, you get to work with a lot of actors! But working with any big group of people — especially actors! — can come with a host of unique challenges. So, whether you’re making a blockbuster like the Russo Brother’s recent uber-ensemble Avengers: Infinity Wars or you’re making a web series in your back yard with all your high school drama class friends, many of the lessons are the same. My current film, Bernard and Huey may sound like a […]

At the moment, Harry Lennix is perhaps best known for his portrayal of FBI agent Harold Cooper on NBC’s The Blacklist. The breadth and depth of his work on the stage and screen go well beyond that hit show, however, with film roles spanning from Robert Townsend’s The Five Heartbeats and Julie Taymor’s Titus, to General Swanwick in both Man of Steel and Batman vs. Superman, and on Broadway in August Wilson’s final play Radio Golf, and Cymbeline at The Royal Shakespeare Company. In 2014 Lennix created Exponent Media Group and began producing his own content, such as H4, a […]

Emily Mortimer is perhaps best known for her role as MacKenzie McHale in Aaron Sorkin’s beloved HBO series The Newsroom. Some of her other memorable performances are in Woody Allen’s Match Point, Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island and Hugo and, as Phoebe, Jack Donaghy’s love interest, on the NBC series 30 Rock. In this hour she talks extensively about one particular, powerful scene in her breakout film, Nicole Holofcener’s Lovely & Amazing (which earned her an Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Actress), and about what it was like to play a character named “Emily Mortimer” in her HBO series Doll […]