Unmentioned in my post on Meek’s Cutoff was that two of its cast members are the great young actors Paul Dano and Zoe Kazan (an off-screen couple as well). Dano came to notice in Little Miss Sunshine and gave a mind-blowing performance in There Will Be Blood. He was the subject of a short profile by Melena Ryzik in the New York Times Magazine in 2009. An excerpt:
“Mr. Dano grew up in Manhattan and Wilton, Conn. He made his Broadway debut at 12 in Inherit the Wind, with George C. Scott and Charles Durning, and a few years later appeared as a troubled teenager preyed upon by a pedophile (played by Brian Cox) in the film L.I.E. Despite the steady work, Mr. Dano wasn’t thinking about building a career. Acting was just fun, he said, on a par with other after-school activities, like basketball.
Little Miss Sunshine, released in 2006, was a turning point. The story of a misfit family’s road trip, it became the toast of Sundance and won two Oscars. Mr. Dano’s character, a misfit among misfits, doesn’t speak for most of the movie, yet manages to be a focal point in a cast including Alan Arkin and Steve Carell.
Mr. Dano auditioned for it two years before it was made. ‘Sometimes when people don’t have a line, they want to mime the line or communicate too much, but he was good at holding it all in,’ Ms. Faris said. ‘His silence was so much more intimidating, in a way, than other actors.'”
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“The devil is in your hands and I will suck it out”:
