See All<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\nAfter two decades in Hollywood, Stan has become a leading man by physically transforming himself \u2014 and by searching for lower-budget, independent, and international films in which to do it. Last year, he won a Golden Globe for his starring role in Aaron Schimberg\u2019s A Different Man as a man who undergoes a drastic procedure to change his face and ruins his life in the process. He was nominated for an Oscar for his preening, self-serving Donald Trump in The Apprentice, a film by Iranian Danish director Ali Abbasi. This fall, he stars in Fjord, directed by Romanian filmmaker Cristian Mungiu. Stan\u2019s character, Mihai, is a recent Romanian immigrant to Norway who, along with his wife, Lisbet (Renate Reinsve), is accused of beating their children \u2014 all five of whom local authorities place in foster care. Stan traveled directly from last year\u2019s Oscars ceremony to the film\u2019s set in a remote Norwegian village, where the crew swiftly shaved off his hair \u2014 because otherwise, Mungiu says, Stan is \u201ctoo handsome for my kind of cinema.\u201d When I ask Stan if he\u2019s motivated by difficulty, he clasps his hands together and looks sly. \u201cSeems like it,\u201d he says. Later he admits, \u201cI\u2019m drawn to a situation that provokes failure.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Marvel Cinematic Universe has made Stan very famous to one portion of the public, while his smaller projects tend to be seen only by close followers of independent film. That leaves a wide swath of casual moviegoers with no idea who he is. When I mentioned to non-Marvel-watching friends that I would be interviewing him, reactions ranged from blank stares to \u201cIs he the guy who played Trump?\u201d Still, to many people he is Bucky Barnes and, therefore, a star. He\u2019s had stalkers. He can spot a phone being poised for a photo from a mile away, and he and his partner of four years, the actress Annabelle Wallis, are pursued by paparazzi \u2014 only more so after photos revealed earlier this year that Wallis was pregnant. In late July, she gave birth to their first child. Right after the baby was born in New York, Stan had to fly to London to shoot The Batman: Part II (for a role online gossips say is Harvey Dent, which Stan refuses to confirm). Wallis and the infant, too tiny to fly, stayed behind.<\/p>\n
When we meet on a hot Friday in West London, Stan finds himself separated from his child while promoting Fjord, a film about parents separated from theirs. His skull and chin are buzzed clean. He wears no hat and, despite the low-hanging sun, no sunglasses. The effect of this on someone whose eyes and mouth are so big and mobile is that he looks raw and unprotected, like his head is entirely face. He asked to meet on the terrace of a bistro near where he\u2019s been staying; we are bordered on one side by soign\u00e9 mums getting wine drunk and on the other by a busy road. When I tell him the Spartan salmon dish he ordered \u2014 he\u2019s on a superhero-movie regimen \u2014 looks good, he saws off about a third of it and plops it on my plate. We are both pretending to ignore that every other driver passing us is slowing down so they can snap a picture of Stan. I\u2019m surprised he wants to sit here, I say. \u201cOh my God!\u201d he responds. (This is how he starts a lot of sentences, exclaiming at the strangeness of his reality.) \u201cWell, here\u2019s the thing: You can\u2019t stop living your life. You can\u2019t let anything stop that.\u201d One kid parks his car right next to our table and gets out, handing us business cards for his weed-delivery service; it\u2019s unclear whether he recognizes Stan or is just hustling. But his friend in the car shouts, \u201cYou\u2019re the guy! You\u2019re the guy from the Marvels with the arm!\u201d Stan smiles. \u201cI am some days,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\n Clockwise from top left: 2003: <\/strong>Law & Order. 2004: <\/strong>Twelfth Night. 2007:<\/strong> Gossip Girl. 2011: <\/strong>Captain America: The First Avenger. Photo: IMDb; Rutgers University; CW Network\/Everett Collection; IMDb.\n <\/p>\n\n Clockwise from top left: 2003: <\/strong>Law & Order. 2004: <\/strong>Twelfth Night. 2007:<\/strong> Gossip Girl. 2011: <\/strong>Captain America: The First Avenger. Photo: IMDb; Rutgers… more
\n Clockwise from top left: 2003: <\/strong>Law & Order. 2004: <\/strong>Twelfth Night. 2007:<\/strong> Gossip Girl. 2011: <\/strong>Captain America: The First Avenger. Photo: IMDb; Rutgers University; CW Network\/Everett Collection; IMDb.\n <\/p>\nStan has been thinking a lot about how they fuck you up, your mum and dad, and whether it\u2019s possible to avoid doing same. \u201cThoughts about what makes a good parent are very alive in me,\u201d he says. When his baby was born, he felt a surge of connection and an intense pressure. \u201cYou feel like everything you\u2019re doing is now maximized and has major implications and consequences,\u201d he says. \u201cHaving had a baby and then having to get on a plane to go back to work felt like I was ruining their life.\u201d This is the first time he\u2019s spoken publicly about his child, and he acknowledges that he probably should, since the fact that he and Wallis wanted to have one \u201cwas a big part of my interest in the film,\u201d he says. (Retaining the last shred of privacy he can, he tells me he\u2019s trying not to reveal the baby\u2019s name, sex, or birth date, offering only, \u201cLet\u2019s just say that, as a Leo, I\u2019m happy to have a Leo child.\u201d) In Fjord, Mungiu contrasts parenting styles: that of a secular, more permissive Norwegian couple with a defiant and depressed teen daughter and that of Stan and Reinsve\u2019s characters, Evangelical Christians who seem closer with their kids despite their more punitive style. Stan describes Romanian parenting as \u201cstern.\u201d He was sometimes spanked as a child, but \u201cI never ended up in a situation where I was bent over with a belt or something,\u201d he says. Nothing serious. The bigger difficulty for him was all the moving around.<\/p>\n
A few years after Stan was born in Constanta, a Romanian port city on the Black Sea, his parents divorced and his father, Constantin, fled the country. Constantin had helped others escape Romania illegally during Nicolae Ceauescu\u2019s regime, and Stan has said this made his father a \u201cwanted man.\u201d Stan wouldn\u2019t see him again until he was around 18. Shortly after the Romanian Revolution in 1989, Stan\u2019s mother, Georgeta, left the country too; her 8-year-old son stayed with her parents while she tried to get a foothold in Austria. Stan knows she did her best. Even so. When he moved to Vienna to join her, he says they had to \u201crediscover our relationship\u201d in a strange land where neither of them spoke the language. \u201cI have a distinct memory of my mother holding my hand at this public school and being very upset that the teacher was telling her that I couldn\u2019t go to school there because I didn\u2019t understand German. She looked at the teacher as if she was saying I wasn\u2019t good enough,\u201d he says. The years that followed that were \u201ca slight bit of that movie Boyhood,\u201d he says: As his mother tried to make a life, boyfriends popped up, then disappeared. The one who stuck was an American named Anthony, an educator who married Georgeta and in 1995 brought her and her now-12-year-old son to New York, where they settled just north of the city.<\/p>\n
Stan sees shame as an integral part of the immigrant experience, especially for children, who, after all, didn\u2019t make the decision to move. He forced himself to shed his Romanian accent. It probably helped that he was always into doing impressions \u2014 of his grandma, his grandpa, their neighbors, whomever. His mother wondered if that meant he could be an actor, and while they were in Vienna, she got him cast in a small part in a Michael Haneke film. Stan hated the experience. But in suburban New York, exposed to the wonders of family friends\u2019 VHS collections, he became obsessed with American movies. That led him to acting in high school and eventually to the Rutgers B.F.A. program.<\/p>\n
The actress Dierdre Friel met and befriended Stan there. She remembers him writing and performing a piece that was full Marcel Marceau, stumbling and flailing through a landscape of invisible mishaps without uttering a word. \u201cHe looked like he was going to be Mr. Cool, Mr. Reserved, Mr. Laid-back,\u201d she says. \u201cBut then he would do these things that were like, Oh, you\u2019re a clown.\u201d He was soft-spoken, gifted, a favorite of their teachers. During a semester abroad studying at the Globe theater in London, he played Malvolio in Twelfth Night. Although students were prohibited from auditioning outside the program, Stan got special permission to play a teen shooter in an episode of Law & Order. In 2002, another Rutgers friend, Justin Mortelliti, was desperate to try out for a new singing-competition TV show. \u201cYou had to take the train into the city in the middle of the night and sleep on the street to get in, and I was scared and didn\u2019t want to do it alone,\u201d Mortelliti says. Stan trekked out from New Jersey with him, and they lay shivering on their coats in front of the audition venue. Which is how Stan ended up auditioning for the first season of American Idol. He wore leather pants, performed \u201cYour Song\u201d \u2014 inspired by Ewan McGregor in Moulin Rouge! \u2014 and didn\u2019t make it past the first round.<\/p>\n
It was during this period that Stan saw his dad again. Constantin lived in Los Angeles, where he worked for a childhood friend from Romania: celebrity eyebrow maven Anastasia Soare, founder of the makeup brand Anastasia Beverly Hills and Stan\u2019s godmother. The reintroduction was not easy. \u201cWe had our confrontational moments where you ask the questions: \u2018Hey, what happened? Where were you?\u2019\u201d Stan says. \u201cIn my experience, Romanian men are not emotional types. They are very, very guarded \u2014 my father was. A man\u2019s got to do what a man\u2019s got to do.\u201d After graduation, he wanted to live in New York but needed a place to stay in L.A. when making the rounds. He began crashing with his dad, borrowing his car to drive to auditions. Eventually, belatedly, the two got to know each other.<\/p>\n
Stan\u2019s first New York apartment was right on 42nd Street, opposite the Port Authority. He spent a lot of time running self-tapes up to his manager on 57th Street. When he booked Gossip Girl in 2007, he was delighted because he could sleep at home. For a couple years during filming, he was in a relationship with his co-star Leighton Meester, whom he later called his first \u201cserious love.\u201d Though the show got him recognition, he was never one of the main characters. He likens his role as bad influence Carter Baizen to being \u201cthe sixth man\u201d on a basketball team \u2014 \u201cthe guy you throw in there in almost any situation. Always adds, always adds, but never quite makes it to the starting five.\u201d In 2011, he was cast in his first Marvel movie, Captain America: The First Avenger. It didn\u2019t change his life right away. \u201cI was still struggling with money,\u201d he says. \u201cIt just felt like this period in time when I was getting enough that I was carried along, but I wasn\u2019t maturing.\u201d Then he got another Marvel movie and another. Eventually, he was able not only to sustain life but to buy an apartment and take care of his mother after his stepfather died.<\/p>\n
Stan is careful to praise Marvel, calling his character Bucky Barnes \u2014 who has, since Stan started playing him, fought in World War II, fallen into a ravine, been brainwashed, become a super-assassin, killed JFK, been deprogrammed, died, come back to life, and been elected to the U.S. House of Representatives \u2014 \u201ca fucking cool character.\u201d He expresses only gratitude to the higher-ups who gave him a shot. At one point, when Stan is talking about what\u2019s special about working with Mungiu, who prefers long takes and a subdued, observational approach, he comments that cinema is amazing because it can honor moments that seem mundane in real life. Then, without my mentioning Marvel at all, he seems to intuit the contrast he\u2019s drawing to his other work. \u201cThis is not \u2014 this is actually the opposite of a put-down of hero movies,\u201d he says quickly. \u201cIt\u2019s important to have the courage and the hope and the inspiration to stand up for something.\u201d<\/p>\n
He does still see himself as a \u201csixth man\u201d in the MCU, though, and points out he\u2019s never led a film. Recently, he only half-jokingly pitched a \u201cSicario-esque\u201d Winter Soldier movie to Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige. He recounts it for me in a Hollywood pitch voice, holding up both hands in front of him like \u201cpicture this\u201d: \u201cWe keep a real small budget. It\u2019s about a guy who thinks he recognizes someone from his past that had something to do with when, you know, he was brainwashed, and he gets obsessed with this person. He goes on a whole journey to try to figure out who this person is. It\u2019s a thriller.\u201d He says Feige humored him: \u201c\u2018Yeah, that sounds cool!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
\n Clockwise from top left: 2017:<\/strong> I, Tonya. 2022: <\/strong>Pam & Tommy. 2024:<\/strong> The Apprentice. 2026:<\/strong> Fjord. Photo: Hulu\/Everett Collection; Everett Collection; Neon.\n <\/p>\n\n Clockwise from top left: 2017:<\/strong> I, Tonya. 2022: <\/strong>Pam & Tommy. 2024:<\/strong> The Apprentice. 2026:<\/strong> Fjord. Photo: Hulu\/Everett Collection; Everett Collection;… more
\n Clockwise from top left: 2017:<\/strong> I, Tonya. 2022: <\/strong>Pam & Tommy. 2024:<\/strong> The Apprentice. 2026:<\/strong> Fjord. Photo: Hulu\/Everett Collection; Everett Collection; Neon.\n <\/p>\nIdeas about masculinity come up often when Stan speaks about his life. I started to get the feeling that, for him, being the right kind of man means taking responsibility. This is part of why he works so much. When he won his Golden Globe last year, Stan thanked Romania, his mother, and his stepfather for taking them in and being what he called \u201ca real man.\u201d What he does not appreciate is guys who seem like they\u2019re trying to compensate for something. He brings up the fact Trump recently staged a UFC event on the White House lawn: \u201cIf I decided to have a huge display with, quote, unquote, ripped muscle men and I showed up at an interview with my posse, what could you deduce about my manhood at that point or how I feel about it?\u201d As we\u2019re discussing this, drivers are tearing along the road next to us, engines roaring. \u201cThere they are!\u201d Stan says, raising his eyebrows as a particularly loud car passes. When a convertible rockets by, drowning out our conversation, he throws up his hands. \u201cThat\u2019s what I really need to feel like a man, goddamn it!\u201d he says. \u201cA Corvette that I can blast down a street full of families and kids!\u201d<\/p>\n
Stan is a hand talker, sweeping the air around him or bringing both palms to his chest to show he\u2019s speaking from the heart. The way he moves is so loose and rubbery that when we get up and walk, strolling down the docile streets of his neighborhood, I\u2019m surprised by how brolic he looks from the side. Although he says he deplores the culture of self-optimization because he thinks it makes everyone want to be the same, he also enjoys reading Substacks like The Stoic Manual, which applies the philosophy\u2019s ideas in self-help-y posts with titles like \u201cHow to Deepen Your Friendships Part I.\u201d He\u2019s into Gabor Mat\u00e9. He\u2019s into therapy. He believes that, as an actor, \u201cyour whole life\u2019s about trying to understand what you\u2019re working with.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 2017 film I, Tonya may have been the first performance in which Stan really got to show what that was. When the script for Craig Gillespie\u2019s Tonya Harding figure-skating biopic came across his desk, full of \u201ccomplexity, nuance, humor, and heartbreak,\u201d Stan was desperate to nail the part of Harding\u2019s then-husband, Jeff Gillooly, a co-conspirator in the attack on Harding\u2019s rival Nancy Kerrigan. \u201cI worked really fucking hard on that,\u201d Stan says. \u201cI did all this research. I grew the mustache. I went to vintage stores and found \u201990s clothing. I parted my hair. And from the second I left the hotel and got into the car and went into the audition, I was that guy. I spent so much time preparing in a way I never had before for something.\u201d And he nailed it. His performance in the film, with Margot Robbie as Harding and Paul Walter Hauser as Gillooly\u2019s partner in crime, Shawn Eckardt, is desperate, keening, and sympathetic, his voice warbling as he tries to evade the chaos he\u2019s caused.<\/p>\n
Hauser had assumed that because Stan was a Marvel guy, he was going to be too handsome and too cool to pal around with him. He was wrong. Their characters are an idiot buddy duo, and the two spent a lot of time together, inventing silly improv games, getting steaks, and \u201cjust imbibing at whatever local yokel bar\u201d they could find near the set in Atlanta, Hauser says. During the shoot, \u201cwe shook each other up at times,\u201d like when they were doing the scene in which Shawn tells Jeff he had his minions attack Kerrigan and Jeff explodes with rage. \u201cSebastian choked me up against the wall \u2014 not like \u2018I can\u2019t breathe\u2019 but harder than anticipated,\u201d says Hauser. \u201cOn the next take, I slapped him, almost to give him a receipt for the choking, and then the next take, he slapped me. On the fourth take, I went to slap him and he shook his head, but I just waited for an opening and slapped him again. I don\u2019t know where the character began or ended, but I know I was doing something that most of his scene partners had never done, which is force him to get weird and ugly with it.\u201d Afterward, Hauser approached Stan to ask if they were cool. \u201cI got choked up because I was afraid I\u2019d pissed him off so much he didn\u2019t want to be my friend anymore,\u201d Hauser says. \u201cHe looked at me and went, \u2018Aw, man!\u2019 and gave me a big hug.\u201d Stan says working on I, Tonya was the first time he felt secure about his place on a project, integrated and supported in a greater whole. \u201cFor some reason, before, I just felt very alone in the process. I felt like I had to look out for myself, to scramble and fight for the moments and be loud,\u201d he says. \u201cBut that movie really showed me what this could be when it works.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since I, Tonya, he\u2019s figured out that the best way for him to get results is to eat, drink, and sleep his parts. He was in talks to play Trump in Ali Abbasi\u2019s film before the project could get moving. Nothing really budged until 2022, when he played the M\u00f6tley Cr\u00fce drummer Tommy Lee, all swaggering arrested development in prosthetic nipple rings and a prosthetic penis. That performance, in the miniseries Pam & Tommy, \u201cled to The Apprentice in a way because it gave people confidence that I could play a real person,\u201d Stan says. He also acknowledges there probably weren\u2019t very many other people who wanted the Trump part. The Apprentice is a lightly fictionalized reimagining of Trump\u2019s relationship with his mentor, the right-wing attack dog Roy Cohn, tracking the real-estate heir from his first meeting with the lawyer through Cohn\u2019s death from AIDS. Is it even possible to do a subtle Trump? Somehow, Stan does, inhabiting the physicality and voice completely, turning up the volume on the Trumpian tics as the character ages.<\/p>\n
The same year The Apprentice came out, as the once and future president was threatening lawsuits and attempting to block its release (while also giving it free publicity by ranting about it on Truth Social), Stan released his first film with Reinsve, A Different Man, in which he wore prosthetics to play a man with a visible facial difference who feels completely marked by his appearance and unable to overcome it. He decides to take part in an experimental study that causes chunks of his skin to fall off \u2014 until he emerges with the face of Sebastian Stan. \u201cWhat\u2019s so brilliant is that he looks so uncomfortable in his own skin. It\u2019s jarring to see somebody who looks like Sebastian seem so anxious, and that really makes the performance,\u201d says the film\u2019s director, Aaron Schimberg.<\/p>\n
The story hinges on a m\u00e9nage \u00e0 trois involving Stan\u2019s character, a playwright he\u2019s in love with (Reinsve), and a cheerful, impossibly charismatic man he meets after his surgery played by Adam Pearson, who has a genetic disorder called neurofibromatosis. \u201cThe only thing Sebastian ever demanded was that we get the prosthetics right,\u201d says Schimberg. \u201cOn day one, he was like, \u2018I know the guy, and I\u2019m talking to him\u2019\u201d \u2014 Mike Marino, a prosthetics designer widely considered one of the best, who\u2019s also working on The Batman: Part II. Because Marino was already booked for their shoot days and the budget couldn\u2019t cover his fee, Stan helped pay Marino himself and agreed to sit for makeup at 3 or 4 a.m. so Marino could work on him before heading to his day job. With so many hours left before Stan\u2019s call time every day, Pearson encouraged him to go about his daily life to experience what it felt like with his new face. And he did \u2014 strolling around Soho, getting a coffee. \u201cThere are two ways to lose your anonymity in society and almost become public property,\u201d says Pearson. \u201cHave a visual difference or be really, really famous. In both cases, people feel like you owe them something.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even before Stan made these films, he had been exploring the possibility of working on something in Romania. He\u2019d been following the rise of the so-called Romanian New Cinema since the early aughts, when a generation of filmmakers including Mungiu, Cristi Puiu, and, later, Radu Jude started working in a minimalist style that often wrestled with the absurdities and hypocrisies of their home country. These filmmakers were starting to win prizes at international festivals, and by the time Stan met Mungiu at a 2016 screening of the director\u2019s Graduation, Mungiu had already won the Palme d\u2019Or and Best Director at Cannes. (This year, he won the Palme d\u2019Or again for Fjord.) They eventually began to talk about working together, but before that, Stan decided to produce a first-time feature by Romanian filmmaker Andreea Cristina Bortun called A River\u2019s Gaze, about a Romanian single mother who contemplates moving abroad to provide for her teen son. Bortun, who released her film last year, says this is an increasingly common situation as well as one that resonates with Stan\u2019s own history. \u201cSebastian has a very lucid perspective on what\u2019s happening on a political and social level in Romania,\u201d says Bortun.<\/p>\n
Romania is, on the whole, a conservative country, where the ascendant right wing deploys the concept of the \u201ctraditional family\u201d to justify its homophobia and is eager to amplify the resentment some Romanians feel toward Western Europe \u2014 particularly those in the diaspora who have, since the country joined the E.U., moved abroad to work difficult, low-wage jobs. Bortun points out that when a far-right candidate ran for president two years ago and attempted to leverage these frustrations to get elected, Stan recorded a video message to Romanians asking them to vote for a different candidate. (The right-winger, Calin Georgescu, ended up being barred from the final election after investigators discovered that Russia had created bots to support him online.)<\/p>\n
None of this is mentioned in Fjord, but all of it shapes how Romanian viewers see the film. Mungiu was inspired by news stories about Romanian and other immigrant families to Norway who felt they were being unfairly targeted by the country\u2019s child-protection agency, the Barnevernet. These stories have made headlines in Romania, particularly the case of Ruth and Marius Bodnariu, Pentecostal Christians who in 2015 were living in a small Norwegian village when they had all five of their children taken away from them after two of their older kids told people at school that their parents hit them. The Bodnarius admitted they spanked the children occasionally but denied doing more than that. Over the seven months they spent trying to get all of their children back, they became a cause c\u00e9l\u00e8bre both for Romanian conservatives and for Evangelical media worldwide, which claimed the family was being persecuted because they were Christian. (A BBC report found no evidence of this.) There have since been cases in Norway, Sweden, and other countries covered in a similar way; in 2023, a Bollywood studio released Mrs. Chatterjee vs Norway, a film based on the story of an Indian mother whose children were taken by the Barnevernet. Bucharest-based film critic and lecturer Irina Trocan says coverage of the Bodnarius was unavoidable in Romania, sparking protests and online campaigns and kicking off an entire line of discourse. \u201cSome people saw it as our values and identity being denied by the cold Norwegians,\u201d says Trocan. \u201cBut despite who was right or wasn\u2019t, it dawned on many conservative politicians that this is a profitable topic to piggyback on, and it was politicized to deliver this narrative of \u2018us versus them.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Mungiu cast Stan before he even started writing the screenplay, knowing he would need bigger names to get the film financed. \u201cHe had the right profile: an actor capable of delivering strong dramatic performances with a nuanced and subtle interpretation,\u201d he says. \u201cBesides, he is the only well-known actor in the U.S. who speaks Romanian.\u201d Mungiu interviewed the Bodnarius as part of his research, which also included speaking to other families, activists, and social workers and attending public trials in Norway. So far, Fjord has screened for only one day in Romania, drawing record crowds. And already, conservatives have seized on the Bodnariu connection, deciding that because Fjord explores possible discrimination against religious Romanians, Mungiu must also believe the \u201ctraditional family\u201d is under attack. One right-wing politician named Titus Corlatean, who was active in the Bodnariu protests, claimed on Facebook that Mungiu had invited him to a special screening. (Mungiu denies this; he says Marius Bodnariu invited Corlatean.) \u201cFor us Christians, Fjord is, after all, something we did not expect and for which Cristian Mungiu deserves our thanks,\u201d he wrote. Corlatean included photos of himself with Mungiu \u2014 albeit surrounded by other people \u2014 that, as one Romanian political scientist puts it, conservatives have started circulating as a \u201ctrophy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mungiu denies that either he or the film supports Corlatean\u2019s opinions. \u201cBecause I don\u2019t explicitly approve or condemn the positions that I bring to public debate, the supporters of these groups will always try to capitalize on that and claim this simple lack of firm judgment equals a \u2018victory,\u2019\u201d he says. \u201cThe characters in my films lie and are as manipulative as people in real life. Judge with your own head.\u201d In his view, \u201cFjord is not about Norway or Romania. It is not about a specific religion. It is about a fundamentalist way of seeing things \u2014 when you believe that you are the only one who is right and that you are entitled to impose your views on others.\u201d Although Stan\u2019s character, Mihai, makes passing comments about how \u201ca little discipline\u201d is required to keep five children in line and the couple admit to giving their children a \u201cslap on the butt,\u201d we never see them do this. Perhaps as a result, the Norwegian teachers and social workers in the film come off as hypervigilant and occasionally absurd. At one point, a Norwegian teacher tells the couple\u2019s neighbor she first wanted to call child-protection services after one of Mihai and Lisbet\u2019s younger children says in class that homosexuality is wrong; in the teacher\u2019s opinion, it constitutes abuse to teach your children to be homophobic. At the same time, Fjord is nonjudgmental in its depiction of a blossoming romance between two girls, and protesters who come to support the Romanian family are shown as hysterical too, spray-painting warnings about Satan outside the local school.<\/p>\n
Stan does not care to interpret the film\u2019s politics. He likes that Mungiu is not attempting to be dogmatic. \u201cA lot of movies today have to spoon-feed people everything,\u201d he says. \u201cThis is someone who\u2019s trying to present you something objectively, who seems immune or even allergic to melodrama. That was interesting to me because when I was younger, I remember flipping through scripts like, Okay, where\u2019s the scene where I\u2019m gonna cry? \u201d He plays Mihai as a man of few words who nearly trembles with repressed rage; the character\u2019s movements are so contained that Stan says he began to feel trapped. In other ways, though, he was expanding because the film was a reimmersion into the Romanian language. \u201cOn a personal level, I felt like I was connecting with something that was very familiar and had felt distant for a long time,\u201d he says. Every day, he spoke Romanian with the crew and director, trying to sound less like the English speaker he once forced himself to become. While he insists it didn\u2019t make the work of acting more difficult, he says he expresses himself differently in Romanian. \u201cIt\u2019s like writing with your other hand,\u201d he says. \u201cLike using a different part of your brain.\u201d He\u2019s starting to think part of his brain never managed to port over; certain concepts have always felt difficult for him to access or explain in English.<\/p>\n
For both his accent and his character, he took some inspiration from his father, who died of COVID while visiting Romania in 2021. Stan was shooting in L.A. the last time he saw him. His father would come over to hang out: \u201cWe would barbecue and just talk, grilling steaks and doing manly stuff.\u201d Stan laughs briefly but doesn\u2019t smile. He has told a Romanian publication that he partly blamed his father\u2019s death on the dysfunction of the country\u2019s health-care system. \u201cHe had a very adventurous spirit. He was a rebel,\u201d says Stan. And for a long time in my early American years, I wasn\u2019t trying to break rules. I was just trying to sneak by. Now I feel like, in my work, I\u2019m drawn to rule breaking. I\u2019m more oppositional in work than I am in life. That\u2019s something I probably took from him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stan wasn\u2019t yet a father when he shot Fjord. Now, though, he\u2019s stuck in London until at least December. Actors\u2019 lives have a quality of drift that is painful to reconcile with a child\u2019s needs. Reinsve found it hard to read Fjord \u2019s script at first because the scenario it depicted was so devastating and so easy to imagine. She has a young son who can visit her during production thanks to the efforts of her ex, who brings him around. \u201cThe periods where I\u2019ve been away for a couple of weeks have been really painful, and the bigger the kid is, the more of their own life they have, so it\u2019s more difficult to leave,\u201d she says. In her performance, \u201cI could definitely lean into how empty it feels when you are separated.\u201d Stan\u2019s compromise for now is trying to get back to New York every weekend he can, even if it\u2019s just for 24 hours. Once the kid\u2019s immunized, Wallis and the little one will come to London to stay. \u201cI feel kind of schizophrenic,\u201d Stan admits. \u201cI\u2019ve always been all or nothing with work. I don\u2019t know how else to do it. But now I am forced to have one foot in one world and one foot in the other.\u201d<\/p>\n
He has many more projects lined up: In December, he\u2019s in yet another MCU movie, Avengers: Doomsday. A film with Chilean director Felipe G\u00e1lvez, Impunity, will shoot in England, Ireland, and Spain. He\u2019s developing a project with Radu Jude called Frankenstein in Romania, in which he\u2019ll play both the doctor and the monster. \u201cWhen you have a kid, you start to think about providing all the time,\u201d he says. \u201cSo \u2026 I don\u2019t know. I\u2019ll see how I can keep balancing these jobs that I love to do, but that\u2019s not where you make any money. That\u2019s all for the love of the game.\u201d He\u2019s reading parenting books. He sends me the cover of one he\u2019s on now, titled The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read (and Your Children Will Be Glad That You Did). Last month, he flew to New York the day before his 44th birthday so he could celebrate at home. \u201cIt was fleeting. My mom came by. We had some cake,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd then I was able to get up in the morning and, you know, hold the baby\u2019s hand for a little while.\u201d He flew back to London later that day.<\/p>\n
Production Credits<\/p>\n
\n- \n Photograph by
\n David Bailey<\/strong>\n <\/li>\n- \n Grooming by
\n Talia Sparrow<\/strong>\n <\/li>\n- \n Styling by
\n Jason Bolden<\/strong>\n <\/li>\n- \n Tailoring by
\n Martha Howard<\/strong>\n <\/li>\n- \n Wardrobe by
\n Sunspel<\/strong> (shirt) and\n <\/li>\n- \n
Jacques Marie Mage<\/strong> (glasses)\n <\/li>\n<\/ul>\nThank you for subscribing and supporting our journalism.
\n If you prefer to read in print, you can also find this article in the September 7, 2026, issue of
\n New York\u00a0Magazine.<\/p>\n
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\n to support our journalism and get unlimited access to our coverage.
\n If you prefer to read in print, you can also find this article in the September 7, 2026, issue of
\n New York Magazine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photo: David Bailey for New York Magazine When you\u2019re a young actor, people with more power than you…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":678647,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[268],"tags":[75237,434,356,18,117,287215,287216,113812,36705,19,17,327,3466,14944,69799,16007,16008],"class_list":["post-678646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-audio-article","tag-celebrities","tag-donald-trump","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-fall-preview","tag-fall-preview-2026","tag-fjord","tag-hard-paywall","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-movies","tag-new-york-magazine","tag-profile","tag-sebastian-stan","tag-vulture-homepage-lede","tag-vulture-section-lede"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=678646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678646\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/678647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=678646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=678646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=678646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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