Alden Ehrenreich's first day of press happened when he was 19, sitting next to Francis Ford Coppola for Tetro. And he realized he didn't know how to do interviews.
"And I remember him saying this thing that I still think about, which is like, you just talk to the person. It's just like each person that comes in is just a different person. You just talk to them."
Years later, Ehrenreich sat with Josh Horowitz on Happy Sad Confused to promote A Talent for Murder. That's Anton Corbijn's chamber thriller starring Helen Mirren as Patricia Highsmith, written by Joanna Murray-Smith. He has worked with the Coens, Coppola, Christopher Nolan, and Zach Cregger, and he talks openly about both the high points and the hard ones.
Here's what actors and directors can learn from his stories.
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Make It Matter So Much It Stops Being Funny
One of my favorite movie scenes of all time is from Hail, Caesar! Ehrenreich plays a young Western actor who gets pulled into a serious British drama at the same studio, where he's terribly miscast and in over his head. He's given the line, "Would that it were so simple," but with his accent, it doesn't sound as refined as the director (Ralph Fiennes) would like. He's noted to death and is never able to deliver the line right.
It is so funny because of its repetition and absurdity. He said it was the funniest writing he'd ever read, and that was the problem.
"And I couldn't get through preparing for it without laughing, right? And it became really scary because I really couldn't get through without laughing."
The Coen brothers told him it was fine; they could cut around it. But he wanted to do the scene right. His fix was to raise the stakes for his character, Hobie Doyle. He had just come off prepping for a grueling audition and role in Warren Beatty's Rules Don't Apply, which had raised his bar for how prepared he needed to be.
"And when I did Hail, Caesar! it was almost like all of that newfound threshold of how prepared I needed to be came into play, because I was like, this has to mean so much to me. In other words, what my character wants, and this opportunity in this prestigious—I think it was called Merrily We Dance or something like that—movie has to mean so much to me that there's nothing funny about it if I can't say these lines."
He went to the woods and spent a day mentally preparing. Fiennes stayed in character the whole shoot until his last close-up, when he finally broke. Ehrenreich also says he was "playing what he was living," a nobody among A-list stars, determined not to blow his chance. Comedy works when the character takes the situation completely seriously.
If an actor is cracking up in rehearsal, help them find what the character wants. Raising the stakes is what kills the laugh. The Coens took the pressure off without lowering the bar, and that left Ehrenreich room to push himself.
Compare that with the worst note Ehrenreich says he ever got.
"The director had watched dailies of the scene the day before and came the next day to me and the leading actress and said, 'I just need to see it behind the eyes. I just need to see it behind the eyes. I want to see it behind the eyes.' I was like, 'How do I—behind the eyes?'"
A good note gives the actor something to play. "Behind the eyes" doesn't.
For him, the mood on set also matters.
"How good a filmmaker is is how good of an experience you have making the movie, I think. And you don't have control over how the movie comes out, but the experience itself, if you're working with somebody who's really talented, it's just going to be a great time."
When a Production Falls Apart
Shortly after his film with the Coens, he landed a lead role in a Star Wars spin-off as a young Han Solo. But the film didn't do well, and production was something of a disaster. He was initially excited and felt like "a little kid" given permission to play make-believe.
Asked whether he felt the production coming apart in real time, he says most of it doesn't matter anymore. But he describes how the director change felt.
"By the time there was the director switch, it was like when people say their parents got divorced and they were just so relieved because the household had become so tense," he said.
Lucasfilm fired Phil Lord and Chris Miller in June 2017 and brought in Ron Howard. At the time, The Hollywood Reporter reported that the studio had hired an acting coach for Ehrenreich. When Horowitz brings up that coverage of his acting, Ehrenreich says it "was not accurate" and that he's moved on.
Cast and crew feel tension at the top of a production, even when no one says anything about it. Directors and producers set the tone for the whole set.
'Weapons' Credit: Warner Bros.
Prepare, Then Fight for the Role
Ehrenreich talks about how he once blew a big audition when he was in his early 20s. He was not off-book. Years later, Zach Cregger gave his Weapons role to another actor, and Ehrenreich didn't let it go.
"I sent him a short film that I directed where I gained 20 pounds, and I looked like hell, and I just said, 'You know, just want you to see this,'" he says. "This is after it went to the other actor because I never felt this before, but I was like, 'I didn't get it, and something's wrong. I feel like that was my part.' And I for a year stayed on him, and other people went in and out of the movie and other roles, and the movie got delayed, and I just kept emailing him."
It paid off. When a scheduling conflict opened the role back up, his agents told him to email Cregger that day. Cregger called and asked him to dinner.
Filmmakers can learn from both halves of this story. Showing up unprepared to a pitch or a meeting can cost you the job, and you may not get a second shot.
And when you believe a project is yours, show it. Ehrenreich sent a short film that proved he could transform physically. For a director, that might be a proof of concept, a lookbook, or a short that shows you can handle the tone. Then follow up politely and stay on the radar.
