By Ellise Shafer. What a beautiful thing. Tell me a bit about how you got started in acting. The year was , I was just a boy… No, I grew up doing theater and there was always a passion for it without any kind of understanding of how to do it professionally.
I loved being on stage. I ended up going to college for it and studying theater and within that time found this passion for film and movies. What were some of your favorite movies as a kid? It just really expanded my world. I remember falling in love with movies when I was very young. And then, kind of on my own, discovering Paul Thomas Anderson films. It was very bizarre and surreal … It was such a delayed process. At least that was my experience — I kind of got to hide back in the shadows a little bit.
But I think that was ultimately good, because if we would have hit the ground running right away after that first season and gone out into the world, it would have been harder for me to adjust to it.
What sort of sense did you get of your character from both the book and from Guadagnino? What did he want you to bring to Allerton? Ambiguity, really, which was a challenge. And I wanted to protect him in a way and kind of guide him through this.
I still think about him. Tell me about working with Daniel Craig. Were you starstruck the first time you met him? But yeah, I mean it was about the work and we just got into it really quickly. He never took anything too seriously.
