The two actors that inspired Paul Dano to become a star
Paul Dano has had a very fruitful career since he began acting as a child, having made his Broadway debut aged just 12. Transitioning to the big screen, his first major film role came when he was 16, appearing in the intense drama L.I.E., a story about a young boy who becomes involved with a middle-aged man.
Dano’s string of serious roles continued the following year when he played a high-schooler who finds out he is going to be a father in Too Young to be a Dad. However, the actor also experimented with comedic roles, starring as a nerdy and awkward high school student in rom-com The Girl Next Door in 2004.
However, it wasn’t until 2006 that Dano began to receive mainstream attention after his performance in the tender comedy Little Miss Sunshine. Shortly after, he made his breakthrough by playing Eli and Paul Sunday in Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood. Critics were widely impressed with the actor’s performance, respecting his ability to hold his own opposite one of cinema’s greatest modern actors, Daniel Day-Lewis.
Dano also received further acclaim when he played young Brian Wilson in his biopic Love and Mercy, for which he gained weight and learnt to play piano and sing. In 2016, by which point he had also starred in Oscar-winning 12 Years a Slave, Being Flynn opposite Robert De Niro, and Denis Villeneuve’s Prisoners, Dano released his directorial debut, Wildlife, which was highly praised by critics.
Most recently, Dano played The Riddler in The Batman, with director Matt Reeves stating that he wrote the character with the actor’s portrayal of Brian Wilson in mind. Given the list of accolades mentioned, it may not come as much of a shock to discover that Dano is a self-confessed cinephile, with his Criterion Closet video seeing him pick out films from Yasujiro Ozu, Jacques Demy, Gus Van Sant, and Edward Yang, explaining how they inspired his acting and directing career.
However, in a 2015 interview, Dano revealed the two actors that really solidified his decision to enter the movie business. When asked what movies defined his adolescence, Dano revealedL “I think there’s a few years or phases in my life that are important to me. I think early on when I liked movies, it was because of acting. I think later it became about film.”
The two actors that inspired him the most were Jim Carrey and Jack Nicholson. He explained: “There were two things that happened when I was in late elementary school or middle school that really excited me, and one was Jim Carrey. I remember seeing Ace Ventura, Dumb and Dumber and The Mask and thinking that he was a total genius —I just was obsessed with his movies at that point.”
On Jack Nicholson, he said: “In middle school, seeing One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and then Five Easy Pieces. To this day, Five Easy Pieces is probably one of my favourite films and favourite performances ever.”
