Stephen Dorff on working with less “cheats” and more raw

Probably most actors find that costumes and the props they interact with help bring their characters to life – along with dialogue, of course.

Stephen Dorff talked in a recent interview about working in Sofia Coppola’s movie “Somewhere” with much less of all of those.

Moviefone Blog: There’s hardly any dialogue in this script. Isn’t it tough to sell a script like this to an actor? Don’t actors like a lot of dialogue?

Stephen Dorff: It’s not tough for me! I looked at it and I said, ‘I’d be crazy not to accept this.’

I felt I understood all this stuff. I thought Sofia really got the acting thing down, as far as the loneliness and the emptiness that can happen.

As an actor you get so much attention. People need you, need you, need you, and the junkets, and then it just ends.

And you’re kind of sitting in your house or in your hotel room wondering what the hell do I do now?

I had a lot of questions. I wanted to understand.

Sofia doesn’t really need to necessarily write everything out, because she knows the film she wants to make.

I just loved that it was a character piece. There was time to get to know someone. The trend today is everything but that. It’s always moving so fast you don’t get to know anybody.

Moviefone Blog: Or it’s all explained, or over-explained.

Stephen Dorff: Or exposition. I did ‘Public Enemies.’ I was really happy to be cast in that, working with Johnny Depp. We worked six months on that, and then in the final cut, I liked the movie, but you don’t get to know any of these people.

It’s such a blur. You don’t even get to know Johnny’s character. This was so refreshing. It was like a 1970s movie. …

Being directed by Sofia is incredible. As an actor there’s a lot of cheats you can do. It was the most raw I’ve ever been. It was just me.

Sofia Coppola: You couldn’t hide behind anything.

Stephen Dorff: I find mimicking and accents and makeup the easiest kind of acting to do. Some people would be like, ‘how did he do that?’ That’s easy. You can turn me into a woman, give me some heels, I can do that. I can find the voice, etc.

But just sit me on the sofa? If I’m acting at all in those scenes, it unravels the movie that she wants to make. So it was trying to find this unconscious quality.

I think the intimacy that she brought by picking this small, special crew, by letting me live at the Chateau, by making it so easy for me… all these cool rehearsal exercises without over-rehearsing.

We weren’t blocking scenes. We were rehearsing more an energy and a feeling of comfort between me and Elle [Fanning] or me and these different characters.

From Interview: Sofia Coppola and Stephen Dorff on Visiting ‘Somewhere’, By Jeffrey M. Anderson, The Moviefone Blog.

> Also see post: Sofia Coppola on being a “dilettante” and enhancing creativity