Interview

Sofia Coppola’s casting choices are always as insightful as they are adept. So it was something of a surprise—and then, on second thought, it wasn’t—when the director picked actor Stephen Dorff to star in her fourth feature, tentatively titled Somewhere and set at L.A.’s Chateau Marmont hotel. Dorff, now 36, is not the first actor who comes to mind as an off-the-wall leading man although he certainly looks like one and has been acting for more than two decades. To his credit, Dorff has taken on roles that few men in the industry could—or would—dare to tackle: He played luckless fifth-Beatle Stuart Sutcliffe in the 1994 band bio Backbeat, iconic transsexual Candy Darling in Mary Harron’s I Shot Andy Warhol (1996), and kidnapping psycho director in John Waters’s 2000 comedy Cecil B. Demented. Dorff’s career has never really followed a straight line, but lately it seems as if he’s finally getting the recognition he’s deserved for all of his brilliantly scattershot filmography. This summer he took a turn as John Dillinger’s conspirator, Homer van Meter, in Michael Mann’s Public Enemies, and aside from the Coppola project, in which he plays a massive Hollywood star dealing with both his 11-year-old daughter (played by Elle Fanning) and his own emotional implosions, he also appeared in and co-produced the biting prison drama Felon (2008), and is now working on an Adam Sandler film, Born to Be a Star, in which he plays a porn star. All of this eclecticism sounds about right for a versatile performer like Dorff. Here he talks to his close friend Owen Wilson about what he’s gained and what he’s lost and what he’s still committed to learning (Guitar Hero).

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OWEN WILSON: Just relax, buddy, I’m a veteran—I interviewed Tony Shafrazi. The best interview they ever had in Interview.

STEPHEN DORFF: [laughs] Do we chitchat or do we go right into it?

WILSON: Let’s go right into it. You just finished a movie that Adam Sandler’s company is producing, Born to Be a Star, in which you play a porn star. It’s a comedy. You haven’t done a lot of comedies, have you?

DORFF: No, I mean I did a movie with John Waters called Cecil B. Demented, but I haven’t done a comedy like the kind you do—a straight-up comedy. It was an exciting opportunity, and I got you to help and coach me on it, buddy!

WILSON: Talk about your Born to Be a Star character—it’s kind of a funny character.

DORFF: His name is Dick Shadow. At the beginning of the film, he’s at the top of his game. Then there’s Bucky, played by Nick Swardson, who realizes his parents were porn stars and is destined to come to Hollywood. Adam wrote the script with Nick Swardson and Allen Covert.

WILSON: It’s a nice way of making movies—to do it with your friends where you can keep control over it.

DORFF: Yeah, it was a really loose and fun atmosphere. Because Sandler has made so many successful films, he’s really laid out a friendly family atmosphere. You see a lot of familiar faces you’ve seen in many of his other films, and I just had a great time. So I might be giving you a little competition in the comedy area.