Heading into 2023 with each an Oscar-nominated movie and a large blockbuster film underneath his belt, Paul Dano is already having an excellent yr. His performances as Steven Spielberg’s dad in The Fabelmans and Arkham villain the Riddler in Matt Reeve’s The Batman have gained him huge consideration in Hollywood. And but, he isn’t fairly the celeb you’d count on him to be.
As put by Matt Brothers and Daryl Bär of their podcast devoted to the actor, Is Paul Dano Okay?: “[Dano] is someone who people know, but they don’t know they know.” Unseen on social media and comparatively quiet with the general public, there’s an opportunity viewers don’t acknowledge his identify in trailer credit. But that doesn’t imply they aren’t any much less enthusiastic about seeing him on display. When his face pops up, audiences know they’re about to expertise essentially the most unsettling, creepy characters in cinema.
This is fairly ironic, contemplating everybody within the movie enterprise agrees: Paul is a straight-up lovable man. Jake Gyllenhaal, fellow youngster actor and co-star within the movie Prisoners, describes Dano as “open-hearted but quiet, and in no need for an actor’s typical desire for attention.” Oscar-winning director Bong Joon Ho really wrote in a personality for Paul Dano after assembly him in individual. “I wanted to capture his inimitable aura and rhythm on film.”
So what’s it about Paul Dano that leaves each his co-workers and followers so enthralled?
Dano Has Perfected Playing the Lovable Punk
To be truthful, Dano isn’t all the time enjoying a whole psychopath. Sometimes he’s enjoying somebody who’s simply… unlikable. In 2006, Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton got here out with the feel-good cult-classic Little Miss Sunshine. A ravishing movie concerning the energy of affection and being your self, Paul Dano’s character stands out like—properly, like a goth child with dyed black hair who, attributable to frustrations together with his dad and mom, has taken a vow of silence. Dwayne Hoover is the antithesis of the movies happy-go-lucky vibe. Sullen, gloomy, and bitter on the world, you’d count on few to be rooting for such a personality.
And but, whereas Dwayne is annoying, maybe reminding viewers of an aggravating older brother or reckless son, that’s what’s so attention-grabbing about Dano’s efficiency; we discover ourselves relentlessly curious, unable to show away every time he seems on-screen. His capacity to embody a brooding teenager––the sort whose desperation for consideration makes you need to ignore him all of the extra–––and nonetheless captivate us when he’s on-screen, appears like sorcery.
Perhaps that’s the place Dano’s real-life charisma is available in; his efficiency is simple, not a scream to make viewers look, however an aura that has audiences leaning in to seize what he’s saying.
Little Miss Sunshine wasn’t the one movie the place Dano performs a wanton youth. The yr prior he got here out with The Ballad of Jack and Rose, through which he performs a sullen, impolite, delinquent vying for the center of the protagonist. His harsh phrases and unfriendly demeanor push everybody, together with the viewers, away. And but, there’s a small a part of us that feels comfortable when he will get the woman. There’s a way that, buried underneath that annoying exterior, there’s somebody lovable inside.
Dano is a Master of Duality
While Dano does an excellent job of performing the tortured soul, he does an equally improbable job of portraying the straight-up tortured. In 2012, Dano made audiences twitchy together with his demented character Seth within the movie Looper, an murderer in a future world the place time journey exists for these in shady and profitable companies. With a delicate demeanor and cowardly presence, Seth fails to finish his “mission” and rapidly deteriorates when his bosses start to hunt him down, falling into insanity.
In 2016, the Daniels got here out with the quintessentially odd Swiss Army Man. In this movie, Paul Dano performs Hank, a person stranded on a desert island. Bored and with out hope, he’s on the verge of trying suicide when he spots a miracle approach out: a useless physique washed up on the shore whose farts are highly effective sufficient to propel him away from the island. A survival story, Hank spends the remainder of the movie at his wit’s finish, leaping from one life-or-death scenario to a different.
While Seth and Hank are wholly totally different characters, in fully totally different circumstances, Dano is ready to completely seize the craze and desperation of individuals combating for survival. The actor’s performances make the characters really feel unusual from the on a regular basis man. Seth, who strikes together with his manias and appears captured by some out-of-body entity, and Hank, who has been alone and remoted for a lot too lengthy, having let go of societal norms ages in the past. Yet, inside that estrangement, Dano maintains a detailed diploma of relation to each characters. Neither Seth nor Hank is a hero, prepared for battle. They, like viewers, are simply individuals who discovered themselves in a reasonably unhealthy scenario.
From Tortured to Psychotic, Dano’s Characters are Downright Scary
While Seth and Hank stay comparatively harmless, Dano shines brightest when he performs the outright horrifying. So a lot so, it is most likely an excellent a part of why the 2007 movie There Will be Blood was nominated for Best Picture.
In an 1898 prospector city, the place there’s nothing however desert and silver mines, Dano performs Eli Sunday, an off-kilter pastor trying to win huge within the booming oil enterprise. Surrounded by poverty and wasteland, Eli comes from troubled origins. Yet, his demeanor is toxically constructive––continually raving in his sermons concerning the energy of Christ, whereas obsessed together with his imaginative and prescient of turning into rich.
From begin to end, Eli maintains a crazed glint in his eye, an unsettling stare that permits you to know his godliness is an act, and there’s something grotesque hidden beneath. Shifting from loud screaming monologues into disturbing whispers that ship chills up your backbone, and a bloody last showdown between Eli and the protagonist (performed by Daniel Day-Lewis), Dano performs a villain you simply can’t take your eyes off of.
Directors Can’t Get Enough of Dano in Dark Roles
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It’s not onerous to think about that Dano’s villainous function in There Will Be Blood is what put him on the entrance of Reeves’ thoughts when he started work for the 2022 rendition of The Batman, writing the script with the actor in thoughts for the Riddler. A traumatized psychopath obsessive about puzzles and destruction, it appears Dano was the proper candidate to tackle such a heavy function.
It’s onerous to play a villain–– even more durable to play one which doesn’t fall into stereotypes. But with a lifetime of expertise enjoying characters dropping themselves, he delivered an distinctive efficiency as the enduring villain. Grotesquely disfigured, hunched over in darkish corners, and with a voice that oscillated between banshee screams and low rumbles, the Riddler is not any comic-book villain. He genuinely terrifies, making audiences need to disguise behind their fingers each time he comes on display.
And but, even with that intestine intuition to show away, audiences’ eyes are glued to the display by that magical one thing that Dano brings. His gradual actions, glazed stare, and hypnotic voice maintain viewers caught to their seats.
Dano has made a profession off of being uncanny, and if the success of The Batman is any indication, his success is just set to proceed. And whereas the 37-year-old actor provides equally enthralling performances as type, charismatic, and considerate people—take a look at Ruby Sparks, Love and Mercy—he definitely gained audiences’ hearts being the loopy, outlandish, and villainous people we love to look at on display.