Paul Dano Goes Edgy In 'For Ellen'

Indie darling Paul Dano, 28, gives what has been dubbed his best performance yet in Treeless Mountain director So Yong Kim’s minimalist drama For Ellen, alongside Jena Malone (Into the Wild) and Jon Heder (Napoleon Dynamite). In the Sundance favorite, Dano stars as Joby Taylor, a twenty-something rocker who lives a bleak and aimless existence — until he is forced to set aside his musical aspirations to regain custody of his six-year-old daughter Ellen (Shaylena Mandigo), a girl that he barely knows and who is being raised by Margarita Levieva in the role of his estranged wife. Known for his mopey looks and typically benevolent characters, Dano roughens around the edges to embody bad boy Joby in For Ellen.

A New York native and Connecticut transplant, Dano has been acting since he was a child, initially on Broadway and then as Howie Blitzer in L.I.E. at the age of 17 — his first major film role for which he received several awards, including the Stockholm International Film Festival Award for Best Actor. But Dano’s big break was in indie hit Little Miss Sunshine (2006) and Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood (2007), which immediately solidified Dano’s status in the industry. He has since lent his voice to the fantasy adaptation Where the Wild Things Are (2009), and most recently starred in Cowboys & Aliens (2011) and Ruby Sparks (2012) — a romantic comedy featuring Antonio Banderas and Annette Bening, and written by Zoe Kazan, who also co-stars as Dano’s love interest. Despite his busy agenda, Dano continues to work in theater, appearing in Broadway productions such as Inherit the Wind and Ethan Hawke’s directorial debut Things We Want (2007), and has even dabbled in music as lead guitar and vocalist of the four-man band Mook.

In our exclusive interview, Dano reveals how he got into character as Joby in For Ellen — his edgiest role yet. “This was one of my favorite characters that I've gotten to play. It was a real challenge for me,” Dano admits. “Maybe it’s just about spending time with the script and the character, spending time with the type of music he listens to in that world, reading Tommy Lee's book and Slash's book. When you start wearing the clothes, painting your nails black and wearing a necklace, you start feeling different. And I was living in a motel up there — not the one we shot in, but we were in a small town so we were in a motel — and a lot of that became the blueprint of who he was.”

Dano, who got a 104-degree fever during the shoot, also tells us how he used his illness to his advantage. “I quickly tried to shift a couple of things around that made sense with not feeling well," he told Uinterview. "There's a sequence where my character’s at the bar and seems a little messed up, so that was a good scene to do then because, when you're that sick, you feel inebriated in a weird way.”