“Three,” he says, then flinches, understanding he may have just created a disturbance in the Force. What he can't predict is what will happen once he’s done that. He liked the script. “We brought him in many times, pushed him, tried to test his range, and he was always up for it and brought something new, with a great sense of humor.”. Looks like you could comfortably play Bejeweled on it for hours if you were stuck in an elevator in 2007. Kathleen Kennedy, the head of Lucasfilm, says the number was a somewhat less extravagant sixteen hundred but agrees that Ehrenreich stood out from “his very first screen test.”, “Alden, remarkably, remained the person to beat from day one,” Miller says. They had mentioned there were some disagreements before, but they didn’t get into it. The duo, best known for comedies like 21 Jump Street and The Lego Movie, reportedly never saw eye to eye with the studio on the movie’s tone. His father died when he was just seven years old under tragic circumstances that he won’t discuss. Today, smartphone-less and slightly more fully present, Ehrenreich finds a seat in the bowling alley’s otherwise empty sports bar and sips Diet Coke from a Styrofoam cup. Like, this really is Star Wars now.”. It marks the first time since the debut of the intergalactically maligned George Lucas prequels that we’ve been asked to accept a different actor playing a character introduced in A New Hope. “He was reading the Sidney Lumet directing book, he was reading the Elia Kazan book on set,” Howard remembers. . But it may be a) background scenes for his Dior ad with Natalie Portman or b) from the 2009 movie Tetro. “It’s just like in life—you might go to a party or an event, but the next day one or two people just stick in your mind for some reason,” he says. Ehrenreich actually got to spend some time with May, he says, “which was a dream”—he is a big fan of her 1976 film Mikey & Nicky, with John Cassavetes and Peter Falk as doomed wiseguys on the run. “Warren occupies this very singular space of having been in old Hollywood, and knowing people Francis didn’t. Discover more posts about g:-alden-ehrenreich. Ehrenreich knows he can’t spend his entire career “frolicking in that world of film from the past,” that at some point, having apprenticed in a bubble where it’s still the seventies, he needs to figure out how to do the work the way the work is done, here in 2018. And not just any character—Han Solo, the closest thing Star Wars has to Bogart or Wolverine, the template for forty years’ worth of wisecracking- badass pop-culture icons, from Mal Reynolds on Joss Whedon’s cult series Firefly to Chris Pratt’s Peter Quill in Guardians of the Galaxy. The younger actor knew the history of Ford’s up-and- down relationship with the franchise. He knew Kazan”—who had directed Beatty in his first film, 1961’s Splendor in the Grass. We are nearing an event horizon—not peak Star Wars, necessarily, but maybe the point at which being in a Star Wars movie becomes just a thing that happens to every working actor eventually and is therefore unremarkable, neither a Golden Ticket nor a death sentence. “We wanted someone who could evoke the spirit of the iconic performance we all remember while bringing something new and fresh. They didn’t meet, though, because—and this is the best part of the story— Ehrenreich wasn’t at the bat mitzvah. It’s an impossible question for him to answer, and when he answers it, he endears himself to me forever by quoting Lester Bangs’s 1977 obituary for Elvis Presley, which doubled as a eulogy for the community bred by shared reverence. A lot of people told me it was never going to get made. I didn’t know. From Esquire. Still, they’d talk all day at Beatty’s house. “I think he probably reads a book a day.”, “He’s a total sponge,” says Coppola, who cast Ehrenreich in 2009’s Tetro, the actor’s feature debut. “Either they impressed you well or they impressed you badly, but you can’t get them out of your head. Jun 18, 2020 - “It’s a fairytale. They’d show her their dumb movies and she’d laugh. Alden Caleb Ehrenreich (/ ˈɛərənraɪk /; born November 22, 1989) is an American actor. “The world we live in now, everything is so niche,” he continues. “I was still auditioning when I was in college,” he says, “but I wasn’t really giving it the old college try. He wouldn’t get his wish until The Force Awakens, and he refused to sentimentalize the moment even then. I suggest to Ehrenreich that Tetro is the sort of experience that could spoil you for a lot of the other kinds of work a working actor has to do. It’s kind of in the DNA of something this enormous to be a bit of a challenge.”. I’m having such a good day. This is Star Wars. And so it was with Alden—he had qualities that seemed to last with you.”. He was born in 1989, which technically makes him part of the Prequels Generation. I ask Ehrenreich how many he’s signed up for. We talk about his meeting with Harrison Ford, which took place during preproduction on Solo. As a professional, he’s gotten the chance to work with two actors—George Clooney in Hail, Caesar! “So it was really cool to hear those stories, about Marilyn Monroe or Elizabeth Taylor or John Wayne or Bette Davis. Their life together, Ehrenreich says, “was very much a conversation about art and aesthetics,” although he had to sneak off to his grandmother’s house to watch R-rated films like The Godfather. I don’t think he was following the project that closely. He divulged to Esquire in April that he's signed on for "three" Star Wars films in total. “I’m in love with her, and I sing a song about her and she rejects me, and I cry and I eat dirt. He was away at a Latin-club event. There’s a Sizzler across the street,” he says, with the air of someone who is not unfamiliar with the Sizzler across the street. Or that scene in Chaplin when he goes into the wardrobe and finds the costume. It was just such a romantic, exciting thing to me, to be there.”. The next, you’re standing in Francis Ford Coppola’s vineyard in Napa, screen-testing for your first feature. “An impression of Harrison Ford would have felt like an extended Saturday Night Live sketch,” Miller adds. He was just kind of like, ‘Hey, what’s up, kid?’ My impression is that when he did Force Awakens he was surprised at what a good time he had, and how meaningful it ended up feeling to him.”, Not that they talked about that, of course. Ehrenreich got an agent based on that conversation. This is Star Wars. What do you think, fellow Famewatcher? And although Ehrenreich sought his predecessor’s guidance at a top-secret meeting before filming began, he doesn’t seem to be doing a Ford impression here. Outside of being with [Beatty], I was struggling to get into any kind of movie. Evening primrose, brittlebush, gravel ghost. Every product was carefully curated by an Esquire editor. See more ideas about alden ehrenreich, alden, celebrities male. Ehrenreich looks down with concern as my tape recorder starts to red-line. Promoting Solo: A Star Wars Story, Ehrenreich wears fashions from brands like Frame and Calvin Klein. “One of the things I remember Warren Beatty saying,” he tells me, “is that he had a conversation with Jodie Foster once about what the actual value of fame is. “From the first screen test on, we played around with it a lot. Alden Ehrenreich Is Ready to Prove He's Worthy of Han Solo. Article from esquire.com. The things he gets excited about are, in general, things that would bore the pants off many young actors but would thrill the guy from the TCM-fan-club commercial who can’t believe he’s Skyping with Ben Mankiewicz: getting to watch a little bit of footage from Orson Welles’s unfinished The Other Side of the Wind when Kennedy’s husband and former producing partner, Frank Marshall, was assembling it as a Netflix movie; or sitting with Beatty, who directed him in 2016’s Rules Don’t Apply, and listening to Beatty talk about the notes he’d gotten on his script from Robert Towne and Aaron Sorkin and David Mamet and Elaine May. Maybe that way of putting it is a little self-important. Alden Ehrenreich Shirtless Photos. Ehrenreich is a millennial with the face of an old-school matinee idol who has yet to be thrown a pitch he can’t hit—operatic emotion for Francis … SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY (2018) Dir. A lot of people told me not to. You can tell Ehrenreich doesn’t particularly love talking about this stuff, but also that it’s a little frustrating to be sworn to secrecy about the movie and therefore unable to defend it from bad buzz in any non-vague way. “I don’t know if that’s officially, uh, public. Ehrenreich understands, at least a little bit, what’s happening when he plays a young Coppola figure or assumes a Beatty-esque role in a Beatty film—the transference that occurs, the way he’s both a performer and an onscreen surrogate, the way in which these guys can feel themselves living on through an heir. In his spare time, he saw a lot of movies at Film Forum—a West Village institution that screens indies and revivals—and drank at a lot of people’s apartments. “It was this period of going, What if they get somebody that you don’t get along with? Alden Ehrenreich – Esquire. “And you can control how you treat people. Ehrenreich seems legitimately interested; he wants to connect. So I was hanging in there, like, I sure hope this gets made. We may earn a commission from these links. I was giving college the old college try.”. But I think at that point, they were kind of on board with [the decision], too. Alden Ehrenreich Addresses All the Han Solo Drama Rumors: Photo #4071525. April 24, 2018. I’ve been asked polite questions about myself by movie stars before and I know what it feels like. By the time Ehrenreich and I have reached the fifteen-minute mark of our acquaintanceship, he’s asked me where I grew up, where I went to college, when I decided to drop out, and why. Alden Ehrenreich - Get the latest update about Alden Ehrenreich at Esquire Middle East “The outlaw thing is an act. And he was gracious and supportive and very welcoming—a real gentleman. “The wardrobe is a big part,” he says. Instead, we find seats in a different corner of the bowling alley, across from a little coffee counter that looks like it’s been waiting undisturbed for its next customer since approximately 1964. At one point while we’re talking, Ehrenreich stops midsentence and notices something that I’ve also just noticed. The things we need. -Phil Lord. But he and Gianni knew this girl who was friends with one of Gianni’s cousins. It’s only later that I realize he never quite told me why he made the decision. Growing up, he had an action figure of Shaq as the DC Comics hero Steel. Photographed by Alexi Lubomirski, Ehrenreich plays it rugged in an outdoors photo shoot. Shia LaBeouf, Andrew Garfield, and Justin Timberlake were reportedly all in the mix for Frank Forbes, and Ehrenreich says he always assumed there was a chance Beatty would throw him over for a bigger name. April 24, 2018. Mark Hamill, Oscar Isaac, and BB-8 were all there, representing the franchise. “I was there to die. Ehrenreich wasn’t. “If he’s going to be stuck playing one part, he’s going to have to just constantly learn to reinvent and bring new colors to it that can interest him,” Coppola had said. Past billboard adventures aside, Alden has a lot going on professionally at the very moment. really exciting game in town for me at that time. In the end, Ehrenreich may be the best person for this job because he already sees it that way. 34 talking about this. The first one starts with a growl of guitar distortion under the Lucasfilm logo and an unknown hand switching on the Millennium Falcon like it’s a Marshall stack. The new Han Solo (NuHan), Alden Ehrenreich, covers Esquire this month with a profile that is part typical “on the cusp” celebrity profile and part damage control. Unfortunately, Alden Ehrenreich was the lead actor in the first Star Wars movie in the storied franchise's history to lose money.. Solo: A Star Wars Story, in which Ehrenreich played the young Han Solo, had all the pedigree to be a great chapter in the series, but made less than $400 million at the box office.. Like a lot of budding cinephiles, he soon started making films of his own. He knows he can play Han Solo his way and he knows that there’s nothing he can do to change or even predict what will happen once he’s done that. The shoot itself is so immersive you don’t know if you’re on or off set, talking about art or acting in a movie about talking about art, waking or dreaming. May 14, 2018 - The “young Cary Grant” was a scene-stealer in the Coen Brothers’ Hail Ceasar!, but now he’s ready to be the leading man. “Because I don’t think he’s the kind of person who’s just going to go in to work and collect the check and go home.”, After Tetro, Ehrenreich went to NYU for almost four years. “He felt classic and contemporary all at once,” says Lord. But he adds that Howard won over the cast and crew quickly. The director saw something in Ehrenreich that day—a willingness to go for it, for one thing. Alden Ehrenreich is ready for his close-up as he covers the May 2018 issue of Esquire. Like, ‘This is what’s happening.’ That’s not what they said to me, but that was the vibe I got.”, Ehrenreich says the fan-press rumor that it was he who approached Kennedy with concerns about Lord and Miller is “not at all” true, that he couldn’t imagine ever making a call like that “unless people were being put in danger or something.”. May 30, 2018 - Young Han Solo Actor Alden Ehrenreich on 'Solo,' 'Star Wars,' and taking on an iconic role. Yet most of that work happened in films seen by few moviegoers and—probably—even fewer hardcore Star Wars fans. That quality is more or less what the film’s original directors, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (who were replaced during filming by Ron Howard; more on that in a bit), were looking for when they set out to cast the role. But there’s one point he can make without spoiling anything, which is that Star Wars movies are always a little fucked up at first. “Because that’s the only way in which these lessons become of value,” he says. Transferred after a semester from Tisch to the university’s make-your-own-major Gallatin School. Operated by ITP Media Group of PO Box 500024 Dubai UAE by Permission of Hearst Communications, Inc., New York, New York, United States of America, And we don't have to be worried after all. “For a crew to do that would mean they hated [Lord and Miller], which was not by any stretch the case.”. You don’t wanna get there and go, God, maybe I just did this because my agent told me to.” He knows what he’s getting into. “I think the first meeting I had with him was four hours,” Ehrenreich says. And”—he laughs—“that’s about it...In a way, walking a tightrope that’s a lot higher is a great way to learn that lesson more profoundly.”, This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. 's board "Alden Ehrenreich", followed by 690 people on Pinterest. “That was yielding a different movie than the other factions wanted. Maybe that’s a trap, and maybe it isn’t. Découvrez tous les produits Alden Ehrenreich à la fnac : Films et Séries A few days’ growth of beard softens his absurdly sharp jawline, knocks down the overall movie-star wattage of his resting face. He says he doesn’t remember ever jumping off furniture pretending to be Liam Neeson as Qui-Gon Jinn. Esquire participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means we may get paid commissions on editorially chosen products purchased through our links to retailer sites. “He wasn’t saying that,” he says, “but you’d find out that he was meeting with everybody else, y’know?”. Alex Pappademas with Photos by Alexi Lubomirski. Source: cinemagal. Mar 3, 2020 - Explore A.F. On a personal level, it felt emotional, for them to be going after we’d set out on that course together. Those were all people Warren knew.”. “One of the beautiful things about being a part of Star Wars is that it’s one of those few things that are community- building in that way. Howard—the two-time Oscar winner and card-carrying Friend of Lucasfilm—stepped in to direct Solo last July, after Lord and Miller were relieved of duty four months into production. 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(2016), for which he gained praise. Of Lord and Miller, Ehrenreich says, “They had a different style than Ron in terms of the way we were working.” He’s not sure what their Solo would have been like. It’s really insane, it is, and every time I tell this story it still seems so surreal. He likes the idea that everything the characters do in this film, every place they visit, will become part of the lexicon. “He wanted to know everything about New York in the sixties and seventies. He attended the arts-focused private school Crossroads, in Santa Monica, and haunted local revival theaters on weekends. His mother is an interior designer who loves movies. But—yeah.” Anyway: Between auditions for Solo, Ehrenreich took a trip out to Death Valley. As for the various stories about the Solo crew breaking into spontaneous applause upon hearing of Howard’s appointment or (depending on which account you read) Lord and Miller’s firing? On the Internet, to which the actor has so carefully limited his access, the Why him? This sounds a lot like a meeting at which nothing happened. We meet for the second time at Jones, a tiny checkered-tablecloth Italian place. I ask him what it’s like to know that there will be a Han Solo figure out there with his face on it, that he’s now part of a franchise that will outlive him. It's hard to imagine that it was only two years ago that Alden Ehrenreich made his debut as young Han Solo in Solo: A Star Wars Story.Since then we've seen the conclusion of the Skywalker saga and entered the uncertain mid-way point between whatever comes in … Two things happened while he was in college, though: Tetro was released—to decent reviews if little box office—and Ehrenreich was introduced to Warren Beatty. It was when the “super bloom” happened—a once-in-a-decade explosion of Easter-bright flowers bursting to life in the desert.