Nick Stahl
Nick Stahl was born in Harlingen, Texas on December 5, 1979. After his mother, Dona, took him to see a children’s play at the age of 4, Nick confidently declared that acting would be his future. Commericals and community plays followed, two television movies were also released in the early 90s. The breakthrough he needed came next when he starred alongside Mel Gibson, who hand-selected Nick for the role, in The Man Without a Face (1993). Nick played Chuck, the little boy who befriends a stranger that was disfigured in an accident. Unfortunately, his follow up films weren’t much success and he slowly disappeared from the acting scene. All that changed in 1998 when he starred in two major films, Disturbing Behavior (1998) and The Thin Red Line (1998). Both films had a modest success at the box- office.
I try to avoid the sweet-ass roles.If I had some fake tanner, I’d like to play ‘Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara’ . I think I kind of look like him except for my skin tone. He’s one of my idols.
I was an escapist, the guy who wanted to get out of school and out of the suburbs…Acting saved me.
For Sin City (2005) the director wanted me to talk in a certain voice for this character. So I left my audition on an answering machine. It worked.
I’ve always chosen the movies and roles that I do solely by the content. That’s what I’ve always tried to do. Something like T3 was so unexpected for me, and was not something I can honestly say that I expected to be doing, given the films I’d been in before. I think that the scale of a movie and the budget a lot of times determines the quality. Sometimes you find that there is better material in small and more independent movies. There’s more risk-taking. I want to keep doing that for the future and choose projects based on the content and the role, and how good those are. And I think the budget of movie to me is somewhat secondary. – On his career choices.
(On his initial reaction to living in Los Angeles) It’s a place built on this industry, and that’s hard to get used to. Whenever your career is not on your mind, then there is always something there to remind you of it. Early on, it was very competitive in that way, and I am not an extremely competitive person. I had to find ways to enjoy it. I had to do my own thing and not get caught up in that kind of rat race.
(On Carnival getting canceled) It ended because there weren’t enough people watching it. It’s pretty simple and comes down to not enough people watching versus the amount of money they spend on each episode. I would say more people come up to me about that than anything else. It was on a premium channel, which narrowed the field of viewers off the bat. It never had the numbers that they wanted. But the fans that it had were very hard-core and loyal fans that loved it. It kept us going for two seasons.
