INTERVIEW: For the Romanian-born Hollywood star, the child welfare film Fjord became a personal journey back to his roots and to an upbringing where men were not supposed to show too much emotion . TBA met Sebastian Stan in Cannes.
CANNES, FRANCE: – I understand the self-consciousness that can come when you are an immigrant and trying to fit in without losing yourself.
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Sebastian has been announced to attend NYCC 2026. You can find more information and how to buy tickets at the link NYCC Ticket Information
Sebastian Stan is “happy” to alter his look for the sake of his work.
The Fjord star, 44, who surprised fans with a buzzcut in April 2025, tells PEOPLE that “some of the fun of being an actor” is to “change things up.”
Speaking at the PEOPLE, EW and Shutterstock Portrait Studio at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sept. 11, Stan says he “felt good” about parting with his hair. In Fjord, from Romanian writer-director Cristian Mungiu, the Oscar-nominated The Apprentice star plays Mihai Gheorghiu, an evangelical father who moves from Romania to a remote Norwegian village with his family.
“We needed to make these people be as relatable as possible, as real as possible,” explains Stan, who costars in the movie with Renate Reinsve.
Shaving his head for the character was Mungiu’s idea, but the father of one “was happy” to make the sacrifice, says Stan. “I saved a lot of time, to be honest! It’s very easy to move around. But look, whatever it takes.”
Mungiu calls Stan “such a great actor capable of doing very strong romantic pieces. And we never wanted to exploit his popularity and his looks.” Instead, the filmmaker says, they focused on the actor’s “talent.”
Fjord (in theaters Oct. 9) was inspired by the real-life story of Marius and Ruth Bodnariu. It follows Stan and Reinsve’s characters as their conservative ways clash with the local community’s policies. In May, the drama won the Palme d’Or, the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival.
The movie was a personal one for Stan, who immigrated from Romania to Austria at age 8 before coming to the U.S. at 12. The Marvel star has never before acted in a movie in his native Romanian, which he previously told PEOPLE at the premiere of his movie at TIFF made it “very special.”
Although not much is known about Stan’s upcoming role in The Batman: Part II (scheduled for a 2028 release), it is clear he has maintained the shaved head during filming this year. He has that and Avengers: Doomsday (in theaters Dec. 18) among his upcoming projects.
The 51st Toronto International Film Festival runs Sept. 10–20. Following its screening there, Neon will release Fjord in theaters Oct. 9.
17 photos from Shutterstock, PEOPLE, EW and NKPR Toronto International Film Festival 2026 IT House Portrait Studio and Toronto International Film Festival, Los Angeles Times and TIFF Studio Portraits have been added to the gallery.
12 Portraits (5000x size) have been added to the gallery.
Sebastian Stan has been running around the city of Toronto.
We’re sitting in a restaurant, having lunch between his multiple studio visits for various publications. It’s busy and bustling around us, the way TIFF tends to transform every hotel and restaurant over its 11-day period. Stan settles in at the table and digs into a chicken salad. He’s here to talk with Variety about the movie he says he’s been chasing, in one form or another, since he was a teenager.
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The 2026 Toronto International Film Festival premiere of Fjord took place last night. I’ve added at least 70+ UHQ/untagged photos of the event to the gallery. Screencaptures from the interviews linked below will be added in the next few days and edited into this post. For now enjoy the interviews and UHQ photos.
Marvel star is making risky career choices — most recently in the Cannes favorite Fjord.
When you’re a young actor, people with more power than you will label you as a type. The gag is they might do this before you know who you are in real life. In his search for what kind of guy to be, Sebastian Stan started by adopting what he calls all the stereotypical male role models: Brando, De Niro, Hoffman, Pacino. As a freshman in college, he showed up to parties in a white T-shirt and leather jacket, leaning James Dean–ishly against the doorframe like he wasn’t also a baby-faced immigrant kid who’d spent the past few years working on his Jim Carrey impression while trying to scrape off his Romanian accent. But as soon as Stan started seriously auditioning in his early 20s, it was obvious there was one thing everybody wanted from him. “Until recently, I had to battle this conception of me as being, like, the asshole character from The Karate Kid,” says the actor, now 44. “A Waspy asshole. A dick.”
One of his first jobs after college was playing the bad boyfriend in a Hayden Panettiere music video. He landed a part as the villain in The Covenant, a movie about teen-boy witches with abs. A big break was Gossip Girl, where he was cast as a slightly older degenerate gambler who gets his high-school-age friends into trouble. A way bigger break was getting cast in Marvel movies as James “Bucky” Barnes, a.k.a. the Winter Soldier, a.k.a. the childhood friend of Captain America who gets a bionic arm and goes bad (and then, eventually, good). There is a limiting factor to being so square-jawed and blue-eyed and symmetrical, which is that “smirking hot villain” is all mainstream Hollywood knows what to do with you. In recent years, though, Stan has realized he knows what he wants to do with himself.
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