Category: Articles

Apr
21

Photo/News: How Sebastian Stan Survived Communism and Became Hollywood’s Most Daring Shape-Shifter

Vanity Fair

For photos from this interview click here: Session #61 – Norman Jean Roy

This windblown Monday in late February would have been his late father’s 70th birthday, and before the day is gone, he is determined to light a candle and say a prayer in the old man’s memory at a place that had meaning for them both. Stan was born and raised in Romania, where faith and superstition became rooted together for him. “Whenever I’m in a church, I have to go like this three times,” he says, making the sign of the cross with his right hand. “I have to do it. And I have to do it three times before I get on a plane.”
Just before we arrived at this Southern California church in pursuit of the sacred, Stan was indulging the profane. Is there another way to describe an encounter with a remote-controlled talking penis? The actor is based in New York, so when he visits LA, as he’s doing now to attend the Academy Awards, he has a full to-do list. Today, that includes a visit to the makeup studio Autonomous FX, which won an Emmy for transforming Stan and Lily James into Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson for the Hulu series Pam & Tommy. The whole day is a microcosm of what has established Stan as one of the more daring and endearing actors working today. He thinks deeply but has a wild side too.

We’ll get back to the robo-penis later.

It’s getting late, and Stan has to hurry through rush-hour traffic to get right with God for his father’s birthday. The Biserica Ortodox? Român? Sfânta Treime (or Holy Trinity Romanian Orthodox Church) that he wants to visit to light the tribute to his father is meaningful to the Romanian immigrants who founded it, but it’s no soaring cathedral. It’s tiny, a single-story white stucco structure with a squat steeple that’s hidden behind much taller trees. Across the street is the headquarters of the Bilt-Well Roofing company, which is a comparatively much bigger operation.
Stan left Romania more than three decades ago, but it’s still a core part of him. So is the uncertainty of growing up in a place where the government dominated and demoralized its own citizens—which makes him especially attuned to authoritarianism in his adopted country of the United States. His old accent is gone, of course. Few who have seen him onscreen as the Winter Soldier in a decade and a half of Marvel movies—including the upcoming outcast team-up adventure Thunderbolts*—could find a trace of it. Stan’s character of Bucky Barnes is as all-American as his closest friend, Captain America. The character was a Brooklyn native, but Stan took on a neighboring Queens inflection for another famous (or infamous) performance, playing young Donald Trump in the scathing true-life drama The Apprentice. The role earned him both a best-actor Oscar nomination this year and the enduring rage of a vengeful, unchecked president.

New faces and new voices were exactly what drew Stan to acting in high school. He moved to the US in the 1990s, and—as an immigrant kid still struggling to adapt to the language and culture—it was a lot more fun to be Bum Number Two in a production of Little Shop of Horrors than it was to be himself. “I just remember how fun it was to try to change everything,” he says.

Being onstage turned a shy kid into a scene-stealing extrovert— and he was good at it. His mother sent him to summer theater camp not far from their new home just outside New York City, and by the end of high school, he was being cast as the lead in Cyrano de Bergerac. He was a good-looking kid, but he still loved hiding his face beneath Cyrano’s oversized nose. “You’re dress ing up, you’re putting on fake beards, you’re walking differently, you’re changing,” he tells me. “You take big swings. You take bigger swings than you do when you’re a young actor coming to LA to go on pilot season auditions and they try to cast you as yourself—and you’re only allowed to play yourself.”

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Apr
17

News: How Jacob Elordi Physically Transformed for Justin Kurzel’s Piercing War Story ‘The Narrow Road to the Deep North’

Indiewire

While Kurzel said he is no longer associated with the Laura Dern and Benedict Cumberbatch sci-fi drama “Morning,” he is about to begin production on another adaptation. Kurzel has replaced “Room” director Lenny Abrahamson to helm Cory Finley’s adaptation of “Burning Rainbow Farm: How a Stoner Utopia Went Up in Smoke,” journalist Dean Kuipers’ account of a five-day standoff between marijuana advocates and the FBI. As an indication of the regard in which he is held by actors, Kurzel was brought onto the project by its star Sebastian Stan, a gesture that speaks to the collaborative spirit he fosters on set.

Apr
04

News: How Sebastian Stan Finally Brought Hollywood to His Homeland With Romanian Festival Hopeful ‘A River’s Gaze’

Variety

It’s hard to imagine Sebastian Stan fighting for any part in Hollywood.

The Academy Award nominee has proven he’s as bankable in high-brow indies like “The Apprentice” and “A Different Man” as he is in soaring commercial fare like his continuing role as Marvel’s Bucky Barnes (next appearing in “Thunderbolts”).

But a cinematic homecoming that has eluded him over his career. Born in Constan?a, Romania, Stan has been trying to find a way to bring his day job back to his birth country and highlight talent in the region. Stan told Variety that’s been looking for the right Romanian script to act in for the for the better part of 15 years. Now, he’s found a way to represent behind the camera as a producer on “A River’s Gaze,” a Romanian-set drama from director Andreea Bortun.

It’s a story close to his own upbringing, Stan says. His single mom Georgeta raised him across multiple countries while forging her own artistic and academic path. Bortun, whose work is a blend of anthropology and visual art, has sent successful shorts to festivals like Cannes (where her collaboration with Stan has submitted for inclusion this year).

“A River’s Gaze” tells the story of Lavinia, a single mom herself whose ambitions of a better life for her 14-year-old son often eclipse his urgent emotional needs in the moment. Told over four seasons in rural Romania, Stan and Bortun caught up with Variety to discuss the artistic trip home.

Sebastian, how did you attach as a producer to this project?

Sebastian Stan: This came from a lot of conversations I’ve had with her over the years about my desire to be more involved with Romania creatively. A mutual friend who we both admire and respect spoke highly of Andrea and sent me her short, which had gone to Cannes. I was immediately blown away. I’ve wanted to act in a Romanian film for a very long time. I’ve tried and it hasn’t come about, but I realized that I can also help behind the camera. Andrea’s script spoke to me personally. At the center is this very specific, intimate relationship between a mother and a son growing up in Romania under particular conditions, which I feel are not always reflected much to the rest of the world. I had my own journey with my mom growing up there and leaving the country. I felt there were things about it that really rang true to me, and that was great, because it only incentivized me to want to be involved further in helping her craft this vision.
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Mar
06

News/Photo: Hollywood’s Top 25 Power Stylists 2025

The Hollywood Reporter

Note: Photoshoot photos including Michael’s instagram photos are here: Session #161 – Nino Muñoz

Michael Fisher

CLIENTS Sebastian Stan, John Mulaney, Bowen Yang, David Harbour

WHY HE MATTERS For the press tour of The Apprentice, Stan and Fisher steered clear of his onscreen persona’s power-shouldered suits in favor of such modern interpretations as shrunken Thom Browne and smartly tailored Prada suits and Dolce & Gabbana pinstripes. “Michael’s a movie buff. He watches the films and has a point of view. He’s conscious of who he’s working with: the person’s tastes, characteristics, what kind of actor they are. He’s sensitive to the themes being promoted,” says Stan of Fisher, with whom he first teamed in 2018.

TOP LOOK Fisher is partial to the contrasting piped black Prada mohair coat and trousers that the Different Man Golden Globe winner wore to the ceremony. “Custom looks are always stressful because you don’t really know how it will turn out or how your talent will feel once they try it on,” says Fisher, who has a history with the luxury Italian house. “Instinct told me that the final result would be perfect for the win.” Adds Stan: “There was something timeless and old Hollywood about it that I loved. … I also think I probably always love everything that’s in black. If it was up to me, I would always just be dressing in black.”

Photographed on Feb. 26 at the Sunset Marquis in West Hollywood. On Stan: Prada coat, sweater, tee, pants; Cartier watch, jewelry; Steve Madden shoes. On Fisher: Prada clothing; Cartier watch, jewelry. Groomer: KC Fee at Redefine Representation Artistic and Fashion Director Alison Edmond Photographed by Nino Muñoz

“I sought him out,” says Stan (right) of Fisher. “I really loved that at the time he was working with some of my favorite actors, like Michael Shannon, Ethan Hawke and Adam Driver. It seemed that everything on those guys was effortless and felt connected to who they were and their personalities.” Adds Fisher, “Sebastian’s passion, generosity and sense of adventure always make my job easy.”

Feb
12

News/Photo/Video: A Turn as Trump Made Sebastian Stan an Unlikely Oscar Nominee | New York Times

New York Times – He is attracting different attention, and some leading man hardware, after standout performances in “The Apprentice” and “A Different Man.”

For accompanying photo: Session #157 – Caroline Tompkins.

For the accompanying video clip click here.

For the screencaps of the video clip click here

For years, it seemed fair to assume that the actor Sebastian Stan could make a career on both sides of Hollywood. There was dabbling in juicy supporting roles — he played the ex-husbands of both Tonya Harding and Pamela Anderson — while comfortably returning to the action-hero part for which he is best known: Bucky Barnes. As the erstwhile sidekick of Captain America, Stan has been a regular in the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies since 2011 (including “Thunderbolts*,” which hits theaters in May). There are surely worse fates than simply maintaining that balance.

“There’s a group of actors — I’ll put Colin Farrell in this group as well — that are so handsome that in some sense it works against them,” said Jessica Chastain, Stan’s friend and castmate in “The Martian” and “The 355.”

While being too good-looking a movie star may be world’s-smallest-violin territory, a whirlwind year with two standout unconventional performances now has the 42-year-old cast in a very different light. It has also already brought in some leading-man hardware, with more maybe to come.

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Feb
11

News: ‘A Different Man’ Makeup Designer Mike Marino On The Prosthetic Stages Of Sebastian Stan’s “Metamorphosis”

Deadline

When makeup designer Mike Marino signed on to do the prosthetics for A Different Man, he was taken in by the story’s ability to shine a comedic light on a dark subject. Writer-director Aaron Schimberg’s take on someone’s obsession of self then led Marino to an Oscar nomination for his prosthetic designs.

A Different Man follows Edward (Sebastian Stan), an aspiring actor, who undergoes a medical procedure to drastically change his appearance. When his new face gets in the way of the role he was born to play, he becomes obsessed with reclaiming what was lost. Marino looked to Adam Pearson for inspiration on what Edward’s initial prosthetics should look like, since the actors had to be playing off of each other, though Marino’s real craftsmanship came in the form of the “treatment stages” prosthetics.

DEADLINE: What was your inspiration for Edward’s prosthetics?

MIKE MARINO: The actual direct inspiration was Adam Pearson. Due to what we needed to do through the film, we had to have Sebastian look close to Adam Pearson, but a bit different. He was really the main influence with the design of the makeup because they’re playing against each other, so it wouldn’t really make sense if it looked completely different. It had to have the same feeling. So, I used Sebastian’s face to do what I could with his own face and his proportions, and mix them with Adam Pearson’s in a sense, but I had to actually make it a little bit more dramatic because his face is like Edward’s face in the film. Sebastian’s character is going through this kind of metamorphosis where he’s getting scabs and these pieces are peeling off of his face. So, it had to be altered from Adam Pearson’s face, which is not going through any of that stuff. Throughout the film, his face is getting scabby and lumpy and all these other things happening, and then he’s peeling pieces of it off, and then he ultimately peels his entire face off.

DEADLINE: Tell me about the stages of the prosthetics.

MARINO: So, there’s a few stages. His initial look is its own look in itself, and then when he starts going to treatments, he starts getting scabs and little pieces of things that are more intensified and flakier. And then you have this extremely soft version where his face almost looks like it’s melting off, which is the scene where he peels his face off and underneath is another stage of makeup. It’s a transitionary state between Edward’s final look as Guy, which he changes his name to, and Edward’s look. When he peels that off, underneath is another makeup he’s wearing that’s slightly distorting his facial features. If you look closely, you can kind of see remnants of the shape of what that character looks like. And then ultimately the next scene, he’s Sebastian Stan. He’s the new character.

That’s about four stages, and it was hard to make the very soft one. We barely could even take it out of our molds because it was just so pliable and so soft that it was barely holding its shape. And I had to do the makeup of his transitionary stage first and then glue with a very sticky gel, a very sticky material called Methylcellulose, which is basically a concentrated jelly donut filling. I had to glue the makeup on with that material so that it would kind of slough off and just peel and drip off. So then when he stretches it, it’s all this really stretchy cocoon-like shell going on. So that was definitely a tricky thing to even pull off.

DEADLINE: And what is that last prosthetic itself made out of? Is it a different material from the others that makes it so soft and difficult to work with?

MARINO: It’s all the same material. It’s just varied in density of silicone. There’re ways to vary the softness of things. Like for instance, on The Penguin, I made certain aspects of that makeup harder, like the nose. And there were aspects of Colin [Farrell]’s face, like the neck, which I made extremely soft because it’s such a mobile area. Same with this, there’s a couple of soft spots of Edward’s character, and then when he’s peeling his face off, it’s a much, much softer version of the same material. We can make it more liquid and do different things chemically to make it very pliable, but it’s all platinum, medical-grade silicone.

Feb
07

News: Fernanda Torres and Sebastian Stan Join Ariana Grande, Karla Sofía Gascón, and More at Santa Barbara Tribute — Exclusive

Indiewire

Under executive director Roger Durling, the Santa Barbara International Film Festival (SBIFF, February 4-15, 2025) has thrived by not only mounting an eclectic film festival but riding the awards season waves by programming prestige interviews with Oscar contenders.

All the festival’s popular panels are held at State Street’s capacious Arlington Theatre. The festival is adding two new tributees, Oscar nominees Fernanda Torres (“I’m Still Here”) and Sebastian Stan (“The Apprentice”), to TCM host Dave Karger’s popular Virtuosos tribute on Sunday, February 9 at 8 p.m.

They will join panelists Karla Sofía Gascón and Selena Gomez (“Emilia Pérez”), Harris Dickinson (“Babygirl”), Ariana Grande (“Wicked”), Clarence Maclin (“Sing Sing”), Mikey Madison (“Anora”), and John Magaro (“September 5”). The festival may not have foreseen that Torres might be rubbing shoulders with rival Oscar nominee Gascón in the wake of her recent scandal. Netflix may opt not to send Gascón. (Netflix had no response at press time.)

Every year, screenwriters, directors, and producers promote their films on panels, with past speakers like Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey Jr., Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Kristen Stewart, Cate Blanchett, Christopher Nolan, Ben Affleck, Brad Pitt, Bong Joon Ho, and more submitting to in-depth tributes.

The panels, tributes, and special screenings lure not only local cinephiles but the area’s few hundred Academy members eager to hear Oscar contenders talk about their creative process. Most of the tributes and panels are held in person at the historic Arlington Theatre, and they’re posted online.

SBIFF 2025, the 40th edition, will open with the U.S. premiere of “Jane Austen Wrecked My Life” and will unspool 12 days of film programming from 60 countries, including 32 world premieres such as Maxim Derevianko’s “Ai Weiwei’s Turandot,” as well as red-carpet tributes to filmmakers and talent including Colman Domingo, Angelina Jolie, Ralph Fiennes, Zoe Saldaña, Timothée Chalamet, Adrien Brody and Guy Pearce. The closing night film is the U.S. premiere of “A Missing Part.” Tickets are available here.

I will return to moderate The Writers Panel on Saturday, February 8 at 11 a.m. The Oscar nominees include “The Brutalist” co-screenwriter Mona Fastvold, Golden Globe-winning screenwriter Peter Straughan (“Conclave”), “Nickel Boys” co-screenwriter Joslyn Barnes, “A Real Pain” writer Jesse Eisenberg, “September 5” writer Tim Fehlbaum, and “Sing Sing” co-screenwriter Clint Bentley, whose “Train Dreams” just premiered to kudos at Sundance.

The Animation Panel moderated by Durling will take place on February 5 at 5 p.m. with creators Gints Zilbalodis (“Flow”), Kelsey Mann (“Inside Out 2”), Nick Park (“Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl”), and Chris Sanders (“The Wild Robot”).

The International Features Panel moderated by Durling will convene on February 9 at 11:00 a.m. with Zilbalodis (“Flow”), writer-director Jacques Audiard (“Emilia Pérez”), writer-director Walter Salles (“I’m Still Here”), and Mohammad Rasoulof (“The Seed of the Sacred Fig”).

The Producers Panel moderated by Nicole Sperling (The New York Times) will meet on February 10 at 5:00 p.m. with producers of Oscar-nominated films including “Anora,” (Alex Coco), “The Brutalist” (Brian Young), “A Complete Unknown” (Alex Heineman) and “Dune: Part 2” (Cale Boyter).

The Women’s Panel starts on February 15 at 11:00 a.m. PT, moderated by Madelyn Hammond. Oscar nominees include Smriti Mundhra, director of documentary short “I Am Ready, Warden,” Victoria Warmerdam, writer-director of live-action short “I’m Not A Robot,” Paula DuPré Pesmen, producer of documentary feature “Porcelain War, ” Emily Kassie co-director of documentary feature “Sugarcane,” and Diane Warren, veteran songwriter of Tyler Perry’s “The Six Triple Eight.”

Feb
07

News: Want to Perfect Your Trump Impression? Just Ask Sebastian Stan’s Dialect Coach

Vanity Fair

It’s the noise living in all of our heads—when we turn on the news, scroll through Elon Musk’s X, or listen to any number of podcasts. Donald Trump’s voice even forced its way into awards season with The Apprentice, which fictionalizes the president’s ascent in the New York City real estate scene in the 1970s and ’80s. Despite a long and difficult battle for distribution, the film earned a pair of Oscar nominations: one for Sebastian Stan’s lead performance as Trump, and the other for Jeremy Strong’s supporting turn as his shadowy mentor, Roy Cohn.

Stan’s performance is made not just by his sideswept blonde wig and perpetually pouted lips, but his total mastery of Trump’s idiosyncratic diction. For that, we can thank dialect coach Liz Himelstein, who has devoted her life to helping performers find characters through accent. That means phonetically breaking down dialogue—every vowel, diphthong, and consonant change—in addition to giving her high-profile clients primary source material they can study.

The key to Stan’s transformation turned out to be Trump’s 1980 conversation with gossip columnist Rona Barrett. “In that interview, we found so much of him,” Himelstein tells Vanity Fair, speaking in the soothing, perfectly enunciated tone one would expect from a person who teaches accents for a living. “It was a treasure trove of sounds and cadence, and also [Trump] being 34 years old, his younger voice.”
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Feb
07

News: ‘A Different Man’: Oscar-Nominated Makeup Artist Explains the Link Between Storytelling and Prosthetics

The Wrap

“I’m basically a storyteller, just with the skin on a character’s face,” explained Mike Marino, the prosthetics maestro whose reputation is fast becoming as lauded as movie makeup legends Rick Baker and Stan Winston.

At this year’s Golden Globes, Marino was acknowledged not once, but twice by winning actors on stage: First by Colin Farrell, who is unrecognizable in HBO’s “The Penguin”; and then by Sebastian Stan, who won for his role in the dark indie comedy about disfigurement and self-acceptance, “A Different Man.”

“That was a huge compliment,” Marino told TheWrap of the shoutouts. “People were texting me that night — producers and actors and heroes of mine like Rick Baker — joking, ‘These are the Marino Globes.’ I’ve been doing this for my whole life and I’m just super thankful and fortunate to do what I do. Prosthetics work isn’t the crazy, booming business it once was, but I’m following in the footsteps of my mentors and trying for greatness every single time, because that’s what I learned from them.”

For his work on “A Different Man,” Marino notched his third Oscar nomination in the makeup category (shared with David Presto and Crystal Jurado). His previous noms were for “Coming 2 America” (2021) and “The Batman” (2022), but “A Different Man” is in a whole other key – the lowest budget of Marino’s three nominated movies, by many millions, with a svelte shooting schedule of just 22 days.

Directed by Aaron Schimberg, the story follows Edward (Stan), a man with facial disfigurement whose insecurities worsen after he undergoes a treatment to improve his face. After the change, he meets Oswald (Adam Pearson), a warm, chatty Englishman with the same facial condition as pre-transformation Edward.

A few weeks before the film began production in 2022, Marino was contacted via text message by Stan, who is also an executive producer on the film, asking if the makeup artist could lend his prosthetic gifts. Marino, who is based in New York, where the movie would be filmed, was intrigued.

“I read the script and thought, ‘This is totally strange and original and I need to do this,’” he recalled. “We’re living in a time where everyone’s trying to look as perfect as possible, and this story actually has something to say about that. Edward goes through this metamorphosis, where he becomes a handsome guy like Sebastian Stan, but after he loses his face, he doesn’t know who he is.”

With Pearson as a blueprint (the actor, who made his film debut in Jonathan Glazer’s “Under the Skin,” has neurofibromatosis), Marino crafted a three-piece silicone prosthetic for Stan’s character.

“In a previous era, it would have been seven or eight pieces, but the majority of this was one main piece, with also a tiny eyelid and a lower lip,” Marino shared. “And with Sebastian, we got it down to a two-hour application, once the hair and the eyebrows were glued on.” While not filming, Stan wore the makeup on the streets of New York City, both to test its credibility and to feel the reactions of passersby, a theme that the film handles with a mixture of poignancy and irony.

The story also called for several stages of makeup, as Edward is experiencing his facial transformation. For a scene in the bathroom, Marino paid homage to a moment from an 1980s ghost horror classic.

“Aaron, Sebastian and I, we’re super film geeks, and we watched that nightmare sequence in ‘Poltergeist’ where a guy in a mirror peels off part of his face. The funny thing is that for that movie, they only had one shot to get it right, so [screenwriter] Steven Spielberg stepped in and did the peeling himself. Those are his hands in the scene. For us, Sebastian had the responsibility to get it done just right, which he did perfectly.”

Marino also cited “The Elephant Man” as his favorite movie — the one that most determined the path of his life and career — and is grateful that critics and audiences have understood the ideas in “A Different Man” on similar terms.

“David Lynch captured the beauty and the humanity of Joseph Merrick in that film,” he said. “And I love the reactions to Adam’s performance in our film, which prove that people get it. People love Adam when they see him and talk to him, and it doesn’t matter what he looks like and all that superficial stuff.”

The history of movies, Marino mentioned, is notable for the contributions of makeup artists, as far back as Lon Chaney in the silent era and Jack Pierce, who worked on the original “Frankenstein.” Marino is an avid devotee of their efforts and even studied as a protégé under Oscar-winning makeup man Dick Smith (“The Godfather,” “The Exorcist,” “Amadeus”).

“I look at my work as who I am,” he said. “I’m not just a hired gun, which sometimes people want on their production. I have to be interested in the material and feel that it’s right, like with this movie. I love to approach a character and ask, ‘How did this person grow up? How do they live? What are they thinking?’ Makeup is storytelling.”

Feb
07

News: Sebastian Stan on Curiosity, Confrontation, and His Oscar Contenders

When Things Go Pop

Sebastian Stan has had a wild twelve months that I strangely found myself a small part of.

Stan received critical acclaim and awards attention for two films: A Different Man, where he played an actor with a facial disfigurement, and The Apprentice, where he played a young Donald Trump. Both performances are intricately detailed and precise, evading stereotypes and caricatures amidst shifting themes and tones. They also encapsulate a common theme in his work that I first noticed in Fresh: exploring characters’ darker impulses that others either miss or deliberately ignore. Despite their acclaim, both films struggled with distribution and promotion, with The Apprentice facing lawsuit threats and industry hesitance to engage with the film. He went viral after revealing that he couldn’t participate in Variety’s Actors on Actors series because other actors’ publicists didn’t want them discussing the newly-elected president. (My tweet describing the situation as reprehensible went viral, too.) Despite the blowback, Stan remained upfront and outspoken, fashioning himself as a fearless, principled artist during a fraught political and cultural moment.

Stan’s unique position and detailed approach to his work were reinforced in my interview with him for AwardsWatch, conducted days after he won the Golden Globe for A Different Man and before his Oscar nomination for The Apprentice. It was a full circle moment of sorts for me, after advocating for A Different Man since seeing it in April, interviewing Matia Bakalova for The Apprentice, and meeting director Aaron Schimberg following a screening in New York. During our conversation, I sensed that he wanted to meet his moment in time responsibly, emphasizing how important curiosity and empathy were to the human condition. Given his challenges in releasing and promoting his films, I also sensed, through our few interactions, how genuinely moved he was by the support and recognition he’s received. (Case in point: he was incredibly generous with his time when he didn’t have to be.) It’s near-impossible not to be thrilled for him and the acknowledgment of his talent and thoughtfulness.

My goal in publishing this interview in full is for others to sense what I have about Sebastian Stan over these past twelve months by giving him the space to share his journey, in this awards season and in the larger context of his complex career.
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