Michael Stuhlbarg on his ever-surprising screen career, from serious man to drug addict – newsdubai

Take a look at Michael Stuhlbarg‘s resume over the past year, and you’ll find an actor willing to take on some controversial roles. In both Hulu’s Addictedfor which he is nominated for the Supporting Actor Emmy, and HBO Max’s The staircase, the 54-year-old played characters based on real people who then came out against the projects, either directly or more publicly. In the case of Addictedactually Stuhlbarg got a letter from David Sackler‘s lawyers during the production of the show, which tackles the origins of the opioid epidemic and closely follows the Sackler family, who founded Purdue Pharma. The decision that was made was not to respond: “Engaging with the Sacklers, because of issues of litigation and otherwise, it’s a slippery slope,” Stuhlbarg says on this week’s Little Gold Men (listen below). “I try to take the advice of the people I work with.”

That ethos sums up much of Stuhlbarg’s career: This is a working actor who, over decades, has learned to navigate a tough business by focusing strictly on his craft and getting the job done. He finds that he still has little choice in terms of going from project to project, but since his breakout Joel and Ethan Coen‘s A serious man in 2010 he has come to work with some of the best directors available in meaty and complex roles: Guillermo del Toro, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Luca Guadagnino, etc.

IN Addicted, Stuhlbarg brings an unsettling physicality and vocal pattern to Sackler, the product of a long period of research and a certain level of interpretation. It’s one of many situations where he didn’t expect to be considered for the role – and given the biographical nature of the story, he felt extra pressure to get it right. “The fun is in the details – it helps everything I do to be as attentive and learn as much as possible, understand that we’re telling a certain version of the story and hope that regardless of whether the person I I want to see what I honor is what it was that they went through,” says Stuhlbarg. “I really try not to judge who it is that I’m playing. I step into someone’s shoes and try to navigate what it must have been like in their circumstances to do what they did.”

During our conversation, Stuhlbarg reflected on his big film break A serious man, already established as a Tony-nominated Broadway mainstay, but until then, seemingly unable to break through to Hollywood. Through his access to the Coens as the film’s lead, he was given a front-row seat to the process of major filmmaking: “Joel told me that he found that my rhythms were a certain way… It was the beginning of a learning process of understand how film becomes what film acting is. I really think it has everything to do with me just being ready to step into that world at the time after struggling for a number of years and not understanding why I hadn’t been exploited much. I don’t think I knew that.”

Flash-forward a little over a decade, and Stuhlbarg is getting something of a showcase Addicted, and brilliantly plays the series’ big pharma villain. You sense that he is still figuring things out, but on the fly – and in the best way. The actor credits much of the strength and spontaneity of his performance to his surprise at being cast in the role in the first place. It pushed him to give it his all, to try new things. “I’m always looking for something that’s going to be scary, or something that you don’t necessarily see yourself in, but someone else does,” he says. “The fact that someone else wants to see you in a certain role can be enough to give you the impetus to want to try it.”