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do not disturb With a new thriller costarting Katie Holmes and an upcoming war flick with George Clooney, Nick Stahl is suddenly hotter than ever. By Sarah Goldsmith Producers wanted a fat kid to play Gavin, the resident head-banging outcast of this month's thriller Disturbing Behavior. At 5'10" and 130 pounds, Nick Stahl was hardly a shoo-in. He wanted the part but wasn't about to start stuffing his face to get it. "It's not that I'm vain," he says. Still, Stahl, 18, did a screen test; when he didn't hear anything, he was convinced he was out of the running. "I was sure I didn't get it," he says. In the end, the extra baggage was not an issue—the part was his—but when Stahl was getting into character, he found that Gavin's personal style clashed with his own. "He was into heavy metal and dressed in rags, kind of a Whitesnake look," says the soft-spoken actor. "I hate that kind of music, but I had to learn to like it." Stahl's taste leans toward artists like Sarah McLachlan and Björk. As for clothes, his self-described style is "nothing very distinctive, just Texas casual." The Texas influence comes from Stahl's hometown of Dallas, where he started acting in school plays at age four. He made the giant leap to films at age 13. And what a debut. He played opposite Mel Gibson in the 1993 drama The Man Without A Face. Gibson's ultrarelaxed on-set attitude had a significant impact of Stahl. "We were filming this scene on the beach and there were these sand crabs crawling around. Mell asked me, "Do you like crab?" and then he reached down and popped one in his mouth and crunched it up," Stahl says. "After that point there was no anxiety." Stahl continued to work with Hollywood's finest—at 14, he costarred in Safe Passage with Susan Sarandon, and this December Stahl can be seen playing a naive soldier in The Thin Red Line (with ER's George Clooney). Perhaps it was these steller credits that prompted Stahl's Behavior costar, James Marsden, 24, to admit, "I wish I had what Nick has when I was 18," he says. "He's a real talent." Despite his experience in mainstream movies, Stahl still felt it was difficult to work on Disturbing Behavior because box-office expectations are so high. "There is a lot of pressure when you have to appeal to millions of brains," he says. The Stepford Wives—type thriller tells the story of a town where parents are resorting to surgery to control their wayward teens. Gavin teams up with his friend Rachel (Katie Holmes) to try to persuade fellow student Steve (Marsden) that they must do something before another kid ends up on the operating table. Stahl felt he related to Gavin's rebelious nature on a deeper level. "I put a lot of what I've been through into Gavin, you know. We both had not-so-great high school experiences." Holmes, 19, on the other hand, who attended an all-girls Catholic school, had a little help from the director, David Nutter. "He drove Katie around to some rough neighborhoods so she could get a better feel for her role (as a tough girl)," says Stahl. "She really wanted to get it right." Although their characters are closely involved in the movie, Holmes and Stahl didn't see each other off the set. "Katie was usually gone with her boyfriend," says Stahl. And when was his last date? Stahl scratches his head, trying to remember. "I haven't been on a date in a while because I'm busy. Yeah, that's it, I'm really busy," he adds with a coy smile. |
