Actor Interviews

How Michael Stuhlbarg Got His First Leading Role in “A Serious Man”

DVDizzy.com interviewed Michael Stuhlbarg who snagged his first leading role in the movie A Serious Man, which is now on DVD. We always find it interesting how an actor or actress lands that first big role of their career.

On how he got the part: Originally, I was asked to come in to audition for the part of the husband in that Yiddish parable in the beginning of the movie. The one who’s pulling the cart behind him and has the whole argument with his wife and so I had to learn that whole scene in Yiddish, which was a big challenge. I went to a tutor and I learned it and brought it in for Joel and Ethan and they laughed a lot and that made me really happy. They weren’t sure at that point whether or not they wanted to hire folks who could speak the language of Yiddish fluently or if they wanted to hire an actor who could speak it phonetically, and they ended up going with folks who could speak it fluently, and rightfully so.

Then the project sort of went away for about five or six months and then I got a call to come in to audition for both Larry and Uncle Arthur and I learned, you know, three scenes for each of those characters and then did them all for them. Then I kept asking periodically if I was still in the running and I kept getting phone calls back saying, “Yeah, you’re still in the mix, you’re still in the mix,” and eventually I got a call saying, “you’re gonna get one of these parts, they just don’t know which one yet.” (Sighs) So I started working on both of them and then about six weeks before shooting was to begin, Joel called me and said, “We’ll put you out of your misery, you’re playing Larry.” And that’s sort of how it happened for me.

On what’s up next for the actor: I’m actually right in the middle of shooting a new HBO series called “Boardwalk Empire”, which is based on a book called Boardwalk Empire about the birth and high times of Atlantic City.

This television show, it’s executive produced, and the pilot was directed by, Martin Scorcese. It was created by Terence Winter, who wrote and produced for “The Sopranos.” And it has a wonderful cast including Steve Buscemi, Michael Shannon, Michael Pitt, Kelly MacDonald, Dabney Coleman, Stephen Graham, and Vincent Piazza. I’m playing Arnold Rothstein, who was allegedly responsible for fixing the 1919 World Series. It’s a wonderful sort of amalgam of new characters and historical characters like Rothstein and Al Capone and Lucky Luciano — they’re all characters in the piece.

A Serious Man is available on DVD and Blu-ray. Read the rest of the interview here.