Name: Alden Ehrenreich
Notable past credits: Ehrenreich was discovered by none other than Steven Spielberg while at a Bat Mitzvah. The actor, now 33, broke out in the 2016 Coen brothers movie “Hail, Caesar!” and would go on to star as Han Solo in 2018’s “Solo: A Star Wars Story.”
Sundance project: “Fair Play,” costarring “Bridgerton” actress Phoebe Dynevor, which on Monday sold to Netflix for $20 million. The film stars the two as an engaged couple who keep their relationship a secret at work while working together at a top finance firm. When one gets promoted over the other, everything starts to change.
Impression of his first Sundance: Ehrenreich has had films premiere at Sundance before, but this year is his first time making it to Park City, Utah, in person. “There’s great energy. The main thing for me is just my admiration and just enormous debt of gratitude that, as a film lover, I feel I owe to the whole institute and Redford and all of it because they are as responsible for the best filmmakers, let’s say, of the last 50 years.”
Reaction from the film’s premiere: “Oh, it was so fun. It was really a cool experience that I haven’t had in a long time, because this is the first thing I’m releasing in person since COVID-19. So sitting in a theater with people and listening to the laughs and different reactions that you don’t expect and feeling the way the room isI didn’t really know exactly what’s happening, but you get a sense and you can really feel it.”
Saying yes to “Fair Play”: “I’ve always had the best experiences working for writer-directors who were writing something that felt personal to them. Sometimes that’s something dark, sometimes that’s something very entertaining and fun and light, but I always enjoy that experience so much more because it feels like you’re in the hands of somebody who’s doing something that matters to them.”
Up next: Ehrenreich has a busy 2023, with the much-anticipated “Cocaine Bear” in February and Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” due this summer. He also appears in the Marvel miniseries “Ironheart.”
“Cocaine Bear,” directed by Elizabeth Banks, is based on the true story of a 500-pound bear who consumed a duffel bag of cocaine in 1985 and went on a rampage.
“Working for directors is everything to me,” he says of Banks. “Her point of view on the movie, her sense of its humor, her sense of its style, her sense of the heart of it and her feeling for my character, it just made me excited to be a part of this weird, wild, totally unique thing.”