From playing the charming but vacant country boy Hobie Doyle in the Coen Brothers’ Hail Caesar! to taking up the mantle of scruffy-looking nerf herder Han Solo in Ron Howard’s much-maligned eponymous Star Wars prequel, Alden Ehrenreich has made an impression in every single role he’s played. His turn as the recently widowed, currently grieving reluctant gangster Eddie in Elizabeth Banks’ Cocaine Bear marks his return to film after five years away, and his first project since he led the NBC miniseries Brave New World back in 2020. In this rip-roaring, line-snorting creature feature he rocks a mullet and stonewash denim, and gets to utter that iconic line from the maximalist, charmingly absurd trailer: “A bear did cocaine!”
But the process of shooting Cocaine Bear in Ireland last year proved to be a much more meaningful one for Ehrenreich that the film’s outlandish premise might suggest, and now he’s shaping up for a big year, with roles in buzzy Sundance corporate drama Fair Play, Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer and Marvel television series Ironheart, as well as writing, directing and starring in his own short film.
GQ**: It feels like the internet’s reaction to the trailer and premise of** Cocaine Bear has been a solid “What is ****this?!” Did you have a similar reaction when the project first came to you?
Alden Ehrenreich: When I first heard about it was exactly that. Then my representatives explained it to me, and said ‘Okay, this is really what it's about.’ It's kind of crazy, and it's kind of zany. What I love about it most of all is just that it's a big popcorn movie that the studio were brave enough to take a chance on. It’s an original idea and unusual story, something you've never seen before. The zaniness was a big part of the allure.
As a native Californian, did you have any strong pro/anti-bear sentiment before making this film?
I don't think I felt any different than anyone else does about them. They're kind of lovable and scary at the same, right? We actually saw a black bear not that long before I shot the movie, and it was very cute. Some of my family members were approaching it with my niece, and I went “Oh, maybe that’s not something we wanna do”, and after doing this movie, uh, I definitely wouldn’t make that mistake.
Obviously there’s no actual bear on set – but you had a guy dressed up as a bear instead.
Yeah, we had a great creature performer named Allan Henry. He’d done Planet of the Apes and a bunch of movies, and brought the bear to life in front of us, which was very helpful. There was a lot of laughter, but I've worked with things that were supposed to be way bigger and scarier, that in real life were way smaller and shittier, so I could make it work.
You cry a lot in Cocaine Bear – is that something you’re naturally very good at?
It's silly to say, but with Cocaine Bear, it was easier because it is genuinely moving to me to think about what Eddie is going through. Of course it's not going to be that for people watching it, but maybe a little of my emotional connection will seep through. You know, to Eddie there is nothing funny about losing his wife and then getting attacked by a bear that’s high on cocaine. To the audience, that’s another story. But really, it’s a film about these broken families, underneath it all. Not that I think people are gonna walk out and go “Oh my God, that was such a great movie about broken families!” They’re gonna say “That was a movie about a fucking bear that did cocaine”, but hopefully they’ll also get a little depth snuck in there.
I imagine that it must have been an incredibly fun set to be on.
Absolutely – the experience of making this film was so fun and sweet, it ended up being very inspiring for me. This was the first thing I shot post-vaccine, and my previous two jobs, Solo and Brave New World, were both about a year long. Making Cocaine Bear made me want to go to work more than I had been wanting to. I told Elizabeth that having such a good time with this one opened up the floodgates for me, and I did five things in a row, which I’ve never done in my life. Usually, I’ll do like, two things in a year. After Cocaine Bear I shot Fair Play, and then I did Oppenheimer, then I directed a short film that I wrote, and then I did Marvel’s Ironheart. This experience ended up being very meaningful.
You’ve always resisted social media but I noticed you quietly joined Instagram in January. What prompted that change?
You're the first person to ask about it! No, I never was interested in any of that. I didn’t want to post photos of my Egg McMuffin in the morning or whatever. But then I recognised how valuable it is as a tool to be able to tell people about my own projects – ones that don’t necessarily have a studio marketing budget behind them, like my short, and the theatre space I’m opening in LA. That was in tandem with realising that I've been taking photographs for five years, I've been drawing my whole life, and it felt like this was somewhere I could share those forms of creative expression. I’m probably not hitting any of the things that make you really popular on Instagram, but I’m enjoying myself.
I expect working with a lot of great filmmakers must have been a big inspiration for your recent directorial debut…
Yeah, I’ve always wanted to be a filmmaker, but I've had this outrageously great film school of sorts. I called Joel Coen for advice, and I was really inspired by the production process I experienced on Tetro, which was my very first film, with Francis Ford Coppola, who’s executive producing my short, and really is my primary creative mentor. I went up to Napa and sat down with him and recorded a whole interview just asking questions about filmmaking. He's such a huge inspiration, both from craft perspective and then his enormous spirit and belief in the power of art, and renegade nature. I got so lucky, getting to watch them and learn by example.
You’ve been acting for 13 years now. Do you think that there’s been a shift since you began acting in the sort of projects that are getting made?
Definitely. At the beginning of my career the mid-range original idea movie was really in decline, you know, the kind of movies from the 90s that we think of, big-budget dramas – and there was a long spell where all you felt was the decline. What I feel now, and I don't have any pie charts to back this up or anything, but what I sense is, because of the changing landscape of where things are seen and the need for more material, and I think the paradigm shifts in our culture, we're in a quiet renaissance for original filmmaking.
What do you attribute that to?
I think it’s to do with audiences and filmmakers of our generation coming of age, and having this new sensibility that’s more original. They want something new, something they’ve never seen before. So you're seeing movies made that would have never gotten made in the past being huge hits. Everything Everywhere All At Once is a great example of this audacious, imaginative movie, that would have been probably harder to make, and maybe not a huge hit, perhaps even five years ago. There’s been this explosion of originality and new ideas, and then there are scripts for projects I’ve been hearing about since I was 18 years old, like Under the Banner of Heaven, that are finally getting the green light. The era of film that I love the most is the 70s, and it reminds me of that now. It’s a very exciting time for me as an audience member and as a filmmaker and an actor.
GQ: You mentioned that you’re involved in Ironheart**. What made you decide you wanted to be involved with another franchise after your experience with** Solo**?**
It's fun. I mean, it is really fun to do these things, and the people who were part of Ironheart – Eve Ewing and Chinaka Hodge especially – I really admired and felt like they had such a fresh approach to the material. Solo was a few years ago, so it’s been interesting for me, showing up for Ironheart feeling like the seasoned, older person on set. Dom Thorne and Anthony Ramos were so great to work with, and it felt like a nice way back into that commercial storytelling world.
And how was working with Christopher Nolan on Oppenheimer**?**
The great joy of my creative life is working for master filmmakers, and I think sometimes people minimise the specialness of making something – I’ve had experiences where it’s as though the project just doesn't feel that special to the other people involved. They’re on their phone scrolling or whatever, and it’s just another job to them. So to work on a set where everyone is so excited to be there, and feels what they are doing is meaningful…you just can't believe you get to be there. I got to do all my scenes with Robert Downey Jr., who was so generous, and we had such great energy together. With Chris, it’s lovely to be in the hands of somebody whose cinematic vision you trust, and to get to just dance for him.
