Thomas Mann pauses and looks out the window of his London hotel. It’s his first time here. “I really want to it to rain,” he says. “I won’t feel like I’m in London until it does.”
Move over Death in Venice author. There's a new Thomas Mann on the block. And he has an entire arsenal of hits in waiting. Right now Mann is shooting Brain on Fire with Irish wunderkind Gerard Barrett back-to-back with Amityville: The Reawakening.
By the end of this year, regular cinema patrons will have witnessed Mann the Younger playing opposite Kristen Wiig in Welcome to Me, heading up a private-school cocaine ring in The Preppie Connection, singing alongside Mel Gibson in Blood Father and doing porridge in the latest screen adaptation of The Stanford Prison Experiment.
"This is probably really disappointing to hear," says the 23-year-old. "But Stanford turned out to be one of my best shooting experiences. The friend I moved out to LA with was my scene partner. I ended up working with all these people that I've been auditioning against for years. Suddenly, we're all making this project together. It was very nurturing. You felt safe. The movie is very visceral and intense.
“We were always aware that we could fall into our roles of guard and prisoner in real life. But it never happened.”
The Stanford Prison Experiment went down well at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, but it was another Mann film that won most of the buzz, not to mention the US Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic and the Audience Award for US Drama.
In Me & Earl & the Dying Girl, Mann stars as an aspiring film-maker and one-third of a titular triumvirate comprising leukaemia patient Rachel (Olivia Cooke) and the straight-talking Earl (Ronald Cyler II).
Script like no other
For Mann, who previously starred in such teen-friendly fare as Project X, Fun Size and Beautiful Creatures, it was a script like no other.
“I read a lot of coming-of-age scripts or movies set in high school,” says Mann. “This one just felt so different; so original and so honest. I like that the character was a selfish teenager – like a lot of teenagers – like a lot of people are. It felt very modern and very self-aware. It was was the best role I had ever read.”
So how does is it come to pass that Me & Earl – a dying-young teen film – is currently playing in your local arthouse emporium while simultaneously playing at a google-plex near you?
The Sundance awards have helped, of course, but director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon’s love of Werner Herzog and canonical movies immediately marks the film out as something more than a vanilla genre piece.
Mann's character Greg and his "colleague" Earl specialise in homage, with a series of short projects that include Burden of Screams (based on Les Blank's Burden of Dreams), Ate ½ Of My Lunch (based on Fellini's 8½) and Anatomy of a Burger (based on Otto Preminger's Anatomy of a Murder).
“I thought I knew about movies before,” says Mann. “But Alfonso is a walking encyclopaedia. I had to watch a ton of films as preparation. It was sort of like going to film school.”
Getting reactions
The Portland-born, Dallas-raised star caught the acting bug after signing up for a small role in a middle-school production of Sleeping Beauty. "It's weird to think back," he says. "I was definitely always sensitive and I liked getting reactions out of people. Once I started doing theatre, I was just so excited to even go to rehearsal. As lame as it sounds, just making people feel things was very cool for me."
By 17, he left high school, acquired an agent and relocated to Los Angeles, where he quickly found work on Nickelodeon's i-Carly. He landed his first film role in 2010, starring alongside Zach Galifianakis and Emma Roberts in It's Kind of a Funny Story.
“I was staying with a friend in LA,” he recalls. “It was supposed to be temporary. And then I got lucky.”
Was it hard living in Tinseltown at such a young age?
“It’s hard to make friends there. And the friends you do make, you’re competing against. I think a lot of people feel a bit lost when they move to LA. I started to worry I wasn’t mature enough. It was a weird world I didn’t quite understand and it was vastly different to Dallas where I grew up. But I’m a bit more chilled about it now. For guys, it’s easier because there are always enough parts to go around. I think it’s harder for actresses because there’s so few good roles. Now it feels like home.”
Naturally, Mann is delighted by the critical reception afforded Me & Earl & the Dying Girl. But he won't let it go to his head.
“I’ve hit this phase where people are saying: ‘you have one big movie, get ready, it’s going to be crazy’. But people say that at every stage of your career. The first time that happened I got really picky and said no to a bunch of projects that I maybe shouldn’t have said no to. And then I realised I almost hadn’t worked in a year and the rent was due. Now I need to focus on doing roles I haven’t done before and working with people who are better than me. But I’ve been in LA a long time. So the hard part is over. I hope.”
Me & Earl & the Dying Girl is out now on general release
