I’ve capped close to 1000 HD screenshots of Ezra as Elliot in the 2011 indie Another Happy Day. Ezra plays a troubled teen drug addict who battles his issues whilst at a family members wedding. Ezra’s performance is chilling yet mesmerizing, and there’s some downright hilarious parts in there as well. I really recommend the movie, but a warning that it has very strong subject material!
Productions > Movies > Another Happy Day > HD Screencaptures
Emma Watson fans will be in for a surprise when they see her post-Harry Potter films, her co-star Ezra Miller has said.
The We Need To Talk About Kevin actor worked with Emma on the upcoming movie adaptation of Stephen Chbosky’s novel The Perks Of Being A Wallflower in which he plays Emma’s gay step-brother, Patrick.“Emma has become one of my closest friends,” said 19-year old Ezra.
“She is brilliant, not only as a person but as an actress and artist. I think the world is in for a series of serious surprises when these next projects of hers come out, because she truly is an inspired and inspiring human being.”The pair worked hard to get their on-screen partnership right.
He said: “From the very beginning when we first met each other we were cultivating our relationship for the film. And by the second week of filming in Pittsburgh, while we were in next-door hotel rooms, we had opened the doors between our two rooms and were living together in this cultivation of brother and sister.“She is incredibly well-informed when it comes to her craft. You never feel as though you’re working against her, you always feel like you’re working with her because like any great actress she really listens. It was an amazing experience to work with her.” {PA}
Ezra Miller is the 19-year-old star of We Need to Talk About Kevin, Lynne Ramsay’s film adaptation of the book by Lionel Shriver. Miller plays Kevin, a sociopathic child who grows up to commit mass homicide at his high school. The film shows his mother, Eva Khatchadourian, played by Tilda Swinton, reliving the past and visiting him in prison, trying to piece together the story of how her son became a murderer.
Have you always wanted to be an actor?
When I was very little, I was sort of consumed by a love for Opera. Weirdly enough I went from being really enthusiastic about construction vehicles at the age of seven to being really passionate about La Traviata by the time I was eight.
Then I also maintained the thing which every child has; which is that as kids we all run around and play make believe. My mother took me to a lot of operas and when I was eight I got the opportunity to be in one and I realised that transformation into these make-believe situations was possible. I decided that was essentially what I wanted to with my life.
Then I read this film when I was 14 [Afterschool] and it hit so many nerves at the same time and I’d discovered this ultimate form of make-believe; no singing, you just simply had to pretend to be someone else. It was kind of like love at first sight.
You’ve also played a gay teen and a weird boarding school kid. Do you think you are drawn to ‘troubled’ roles?
I’d say I’m drawn to characters that ring true to me. Adolescence which is a troubled time for everyone, so a lot of those characters have been a lot of troubled tortured people. It’s been a great way to navigate my adolescence by having these more troubled kids as an outlet.
Did you read the book?
I read the book like a mystic reads the Bible. I’d open a random page and read a little bit and maybe I’d open to a piece with Eva talking and I’d move pat that to a description of Kevin — something about how he moved or looked — and then incorporate that with the churning process of his history. It was my intention to read it when the film was through, but I’d really had enough of Kevin by that point. After I saw the movie at Cannes I did The Perks of Being a Wallflower – a film with truly happy moments. It was much cheerier.
Do people suspect you of being evil after playing Kevin?
I’ve had a bunch of crazy reactions, sometimes this movie makes people so upset they storm out the theatre or shout “you evil son of gun”, that kind of thing. In Cannes I met someone working on selling the film and I was trying to have a conversation with this person and they were flinching when I tried to shake their hand I just thought, “this is a weird interection” but then about 20 minutes after, it dawned on me that the person had seen the film. Another time, I went dancing with a friend and he was like “Uh. I’m gonna go home.I love you man, but I just can’t look at your face anymore”. It made me feel a little sad but it was also gratifying – like the performance was so effective he couldn’t look at me.
Did it make you consider your relationship with your own parents?
I didn’t speak to my mother while we were filming. It because me and my mother have a happy, good relationship and it might have interfered with the preparation.
What other preparation did you do for the role?
The preparation we had to do was series of archery lessons that we took in the back of a archery and hunting store in Connecticut. This guy named Paul taught me how to shoot a bow and arrow there. It was important from a technical perspective but it was also the physical activity that best informed the mental state of the character . He comes into this state of mind of precision and focus and hitting the target. The psyche of his mother is the target and he hits it in the bulls-eye.
You’ve spoken quite openly about smoking marjuuana. Are you still a strong advocate?
[Ezra was arrested last year while filming The Perks of Being a Wallflower, he said in an interview after “I don’t feel like there’s any need to hide the fact that I smoke pot. It’s a harmless herbal substance that increases sensory appreciation.”]
I never intended to be a strong advocate of smoking pot.I certainly don’t condemn it -it’s something that in its nature is different for each individual its something that grows out of the ground and when you smoke it all sorts of things happen. Its something everyone has to decide whether it makes sense for them but I don’t think we should fill jail cells with people for smoking the equivalent of rosemary.
I heard you dropped out of the Hudson School because you had a dream about Beethoven…?
I love how this stuff works. Did you play that game as a kid broken telephone? Where you whisper something in a circle and it sounds completely different at the end? There were a million reasons high school didn’t make sense for me. I found the classroom forum restrictive and condescending. I was finding really fulfilling and wonderful experiences out of school, in my work. I wanted to come back after going to the Berlin Film Festival, but I felt that some of the teachers and students rejected that.
Also, I did have that dream. It’s true. I dreamt I was on the subway where Beethoven was crying and I knew he was Beethoven somehow and he spoke English and he said he’s only written 4 synphonies and I told him to keep going, it was going to be OK and I was trying to push away these amorphous grey blob people surrounding us. I woke up and I knew I had to make a decision about going to school.
It disturbs me when Obama says in the State of the Union address that he wants to make dropping out of school at 18 illegal, because people learn differently and before there are forms of learning for every type of person in the world we shouldn’t be condemned for leaving.
We Need to Talk About Kevin is released on DVD on Monday 27 February.
Ezra Miller has spoken of his disappointment that We Need To Talk About Kevin has been overlooked for the Oscars.
The film, which also stars Tilda Swinton and John C Reilly, has picked up a number of awards in the UK, but raised eyebrows when Tilda and the movie were snubbed by the Oscars selection panel.
“It’s a disappointment, but not necessarily a surprise,” said the 19-year-old, who plays teenage sociopath Kevin Katchadourian in Lynne Ramsay’s adaptation of Lionel Shriver’s novel .
“It seems like there’s more and more admiration in Oscar culture for clear emotional messages. If you look at the films nominated this year, they all carry very clear viewing experiences. An audience member watching Hugo knows exactly what to feel, and is most likely quite comfortable with what they’re feeling. We Need To Talk About Kevin was never that.”
He added: “But it is still a disappointment to me, because having watched Tilda make that performance and then having seen it in the film, it was such a clear example of an entirely, indisputably worthy performance.”
The actor added that he found watching himself in We Need To Talk About Kevin so disturbing that he never wants to watch the film again.
“I was so scared of myself that when I finished watching it, I felt like I was going to vomit – which was always the goal as far as I was concerned. It had such a horrifying effect on me,” he said.
:: We Need To Talk About Kevin is out now on DVD & Blu-ray from Artificial Eye.
They’re not mother and son, but they talk like it. “He’s got a brain the size of a planet when you listen to him,” Lynne Ramsay says of Ezra Miller, the young co-star of her movie, We Need to Talk About Kevin. “Lynne showed me something interesting. The best direction a director can ever give to an actor is, ‘I trust you,’ ” Miller says of Ramsay.
They’re sitting in a hotel room – Ramsay, 41, the Scottish director of such art-house favourites as Morvern Cal-lar, and Miller, the 18-year-old American known for roles as the difficult son in movies like Another Happy Day and City Island – continuing what sounds like a long-running conversation. Ramsay is in a chair and Miller is beside her on the bed, holding a feather and wearing a string of beads around his neck.
He talks about being an “empty vessel,” and she giggles fondly: not a mother and a son, maybe, but a woman indulging a favourite child, and a teen-ager, perhaps showing off a bit for a parent figure.
What brought them together, though, is anything but maternal: We Need to Talk About Kevin is a dire drama about a woman named Eva (Tilda Swinton) who gives birth to a difficult child and grows to see him as a kind of monster. Based on a bestselling novel by Lionel Shriver, the story depicts a twisted boy (played by Miller as a teenager) who knows how to manipulate his father (John C. Reilly) and reveals his evil side only to his mother. Or – in a chilling subtext – perhaps Eva is simply suffering through a different kind of hell: She’s a woman who doesn’t love her child.
“It was something that hadn’t been spoken about, and I think it’s something that’s true,” Ramsay says. “A mother is meant to feel these instant emotions and instant connections, and I don’t think everyone does.”
Miller, who turned 19 a few days after the interview at last fall’s Toronto International Film Festival, says he related to the reality of the role, if not the specifics.
“Kevin is just … when I read the script, it was real … My attraction to the script was in the very simple thing of finding a real character.”
He wasn’t alone. Ramsay and her husband, Rory Stewart Kinnear, worked for four years on the script, paring a 400-page book down to an 87-page screenplay, as raising money became more and more difficult. But although it was a hard sell to financiers, it attracted a lot of interest among actors.
“It’s amazing how many boys did relate to it, you know, the (number) of people who wanted the part,” Ramsay says.
I suggest it’s a very juicy role. “It’s nothing but juice,” Miller says. “There’s not even a container. It’s just juice all over the place.”
Some critics see Kevin as a “demon seed,” but Miller says, “If there’s one ambiguity that I feel comfortable clearing up, it’s that I never for a second was thinking about how to portray someone innately evil.”
PRODUCTIONS> MOVIES> WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN> PROMOTIONAL
Beware the Gonzo is now available on DVD and we have one copy of the film to give away! What do you have to do? It’s simple. Follow us on our twitter @EzraMOnline and RT the tweet specified to win! I will choose one lucky winner Thursday, February 23 and contact you for further information on how to get the DVD to you. Sounds great huh? Make sure to visit the Beware The Gonzo webpage and check out what other great movies they have to offer!
Photoshoots and Portraits > 029
Photoshoots and Portraits
Ezra attended his first appearance of 2012 with a brand new ‘do. Here he is at the The Cinema Society & Grey Goose screening of ‘Thin Ice’ at the Tribeca Grand Hotel on February 6, 2012 in New York City:
APPEARANCES > Appearances in 2012 > February 06: The Cinema Society & Grey Goose screening of ‘Thin Ice’
