Mark Webber: A star of storytelling with quite a story to tell

Interview, March, 2002 by Guy Lesser

At 21, Mark Webber already seems on his way--just consider the following: Playing a vulnerable high-school senior, he stands out among an impressive group of performers working at high velocity in Todd Solondz's recently released Storytelling. In this month's anticipated adaptation of Moises Kaufman's The Laramie Project, he portrays one of Matthew Shepard's remorseless killers. In April's Chelsea Walls, actor/director Ethan Hawke's homage to the eternally hip Chelsea Hotel, Webber shines as a soft-spoken, love-crossed drifter (opposite Rosario Dawson). Later in the spring he'll play Woody Allen's son in the auteur's next, Hollywood Ending. And, in the upcoming People Know, he was cast opposite the ultimate actor's actor, Al Pacino. Additionally, Webber appeared on stage in 2000's London and New York revival of David Mamet's American Buffalo, opposite William H. Macy and Philip Baker Hall. It's an impressive laundry list, to be sure, but in many ways, it's how Webber grew up--poor and, for a time, homeless, w ith his single mother, an activist committed to radical reform of the American welfare system--that may be the most compelling part of his story.

GUY LESSER: Tell me about growing up.

MARK WEBBER: Basically, I had a really tough childhood--it was just me and my mom. We were on welfare for a good part of the time and always struggling. We ended up actually becoming homeless for a while.

GL: How'd that happen?

MW: On welfare you don't get anything, and you have to report any additional income you get--even if it's 20 bucks in a birthday card. My mom and had linked up with a movement--Up and Out of Poverty NOW--and she got a grant to go to school to become a teacher. Since she didn't report the grant money, federal marshals showed up one day while she was teaching a women's studies class, arrested her and charged her with welfare fraud. Eventually she was found not guilty, but she lost her teaching job and we became homeless for about two years. At that point my mom decided that she wanted to dedicate her life to making sure that no one would have to go through what we did, and we started taking over abandoned, federally owned buildings [in Philadelphia] and moving families in, ourselves included. I mean, in each city there are more abandoned houses than there are homeless people, so our strategy was why let these houses lie vacant?

GL: And where did acting ambitions come into this?

MW: I've always wanted to be an actor. On the rare occasion when I could go see a movie growing up, I would totally escape into another world, a fantasy world. To be a movie star, to be rich, to be famous was the complete opposite of where I was. Also, what didn't realize at the time was that I had already done so much acting. was going to school when I was homeless, but I was so ashamed I couldn't tell anyone. I had to pretend all the time and keep my friends and teachers believing that I wasn't poor. It just became a natural skill to be able to turn certain things off and on.

GL: You've been acting professionally for five years. How many films have you done?

MW: It's so weird [laughs], but I can't even tell you a number offhand. I've done a bunch. Close to 14, I guess. I've been working fairly consistently--with a month, a month-and-a-half in between. Some of them are really small independent films that have never seen the light of day, but they're all things I'm really proud of, and learned so much from.

GL: I imagine your work in Storytelling is one of those things.

MW: Yeah. I just saw it, and I loved it. I was really proud of my work.

GL: Did you get on with Todd Solondz?

MW: I'm in love with that man. But [at first] I didn't impress him. I went in to audition and I thought I did OK, but when we called for feedback, they were like, "Uh ... Todd didn't really respond." Then about two months later, I saw the casting director on the street, and I guess I was really looking like the character that day or something, because she gave me this look. And 10 and behold, three days later they wanted to see me again. They'd set up this work session, and I worked this scene with Todd for about an hour, and it was really good--because of him. He's just so gentle and soft-spoken.

GL: You've probably taken some sort of blood oath not to talk about your role in the Woody Allen movie, but can you tell me if his audition process was everything I've heard?

MW: The audition was literally 30 seconds long. I showed up and there was a waiting room full of guys, all of whom I knew. It was like a little assembly line. One guy would go in, and 30 seconds later, boom, out. So I walked in and Woody was in the far corner of the room--I was told beforehand not to go up to him and shake his hand or anything, because he'd get creeped out--so I sat with the casting director and read the scene, and Woody slowly walked over and just stood there and looked at me.

GL: That must have been comforting.

MW: [laughs] Yeah, really. So the next day, I get the call that I got the part. And I say, "OK. What is the part?" And (continued from page 169) they say, You're playing Woody's son." And I'm like, "Do we know any more than that?" "No. And you can't read a script and you'll get your scenes before we shoot."