Michael Angarano: he may have missed his prom to film a death scene, but chances are that tux won't go to waste

Interview, August, 2005 by Sam Schechner

One of the few times that Lars yon Trier showed up on the set of Dear Wendy, the controversial new film he wrote for director Thomas Vinterberg, he had come to see Michael Angarano die. "Lars is crazy," says the 17-year-old actor, who plays the youngest of a group of poor backwater misfits who develop a fetish for both pacifism and firearms. The result involves a hail of gunfire and exploding squibs. "You know he loves that stuff," Angarano says.

When he's not covered in fake blood, you'll probably recognize Angarano as the 11-year-old Cameron Crowe surrogate from the beginning of 2000's Almost Famous--or the twitchy rich kid with Jeff Spicoli hair and a brain tumor the size of Texas in Lords of Dogtown. But it was Vinterberg who really encouraged the New York native to explore his skills. "It was the most fulfilling acting experience of my life thus far," Angarano says of working with the Danish director. "That was me learning about my craft. That was me learning how to act."

He's currently on-set applying those lessons to One Last Thing ... , where he stars along side Cynthia Nixon as a terminally ill teen who asks to, ahem, spend a weekend with a supermodel. All of which adds up to a lot of dying for a guy who just graduated from high school. "I think I was on my deathbed while my prom was going on," Angarano says during a lunch break. "People ask me, 'Why are you dying in all these things? Why are you always dead?

Do something nice!'"