Sebastian Stan On His Romanian Roots In ‘Fjord’, Fatherhood, Toxic Masculinity, Real-Life Heroes & ‘The Batman: Part II’ – Cannes Cover Story
By Antonia Blyth May 11, 2026 11:00pm
In Cristian Mungiu’s Fjord, Sebastian Stan returns to his Romanian roots with a story that forces us to examine our prejudices, our assumptions, and the treatment of immigrants. Starring opposite Renate Reinsve, Stan once again plunges into a risky, thorny role with a look that belies his MCU star status. As he prepares for both fatherhood and playing a supervillain in The Batman: Part II, he’s focused on being one of the good guys.
Sebastian Stan has been thinking about men. He’s been reading a lot on the subject; studying it, if you will. What makes a good man? How can we support children and young people? What should we do about social media? All this prep is for a role of sorts, but not an acting one. Soon, he and his partner, actor Annabelle Wallis, will welcome their first child.
“I want to be a good dad,” he says simply.
ANDREW ZAEH FOR DEADLINE
We’re discussing his latest film Fjord, which will premiere in Competition at Cannes. Stan plays a man forced to contemplate his own value as a father and as a man — an experience that must now seem serendipitous, given the timing of his personal life.
Written and directed by Cristian Mungiu, whose 2007 film 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days won the Palme d’Or, Fjord stars Stan and Renate Reinsve as Mihai and Lisbet Gheorghiu — immigrant parents of five children who move from Romania to Lisbet’s small Norwegian hometown.
Inspired by the real-life story of Marius and Ruth Bodnariu, the deeply religious family have ways of raising their children that bump up hard against local government policy, landing Mihai and Lisbet in court.
This is Stan’s first role in his native Romanian; he grew up under Nicolae Ceaușescu’s communist rule until his mother brought him to Vienna, Austria when he was 8 years old. Then, when Stan was 12, he moved to New York with his mother and American stepfather.
In Fjord, once again, as with The Apprentice and A Different Man, Stan conceals his movie star looks. This time he not only wears wonky fake teeth, but he shaved his head — and not a hot buzzcut, we’re talking shiny bald pate above a ring of fuzz. The wardrobe is lumpy and practical. The look is giving middle-aged uncool dad.
As the film proves, he doesn’t need to be handsome to keep you glued to the screen. I can’t thank him enough for this, and I believe I should thank his girlfriend as well. — CRISTIAN MUNGIU, WRITER-DIRECTOR OF FJORD
Mungiu decided that Stan was “too good-looking, somehow. Sebastian was very generous and he followed my idea about how he should be looking for Fjord. As the film proves, he doesn’t need to be handsome to keep you glued to the screen. I can’t thank him enough for this, and I believe I should thank his girlfriend as well.”
For the teeth, Stan went to special makeup effects designer Jason Collins, with whom he’d worked on his Tommy Lee look for the television series Pam & Tommy (for which Stan was Emmy-nominated). “I showed him some pictures of my old teeth before I got Invisalign, and then he remade those,” says Stan.
Sebastian Stan, Renate Reinsve and their on-screen family in ‘Fjord’
The great head shave was “an experiment. I was all about it once we nailed it. She kept cutting it and cutting it and I was like, ‘Let’s keep going.’”
Right now, the hair has grown out into a crew cut, but how did he feel living day-to-day with the transformation on set?
“I didn’t think twice about it,” he says. “I think it’s all about serving the story and these people, however they are. And at that point, you’ve got to just put yourself in the backseat.”
But surely, for some men, Stan’s new ‘do is the stuff of nightmares, which brings us back to men in general — not just fatherhood, but the male loneliness and misogyny epidemic, and in particular, emerging toxic ideas on what it means to be a “real man.” I mention his Golden Globes acceptance speech last year for A Different Man, in which he spoke of his stepfather “who took on a single mom and a grown-up kid,” and thanked him “for being a real man.” I tell him that, to me, being a good man means integrity, consistency and quiet strength, among other things.
You really see how young men right now are suffering from a lack of true male role models. We’re having a lot of examples at the moment of very narcissistic, very aggressive, very entitled examples of being a man… It’s incredibly upsetting. It’s painful to see. — SEBASTIAN STAN
“I think the question of masculinity is really under a magnifying glass at the moment,” he says. “There are way smarter people than me that have been talking about this. Jonathan Haidt, for instance, who wrote that great book The Anxious Generation, has been talking not just about boys, but little girls also, and the lack of influences outside of the phone and the technology and what that’s doing. There’s also this other great book, I think it’s called Of Boys and Men [by Richard V. Reeves]. And you really see how young men right now are suffering from a lack of true male role models. We’re having a lot of examples at the moment of very narcissistic, very aggressive, very entitled examples of being a man… It’s incredibly upsetting. It’s painful to see.”
Sebastian Stan accepting his Golden Globe award for ‘A Different Man’ in 2025
He also mentions the book Notes on Being a Man by Scott Galloway. “I’m feeling the responsibility of being a good father,” he says. “And not to mention a good man. I’m 43 and I feel, in a lot of ways, I’m just starting to learn now. It’s just crazy to me. So, I love when I see I’m discovering different people’s point of view. I try to read as much as I can, no matter what the point of view is, just to understand it.”
So, what does being a man feel like to him now?
He pauses. “It’s funny, in the last couple years, I’ve started to identify sometimes being a man with just holding a plank for a very long, long time.”
I laugh. Does he mean the physical exercise?
“Yes. Because I think it is about tolerance. And I think that’s something that we’re not teaching young men. We’re not teaching them how to tolerate discomfort, how to understand their own emotions, their own anger, their own frustrations. Nobody’s educating them on how to embrace depression, or being sad, feeling things, being weak, crying. I reconnected with my own [biological] father much later in life, but I was able to draw this inspiration of, ‘It’s OK for you to feel whatever you’re feeling.’”
As a young man, Stan’s father risked his life to help dissidents escape Ceaușescu’s regime, smuggling them out on cargo ships, before being forced to flee the country himself. Father and son largely lost touch but were reunited when Stan was 18. Then, in 2021, his father died.
When he thinks of the stepfather he called “a real man” in that Globes speech, he says the example he set for Stan was “This quiet integrity that you spoke about, this quiet strength, this way of providing, this way of being there. Listening and understanding and protection as well. You’ve got to provide and protect. That’s kind of what I thought about in terms of what it means to be a man. And sometimes that means putting your own ego aside and looking at how you can support your family, or your loved ones, and be an example.”
ANDREW ZAEH FOR DEADLINE
He’s back to thinking about the welfare of children and young people. “Let me just state it for the record, how much I celebrated that verdict against the social media companies,” he says, referring to the recent landmark case in California against Meta and Google, citing them for negligent design and their effect on young people’s mental health. “Actually, finally holding them accountable for years and years, and stacks upon stacks of data [showing] that they have known of the neurological and emotional and mental impact that they’re having on these young people. That’s one of the reasons why you’ve got boys right now who are being totally subdued and seduced by these phones, and to some extent, I think brainwashed.”
***
Stan had wanted to work with Mungiu for years. “Growing up, I knew very well that he was an incredible filmmaker,” he says. They first met at a Lincoln Center screening of Mungiu’s 2016 film Graduation and then, Stan says, began figuring out how to work together. “We came close on his last film [R.M.N.], but it just wasn’t really a good fit.”
Working with Sebastian again was a joy. He’s an incredibly generous actor and human being — deeply committed to his work, endlessly curious, and brave in his choices. — RENATE REINSVE
Mungiu zeroed in on Stan after seeing his performance in I, Tonya as Jeff Gillooly, the deeply unlikable ex-husband to Margot Robbie’s Tonya Harding. “I programmed that film in this American Independent Film Festival that I founded in Bucharest. Sebastian came over and then we had the time to talk more about acting, cinema, life, his films. What is maybe funny is that the last performance that I’d watched by Sebastian was him in Captain America. When my younger son learned that I might work together with Sebastian, he insisted that I should see that film as well. I took his advice.”
Like Mungiu’s son, many know Stan for his Marvel Cinematic Universe trajectory, starring as Bucky Barnes, aka The Winter Soldier, in several films, the most recent being Thunderbolts*. It’s fair to say that Stan could easily have rested on his superhero movie laurels and polished an action hero career. Instead, he faced the wrath of President Trump by playing him in The Apprentice — a role that many advised Stan not to touch but which earned him a Best Actor Oscar nomination. That same year he played Edward, a facially disfigured struggling actor, in A Different Man and won at the Golden Globes, where, in addition to thanking his mother and stepfather, he called for more inclusive stories.
Sebastian Stan in ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’
Being paired with Reinsve in Fjord was a no-brainer for Stan — he’d already worked closely with her on A Different Man. “It was an easy decision,” he says. “Renate is such a gifted actor and she’s so generous, not only as a person, but as an artist, and in terms of how she works, it’s very collaborative and she gives everything to every moment. Obviously, we’d had A Different Man and that was great. This was going to be a very different relationship and a different way of working from that. But I’m such a fan of hers, obviously from [her film] The Worst Person in the World. I remember Cristian asking me what I thought about working with her, and I just said, ‘You’ve got to hurry up and get her. It’s going to be great.’ So that also just felt very natural the way everything was coming together.”
Reinsve says of being reunited with Stan, “Working with Sebastian again was a joy. He’s an incredibly generous actor and human being — deeply committed to his work, endlessly curious, and brave in his choices. This project was very different from our previous collaboration, and the dynamic between us required a reset. But we also had a shared foundation of trust, which allowed us to move quickly and take risks together, grounded in friendship and mutual respect.”
As Reinsve says, Stan is indeed brave in his choices. As with The Apprentice, his Fjord character is far from a safe or easy option. Mihai may have integrity and solidity, he may love his family and believe he is doing the best for them, but many will find some of his values deeply problematic. And that, surely, is the point: What do we do when we don’t agree with people’s principles? Where is the line for intervention or control? In the film, the actions of the government against Mihai and Lisbet are extreme and partly in response to their religious beliefs.
Mungiu’s journalistic roots initially led him to the real-life Bodnariu case behind the story, but Fjord is a fictional amalgam of various people’s experiences. Says the director, “I talked to as many people as possible involved in such cases, not only in Norway, but also in the other Nordic countries. Not just with the families but all the parts: judges, lawyers, child protection, press, social activists. At the end I came up with a story that is fictional and doesn’t follow just one real story but a kind of pattern.”
Stan read everything he could for background, learning about the Barnevernet, Norway’s child welfare service. “I found that there were actually quite a few other cases that were ambiguous in terms of the practices surrounding those cases, and some cases where they were really impactful in a positive way. And in other cases where they had come under question — are they helping truly protect children or are they tearing families apart?”
Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve in ‘A Different Man’
For Stan there’s a stark correlation between the themes in the film and the treatment of immigrants in the U.S. “I’m certainly hoping that people will be able to look at this movie and make the clear parallel to what’s happening in the U.S., when families are being torn apart by institutions that are government-funded with taxpaying dollars. Because, in my point of view, it’s really no different. This is just one experience in this particular case, where you really see a very different way of being and living, whether it’s in Norway or Romania, and the clashing of that difference.”
Says Mungiu, “Today, our societies have become polarized in the extreme, inciting a kind of radicalization that splits people into opposite rival groups that disregard, despise and often detest one another. We are certain that we are right while the others are always manipulated, radicalized, simple-minded, brainwashed. We have very few to no doubts. And this is what leads to this wave of extremisms of all sorts… It would be a great flaw for me if Fjord just confirms to you the ideas that you already had before watching it.”
Reinsve agrees with this view of a broader problem. “This story could take place anywhere,” she says. “We are living in a time of increasing polarization across the world, and it often leads only to conflict. What would it look like for progressive and traditional perspectives to coexist without fear or judgment? How do we remain flexible in our beliefs without losing our values? And how do we stay open to the possibility that we might be wrong — without letting that idea destabilize us completely?”
There’s obviously a lot of judgment towards immigrants from that point of view, because it’s like, ‘Well, you’re coming here. You should either be like us or go back home.’ All of that is being explored in the movie, but I had a way into it and understanding it. — SEBASTIAN STAN
In the film, when Mihai is questioned by authorities about his parenting, he is willing to admit he was wrong, and Stan muses on this. “Flexibility is the key word,” he says. “It’s unfortunate because what we’re seeing right now is this example of this real rigidness and this loud barking by these political figures that are just… The bark is so loud. It reminds me of somebody, when they drive their car, they’re blasting the motor down the street and you go, ‘Sorry, but how small is your penis? You’re saying that you have to alert the entire street?’ Whereas, if you ask me, it’s the guy in the corner that seems quiet and seems unbothered that I look to save the day, not the loud guy advertising every emotional upheaval and self-absorbed victimhood that he’s projecting on us. I don’t have to name any names anymore. I mean, if it isn’t obvious enough, for god’s sake.”
Fjord was an opportunity for Stan to rediscover his Romanian roots. Ordinarily, he speaks Romanian to his mother, and “every chance I can get. We just went to this Romanian restaurant in Queens called Romanian Garden for Easter on Sunday. It was really funny, I was switching back and forth between English and Romanian.”
His Fjord character, like Stan himself, is also an immigrant — did Stan feel a personal duty to both tell an immigrant story here and to portray Trump in The Apprentice?
“There’s always this fine line as an actor of, what is my responsibility and is there a duty to uphold this mirror to the world as we see it? And I do believe there is. We’re not on the front lines like many others. We’re not in the hospitals, and we’re not like the journalists that are out there with the incoming fire. All we can do is through storytelling, do our part to represent in any way we can, as truthfully as we can, the complexities that we are all dealing with.”
His own experience arriving in New York, speaking no English, was clearly no picnic.
“It was very similar to the Gheorghius in the movie,” he says. “They find themselves out of place and it’s awkward. I think there’s a real self-consciousness, in a way, that can be very debilitating. When you’re an adult, it’s different. You’re more formed and you can own things, but as a kid, you really, really don’t want to be different. You want to fit in.
“On the one hand, I think it really helped me, because that fear and that self-consciousness of being different propelled me to really obsessively learn English quickly, and I did, and I managed to adapt. But on the other hand, it generated years of shame and embarrassment, and this part of myself that I didn’t quite really know would be helpful to my life.”
But when Stan got a bit older, he realized that differences and complexities can be a superpower. “It wasn’t until I was 17 or something where I could start to go, ‘Oh, wait, actually this is good. This is important. This is probably going to help me.’ It’s like you’re living in a house and never opening the door to the basement or to a room upstairs. You just never know what you have there if you don’t go. At least, that was my experience as a kid.”
Writer-director Cristian Mungiu on the set of ‘Fjord’ in Norway
With Fjord, he says, “Obviously I understood what it felt like to go into a different country with different customs, different values, belief systems, and not know necessarily how my own way of life, or what I have learned growing up would translate to a different culture. There’s obviously a lot of judgment towards immigrants from that point of view, because it’s like, ‘Well, you’re coming here. You should either be like us or go back home.’ All of that is being explored in the movie, but I had a way into it and understanding it.”
When he arrived on the set in Norway, Stan found himself embraced by the Romanian crew. “It was very touching. I’d left when I left, and it’s not necessarily like I had a choice, it was the choice that my mom had made — I benefited from it and there’s nothing there to cry about — I just mean there was never a reunion that I experienced. And this film very much felt like that, when these crew members came around me and said, ‘Hey, you’re one of us. We’re so happy you’re doing this movie. It means the world to us. Thank you for acknowledging the country you’re from.’ It only motivated me to want to do more justice to this family and these characters.”
His acting in Romanian was impeccable, consistent, believable, precise, nuanced. So, Hollywood, take care, the Romanian industry might steal him from you. — CRISTIAN MUNGIU
Reinsve remembers a lovely atmosphere amid stunning scenery. “We lived and filmed surrounded by mountains. The beauty and the drama of hearing stones fall or roads being blocked because of stone avalanches and having to get to set on a small boat together early in the morning… We were people from many different countries building this together in an incredible environment, and there was a lot of dancing, barbecues, karaoke under the Northern Lights. I love Romanian culture.”
Mungiu recalls Stan being a little worried that his Romanian language wasn’t perfect anymore. “But his acting in Romanian was impeccable, consistent, believable, precise, nuanced,” the director says. “So, Hollywood, take care, the Romanian industry might steal him from you.”
Mungiu likes to shoot oner-style, with no coverage, and the trickiest scene, rather unsurprisingly, involved both children and animals. “Sebastian had to play with the three children but also with a flock of sheep. You’ve seen R.M.N. — even the scenes with animals are in just one shot for us, even if they require choreography. There’s no improvisation, everybody needs to do and say things precisely right and still make it look as if it’s spontaneous and fresh. It was challenging to get it, but when you’re watching the film, please note the way the sheep looks at Sebastian at the end of the chosen take. He couldn’t possibly get a more honest compliment.”
Stan hasn’t seen Fjord yet, because Mungiu has asked that he and Reinsve wait until they can have the full big-screen experience at the Cannes premiere May 18.
“I have to trust him there,” says Stan. “Last time I was there with The Apprentice, Cate Blanchett was two rows ahead of me, and it was so bizarre and overwhelming to have her stand up and be clapping and looking at you. And so, it’s a very special moment.”
L-R: Sebastian Stan as Donald Trump and Jeremy Strong as Roy Cohn in ‘The Apprentice’
I remind him of the time two years ago when I ran into him at The Apprentice premiere afterparty in Cannes. No one else had arrived yet, and it was just Stan, standing alone in a beach restaurant. He wasn’t even looking at his phone, he was just standing there, looking shellshocked.
“I was in a dream,” he explains now. He likens his experience of climbing the red-carpeted steps of Cannes’ Grand Théâtre Lumière to the scene in Titanic when Kate Winslet’s character dreams she’s back on the ship’s staircase, surrounded by a cheering crowd. “It’s so wild, and you go, ‘It can’t be. It just can’t be that these people are all here for this.’”
So, will he take his mother with him to Cannes, to celebrate the first time he’s playing a Romanian role?
Unexpectedly, he laughs. “Listen, let me tell you something, OK? My mom came to the Oscars, and it was amazing. I kept asking her, ‘What are you going to wear?’ And finally, she decided on this feather dress. And then I spent the entire night picking feathers off of Jeremy Strong or Monica Barbaro, who was sitting next to me, and her father. These feathers were everywhere. I was counting them all day long. And every time she stood up and sat back down, more feathers were flying. I was like, ‘No more feathers.’ So, I’m like, ‘What are you going to wear, mom?’ But of course, I’ll always include her in everything.”
Sebastian Stan with his mother Georgeta Orlovschi at the 2025 Academy Awards
Soon, Stan will begin work on The Batman: Part II in the role of supervillain Harvey Dent, aka Two-Face. The film will shoot in London, the city where Stan trod the boards in 2003 with a year’s study at Shakespeare’s Globe Theater. “Mark Rylance was the artistic director,” he remembers. “And my teacher was Mike Alfreds.”
As a Brit myself, and knowing his partner Wallis is too, I ask if he’s ready to enjoy more British humor, especially the television. “Oh my god!” he says. “What is the show that my girlfriend I watch all the time where you’re watching other people watch TV? Gogglebox! It’s hilarious. And it has a very weird, pleasing, soothing quality to it.”
He’s also been loving the new UK version of Saturday Night Live, but the British clincher for him is a surprising choice: Hugh Grant in Nine Months. “I’m telling you, that movie is so underrated and is so funny. I met him when we were on The Graham Norton Show. It was like a life achievement to get on that show, because I’d watched it so many times and I was so excited. The whole time I couldn’t convince him that I really loved Nine Months. He kept thinking I was pulling his leg.”
The Batman: Part II, will be, he says, “a challenge, like everything else. I feel like it’s a really ambitious movie and I think if we do it all right — and obviously I’m so excited about Matt Reeves [directing] because he’s been one of my favorites for a long, long time — I really think it’s going to blow people away. It’s going to surprise a lot of people, I think, too.”
A few years ago, Stan commented in an interview that the real world has more in common with superhero movies than we realize. Having made several MCU films and now with DC Comics’ Batman coming up, how does he feel about the relevance of these films now?
“Obviously there’s a reason why Batman’s been re-occurring for so many years, and why so many kids love Spider-Man,” he says. “When you’re thinking of, honestly, just anything positive for young men. If you’re a teenager and you’re growing up and you’re watching that, it’s about a kid being odd and figuring his way into things. And it works in very subtle ways.”
Has he thought about writing and directing? What about telling the story of a real-life hero: his father, who saved all those people in Romania?
Read the digital edition of Deadline’s Disruptors/Cannes magazine here.
“I think about it all the time,” he says. “Over the years, I’ve gotten into writing a lot. And some of it is just for my own sanity — some of it maybe will see the light of day in some capacity or not. There are so many great talented directors and people out there that it’s like, why go on the trip if you can get someone better to do it? But in terms of my dad, of course, when he was alive, I did say to him at one point, ‘I think we just need to sit for a while, then I’m going to just ask you some questions and record it so I can understand truly what you’ve gone through.’
“I think what fascinates me, again, to parlay it back to this idea of manhood, and it’s so complicated, is that he was in his 20s when he was helping people escape the country, and he was, in his own way, still providing for me and my mom, which was not in a conventional way, but he was in his 20s. And I just think about that, because there was a degree of awareness and a degree of a drive, and a belief that I feel had nothing to do with approval. It had nothing to do with, ‘I’m going to do this so that I get more attention online, or, I’m going to fight for this cause or whatever so that someone will give me a pat on the back.’ It was totally selfless in that regard.”
At this, he is quiet for a minute. Maybe he’s worrying again about getting parenthood right, or just thinking about all the things our conversation has circled: integrity, protection, flexibility, and now selflessness.
He’ll be a great dad.
Sebastian Stan shot on location in New York at Go Studios.
East Deck Creative Crew: photographer/creative director, Andrew Zaeh; videographer/editor, Jack Mallett; digital tech, Rob Grima; production designer, Vianny Guevara. Deadline design director: Fah Sakharet. Deadline video director: Ben Bloom. Sebastian’s stylist: Jason Bolden.
INTERVIEW Sebastian Stan: “Trauma either destroys you, or it gives birth to you, or rebirths you.”
by Alexandra Tănăsescu April 24, 2026
Photo: Adi Bulboacă for Cultura la dubă
“This is your responsibility – to look at all the parts of yourself, even the ones you don’t like, the questions you’re afraid of, to see who you are, how you were made, and then ask yourself: okay, now what do you want to do with that?”
Departure. For an 8-year-old child, departure can be a concept absorbed far too early, especially when it leads into the unknown. It becomes, however, bearable when accompanied by a mother determined to offer a new life.
Departure is deeply rooted in Sebastian Stan’s life story. He left Constanța as a child, leaving behind his beloved grandparents and his friends from the apartment building stairwell. He arrived with his mother in Austria, then in America, in New York. And later, his acting career would also involve countless other departures.
But today we won’t talk about leaving – we’ll talk about returning.
Sebastian Stan as a child in Romania/ photo: personal archive, through the courtesy of the actor
With an extraordinary ability to transform, choosing vastly different scripts, Sebastian Stan is now one of the most acclaimed actors in Hollywood, a Golden Globe winner and an Academy Award nominee. He holds dual citizenship – American and Romanian.
And in just a few weeks, he will be seen for the first time in a Romanian film, Fjord, directed by Cristian Mungiu – exactly where any cinema artist belongs: at the Cannes Film Festival, in the official competition.
To get close to a celebrity like Sebastian Stan, you would normally have to pass through an army of agents, managers, publicists, or quite literally, security personnel.
On the Fjord set in Norway, however, things were different. For over a month, Stan set aside his invisible superstar cloak and integrated himself into the various layers of the film crew, made up of Romanians, Norwegians, Swedes, and Finns.
Typically, such a celebrity gives interviews rarely and only to major, internationally known publications.
The fact that Sebastian Stan chose to give his first interview in Romania after his Oscar nomination to a small publication like Cultura la dubăsays much more about him than about us. It is just one of the ways in which he uses his notoriety in service of others – to support causes he believes in, causes that otherwise do not receive much attention. With the same reasoning, he supported, as a producer and financier, the debut feature film of a Romanian director – A River’s Gaze, by Andreea Borțun.
The conversation with Sebastian Stan flowed as naturally as possible and touched on personal subjects that help us discover him beyond his acting career. From the search of a child suddenly awakened in a completely different world, to the 42-year-old adult trying to find his true identity and his role on earth. All of this, in the context of the painful loss of his father – “I only spoke Romanian with my father, which created a very special intimacy between us, like an invisible thread that belonged only to us.”
What role does film play in all of this? It is the art form through which Stan can bring his most authentic contribution to a world torn by conflict. And it is also part of his own personal search.
The interview took place in Norway, in April 2025, during a filming break. Sebastian chose to speak in Romanian, though at times some ideas were expressed in English.The material also features the first images of Sebastian Stan on the Fjord film set, captured by photographer Adi Bulboacă for Cultura la dubă.
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“Sebastian, we’re in Norway, close to the end of filming on Fjord. First of all, how are you, how do you feel here?
I can’t even believe we only have two weeks left and we’re done. It’s a bit strange here, you’re in a different state. After so much time spent here, in isolation, among these wild mountains, it’s like you no longer know whether the thoughts that pass through your mind truly belong to you or to the character.
Norway, april 2025/ photo: Adi Bulboacă for Cultura la dubă
Probably this very austerity of the landscape was perfect for me, it helped me disconnect from anything else and sink into a completely different world, one that feels almost timeless.
Being in this location helped us a lot to understand what life would be like here for this family in the film, what each character’s world would look like. It really is a space where the boundaries between you and the role gradually blur, which is wonderful, right?
Ferry in Norway/ photo: Adi Bulboacă
Before I left, I didn’t really have time to think about what it would be like here from an objective perspective, being a totally new experience, after all, it’s my first film with a crew made up of so many Romanians.
What made you accept this project and work with Cristian Mungiu?
I’ve wanted for a long time to collaborate with Cristian. If I look at the last few years, I can say I’ve become more and more dependent on directors and on stories that allow me to go into the character’s depth.
I like to discover in myself and in the character something unexpected, maybe even frightening, that kind of fear that pushes you to dig deeper.
That inner fear, of not being fully prepared or of failing in front of a new nuance, of a character foreign to me, is what I’m looking for, I think it’s what makes me grow as an actor.
I have admired Cristian since I saw his first film. We met a few years ago and kept trying to find a project to work on together. In the end, we found this one and I’m grateful it came together.
Sebastian Stan in costume for his character in Fjord, photo: Adi Bulboacă for Cultura la dubă
You have lived most of your life outside Romania and you’ve already had extraordinary film projects in your career. How can you explain this desire of yours, to have not only a personal connection to the country where you were born, but also a professional, artistic one? How and when did this desire or need appear and what lies, in its depth?
Romania is the place where I was born and where part of what I am today was formed. And yes, for a long time I wanted to get involved in a Romanian cinematic project.
My first project with the Romanian film industry isn’t this one, Fjord, but the film directed by Andreea Borțun, “Malul Vânăt” (A River’s Gaze), where I got involved as a producer and financier. It made me very happy that I had this opportunity to be part of, to support a project by a young director, at the beginning of her journey, on her first feature film.
Actress Mihaela Subțirică in A RIver’s Gaze, directed by Andreea Borțun/ photo: Malul Vânăt
I think it’s very important, if we can, to support such new voices. Often great careers are born from these first steps. Think of Martin Scorsese, who debuted with Who’s That Knocking at My Door (1967) thanks to the support of producer Roger Corman, opening the road toward masterpieces like Taxi Driver later. I won’t say that my support was just as decisive, just as important, but I tried to be there for her in this effort as much as I could.
My roots are there, even if I left at only 8, and my first return was only at 21. That long break made the return not just physical, but much more revealing, I could even call it spiritual.
I needed to mature, to gather experiences and, most of all, to cultivate my curiosity and my desire to better understand where I come from. This rediscovery influenced me a lot from the start of my career, realizing that my place of origin and the traits that set me apart are, in fact, parts that define me and support me in life – after a large part of childhood I only wanted to fit in and be like the others.
Sebastian Stan in USA, New York/ photo: personal archive, through the courtesy of the actor
Being different societies I had to adapt to (n.r. Austria, USA), it’s probably natural to want to belong.
With age, you realize that uniqueness doesn’t come from what you share with others, but precisely from those qualities and experiences that shape your own identity and challenge you to build a path of your own. Our differences and particularities are, in the end, what give us an original perspective on the world and allow us to live detached from norms, in accord with who we truly are.
This matters enormously, especially in the film industry, where, as an actor, everything starts from how you find your voice.
I think success also depends on the power to express yourself honestly, which often comes from your own roots, feelings, and life experiences. That is exactly what stands behind the ability to understand the depth of characters and stories I was talking about earlier, but also of the people you work with, each with their unique history. That richness makes the performance alive, relevant.
Sebastian Stan/ photo: Aaron Stern, through the courtesy of the photographer
These thoughts have always followed me and made me want more and more to return to the place I left, a place that appears to me in some bizarre memories from the Revolution of 1989, but especially in those with my grandparents, family, friends from back then, with how “the grown-ups” related to each other and to the social and political situation of those times.
All of that took shape around 2003, when I met a Romanian woman, Alexandra Tînjală, who later became my friend.
I was in England with my acting classmates from America, from Rutgers – where I was going to college. She was friends with someone in my class and that friend said: hey, you’re Romanian, she’s Romanian, talk. I, until then, had no contact in Romania anymore. I hadn’t kept in touch with the kids I played with in childhood. My grandparents, poor souls, had died. I had nobody anymore. We were all gone.
Sebastian Stan, 21 years old, and Alexandra Tînjală/ photo: personal archive
And because of Alexandra I began to rediscover Romania, Romanian cinema, Romanian directors. She introduced me to the Romanian new wave – Cristi Puiu, Porumboiu, Mungiu, then to Radu Jude’s films and other Romanian directors. She sent me films: “The Death of Mr. Lăzărescu”, “4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days”, “12:08 East of Bucharest” – which remains one of my favorite films, and many others.
I remember that around 2008 she brought me a DVD with Cristian’s film “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days”, which she had gotten his autograph on. I’m really curious if I can still find it at home. That would be something!
Then I started to get involved in Alexandra’s volunteer program, Our Big Day Out, as a volunteer, which targets children in placement institutions and disadvantaged people. Alexandra is also a volunteer of the NGO The Alex Fund, founded by Leslie Hawke (n.r. Ethan Hawke’s mother).
Sebastian Stan and Leonard Bărbieru/ photo: Silviu Pal, Our Big Day Out
They, this NGO, The Alex Fund, had an event at Lincoln Center, in New York – the screening of Cristian Mungiu’s film, Graduation. And Alexandra invited me to this screening, a perfect occasion to meet Cristian Mungiu, especially since I lived in New York.
So I took my mom with me, and at this event I met Cristian for the first time. I don’t think he knew anything about me then. It was happening around 2016, I think.
How did your relationship develop after that moment? Did you keep in touch?
Until 2018 I didn’t hear anything from him, but in 2018 Alexandra suggested that he invite me to the American Independent Film Festival, in Bucharest. There I was invited with the film “I, Tonya”, in which I had just acted. In that same week I also met Corneliu Porumboiu, whose fan I already was for a good few years. And only from then on can I say I kept in touch more often both with Cristian and with Corneliu.
You said earlier that you had several attempts to work together, but only now you matched. Do you feel this collaboration with a Romanian director came at exactly the right moment in your career?
Yes, now, after more than 20-something years in this business (it’s very interesting to hear myself saying that), I realized much more that, surprisingly, you can’t control everything, no matter how much you want to.
You always want to work with certain directors, to get specific roles, but for me all the important films, from “The Apprentice” and “I, Tonya”, “A different man” and now, “Fjord”, came exactly when I wasn’t expecting it.
Sebastian Stan as Donald Trump, in The Apprentice, dir. Ali Abbasi/ photo: The Apprentice
It was as if I let myself be carried by the wave, as if I raised my hands in the air and said: you know what? If it’s meant to be, it’s going to happen, if not, not. And right then, letting things flow naturally, everything came together.
And I feel extremely lucky that ‘Fjord’ came together. We were talking about it back in the summer of 2024 and I still wasn’t sure if we would do it in December or January, but in the end, here we are, it happened now, in spring. And yes, it feels like it was meant to be that way.
I had also talked with Cristian about R.M.N. We tried then too to see if that film could suit me, but we didn’t synchronize.
And I think, in the end, Fjord is much more suitable for us.
Sebastian Stan and Alexandra Tănăsescu, Norway 2025/ photo: Adi Bulboacă for Cultura la dubă
What is it like to work with him? Did you get used quickly to his style on set, with long takes, with many takes?
It’s fascinating to work with a director who has such a personal and meticulous style. What I like most in this job is that every director comes with their own methods.
For me, the first rehearsal, that moment when the door opens toward the director’s vision and universe, is one of the most interesting moments of this career. — Sebastian Stan
It’s somehow a moment that never stops exciting me. As an actor you have to always be open to absorb something new from each project – what worked in one film doesn’t necessarily mean it will work in the next.
Also, I don’t like to play the same thing all the time, it becomes boring.
Sebastian Stan at Zurich Film Festival/ photo: Fabienne Wild for ZFF
This very instability makes a creative career feel alive. Somehow it forces you to reinvent yourself constantly, to discover all kinds of unsuspected resources in you, especially with a director who reconstructs reality down to the millimeter. I admit (laughs), I need someone to guide me. I think trust in directors is crucial.
Since I saw his first films I noticed his unmistakable style: each scene is kept as a long sequence, sometimes 20 minutes, and sometimes with a hundred people involved. And you watch those sequences and you feel like you’re watching a documentary – the actors don’t seem to act a role, they seem to live the story. I think that’s how the situation becomes very real, believable.
But I didn’t know how much he works on what we see, how attentive he is to every detail.
Cristian Mungiu during the filming of Fjord in Norway/ photo: Adi Bulboacă for Cultura la dubă
For example, he worries down to the millimeter how a child sits in a corner or how a flag flutters, everything is thought through meticulously to create impeccable visual authenticity.
After seeing all these things, I look at him now more as a complex artist, almost like a painter. You can stop his films on any frame and look at it like a work of art. And I don’t think that’s accidental. He has an extraordinary eye for detail, which gives his films a rare aesthetic level. It seems to me it’s very difficult to achieve something like that and that’s why it amazes me, I keep asking myself “how did he manage to think up this whole universe?”
And there’s one more interesting thing about Cristian, he is extremely attentive to how we react in real life, and when he says action, he knows exactly when something sounds false, melodramatic or gratuitous. — Sebastian Stan
For me, all these things were very motivating and pushed me daily to want to rise to the level of the universe he creates in his films.
The big difference between American films and European ones is that in many American films you often feel you’re being told how to feel, like someone is spoon-feeding you. Whereas in European films, you’re shown a situation, and you, as a viewer, are the one who draws conclusions, you decide how to feel, how to interpret the characters and the story.
Sebastian Stan in A Different Man, dir Aaron Schimberg. The actor received the Silver Bear award at The Berlin Film Festvial for this role
It’s a much more creative and artistic approach and, in my view, that’s the impact film should have on the public. That’s life, after all, there isn’t only black or white, nobody is only good or only bad, we all try every day to live and make peace with our decisions, aware that we are subject to mistakes and nobody is perfect.
Coming back to working with Cristian, shooting a sequence 20–30 times is a huge challenge, something happens. It’s also a very heavy subject, it contains some very emotional scenes. To try to hold those emotions, as an actor, for that long time, every time, 20–30 times, is not easy at all.
Alexandra Tănăsescu and Sebastian Stan in Norvegia, during the interview/ photo: Adi Bulboacă for Cultura la dubă
You can feel you entered that state perfectly at take five, but maybe the other actors didn’t hit it. Everything has to be synchronized impeccably.
Sometimes what feels authentic to you on set, in the edit or even on screen can look false.— Sebastian Stan
In a way, this style of filming resembles staging a theater play: you do daily rehearsals, you have shows a few times a week, you have to keep the rhythm and intensity, but still find new nuances in the same structure, even if you repeat the same text or scene.
It’s fascinating to go again and again toward that emotional state trying to improve it each time, not to repeat it, but to outdo yourself.
For this role, you needed to radically change your look. How did you reach an agreement about that? Was it hard for you to do?
I don’t think it was hard, especially after the experiences with the series Pam & Tommy, where I lost over 9 kilograms, or for the role in The Apprentice, where I gained about the same.
Sebastian Stan in the miniseries Pam and Tommy/ photo: Erin Simkin, Hulu
I think adapting the look helps enormously and brings authenticity to the character. Not only in what the public sees, but in how I relate, as an actor, to the character: you behave differently, you move differently, mannerisms change, certain instincts seem to adapt automatically. The closer you are to the character’s physicality, the closer you get to him.
I don’t see changing the look as something hard, but rather necessary if the character demands it. If you go to work knowing exactly how it will be, you have nowhere to move forward, and in the long run you only lose.
As I said, to me, discomfort, fear and the unknown are crucial in the projects I get involved in. To me, they are the basis of creative freedom and evolution.
Sebastian Stan in I, Tonya, dir Craig Gillespie/ photo: Neon
Do you feel this collaboration gave you a new perspective on Romania, not only with Cristian, but with the whole Romanian crew? You spent a lot of time with them, I don’t know if you’ve ever spent so much time with so many Romanians in one place.
Yes, I spoke with my mom on the phone a few days ago and she told me my Romanian is much better since I came here.
Sebastian Stan gives his mother a kiss during an interview at the Oscars/ photo: youtube snapshot
To be able to speak Romanian for so long has been nice and very good. Still, for me, the relationship with Romania is a process that is still developing and it will take some time until I reach all the layers I want. There are still many directors and people in the Romanian industry I want to work with. (n.r. Radu Jude told Cultura la Dubă in an interview that he will make a film with Sebastian Stan).
There is certainly a Romanian style and it’s hard for me to describe it in words. It’s a particular feeling, a mix of humor that I used to know and now I’m remembering.— Sebastian Stan
Romanians have an expansive way of speaking, full of gestures, on one side they’re very warm-hearted, on the other, very stubborn. I laughed a lot with them and I liked feeling that energy, which, yes, feels very familiar to me.
For example, when I filmed a sequence with Alin Panc, I could barely stop myself from laughing – he had a way of being that made me collapse laughing with just a look! And Adrian Titieni, whom I had seen in the film Graduation, where he was outstanding, is an incredible actor. I was deeply impressed by his presence and professionalism and I’m very grateful to work with him, but also with the rest of the Romanian team.
Sebastian Stan in front of the camera during filming of Fjord, Norway 2025/ photo: Adi Bulboacă for Cultura la dubă
Honestly, I was a bit scared to be with them on set, I had to find my Romanian again, I still have the accent I have, I wanted to speak as well as possible, to be as authentic as someone who left Romania after much less time than I left.
Well, they are 100% Romanian actors, with deep roots in the culture and the subtleties of expression, which, yes, intimidated me a bit at first. But precisely these differences created a special chemistry both on set and between us. It was and remains a tremendous experience for me!
Sebastian Stan in București, finding out he received an Oscar nomination during rehearsals for Fjord/ photo: Alexandra Tînjală
But do you think that, beyond professional collaboration, our tendency to reconnect with our roots as we get older, to rediscover the stories lived by our grandparents, is actually about a personal need to truly know our identity? It’s like we see these things differently close to 40. How is it for you?
It’s exactly as you said. When you reach 42 (laughs), as I am, you think very differently. Especially when you lose people in your life.
When my father died, in 2021, a lot changed for me. Such an event completely changes how you see life, where you come from, what happened, what the history is, what the roots are, what made you, how it made you, etc.
And I go back again to what we discussed earlier: it’s not just about getting close to the roots or knowing them, but also understanding them and the compassion you must show so you don’t alienate yourself from them, no matter how shaky they may seem at times.
My father died, unfortunately, in a hospital in Romania.
Those days when he struggled for life, in his native country, in a place he had left long ago and only returned to visit, are still very hard for me to describe.
The states I went through then, the anger I felt toward this system that seemed torn from old stories about Romania, the helplessness in front of illness, but especially in front of the way this system works, the lack of transparency, communication barriers and the lack of empathy of the doctors for the patients or their relatives, I admit, all of that marked me.
I kept trying to understand how you cope with such a mechanism, especially since we’re talking about the medical system.
And when I read this script, I felt this parallel: losing my father in the twists of Romanian medical bureaucracy, the helplessness probably shared by many Romanians who lose their parents like this, resembles strikingly the tensions in Mungiu’s Fjord – the family broken by distance, the cultural values in conflict, and the mute fight to keep what remains of humanity in front of a cold, impersonal mechanism.
America had a big influence on me, because I grew up there. I feel very lucky that I had the opportunity to leave when I could, that I had my mom, who fought very hard so we could leave after the Revolution, to have other chances.
Sebastian Stan as a child/ photo: personal archive, through the courtesy of the actor
But I also feel this leaving as a kind of guilt. You sit and think that not many had these opportunities.
And you keep thinking what it would have been like if we hadn’t left, if we had stayed there. Or if we left and never returned, if I had lost Romanian completely. At this age you think about all that, you can’t help it.
In the end, you have to accept. This was your road. The only way. But you have to acknowledge all of it: the luck and the guilt and where you headed, but also where you came from.
Sebastian Stan at Zurich Film Festival/ photo: Fabienne Wild for ZFF
And the work.
Yes! And the work. I tried to do something with this opportunity and sometimes I can’t even believe we are here and talking about this now.
Still, when you lose a parent, when you think about children, about how fast this life passes, you look beyond yourself. You sit and ask: what can you still say and do? What do you do with this platform you built, that you have?
This is my journey. Through the films I make and the profession I chose I want to contribute in a way that is beyond me, that surpasses personal ego.
That’s why I got involved in Alexandra’s volunteer project, Our Big Day Out, and in Andreea Borțun’s film (n.r. “Malul Vânăt / A River’s Gaze), because there are many women directors in Romania who have something to say.
Sebastian Stan, volunteering for Our Big Day Out/ photo: Our Big Day Out
And she had a story somewhat similar to my story with my mother, there are some small parallels there. And not only that drew me to this project, but also the way it was made: the preparation meant six years of research in rural areas, the filming stretched across four seasons, something quite rare for a fiction feature.
Over 60% of the cast are non-professionals from the regions where filming took place, ordinary people who were given a real chance to play what they live day by day and not just anyhow, but in a feature film. Including one of the main actors, the boy, which I think was a brave bet for a debut director, not many take that on.
So yes, I try to find more ways to contribute, but at the same time remain who I am, not pretend anything other than what I am.
Sebastian Stan, Andreea Borțul and Alexandra Tînjală/ photo: personal archive
I’ll end with something I should have started with: congratulations on the Golden Globe and on the Oscar nomination! I don’t know if you realized it, but the moment of your speech caused strong emotions in Romania. Maybe some said: why do we claim him, Romania has no merit. But the truth is that for Romanians the success of a Romanian athlete or artist abroad brings a kind of joy they can’t get from anything else.
Thank you so much! I said on stage exactly what I felt. And regarding Romania, what I can say now is that in those years when I left, there was a lot of chaos for me.
When you’re a child, you keep trying to find your home. You live here, then you go there, then to another country. As I said, when you’re a child, you want to be like everyone else. But, in the end, those years made me. Without all that chaos, childhood in Romania, leaving for Austria, then America, all that built me and otherwise I wouldn’t be here.
I’m convinced that if I had been born in America and lived there all my life, I wouldn’t have ended up in the situation I’m in today.— Sebastian Stan
Maybe there are people who have an ok life, they have a whole family, nothing bad happened to them and they become geniuses, I don’t know, it’s possible. But every director I attached myself to, every writer, screenwriter, absolutely all have family stories, a childhood, situations that made them ask who they are, to discover what they are capable of.
Some traumas…
Exactly. Traumas either destroy you, or they give birth to you, or rebirth you.
And that’s your responsibility, to look at all parts of you, even the ones you don’t like, at the questions you’re afraid of, to see who you are, how you were made and then to ask: ok, now what do you want to do with that?
I understand maybe some look and say “he left, what the hell does he still have to say?”. But still, if I hadn’t had that moment there (n.r. at winning the Golden Globe), if I hadn’t said what I said…
Sebastian Stan’s speech at the Golden Globes, 2025
I could have been on stage for an hour and still I wouldn’t have finished thanking everyone. You always dream of these moments, you think: if I get there, what will I say? In the end, that moment has to be “thank you!”. You don’t get there alone. You get there because hundreds of situations happened, for the people you met along the way and because you worked very hard.
That moment when you said, at the end, Romania, I love you, was it spontaneous or did you have it prepared? And why did you want to make that declaration toward Romania?
It was and it wasn’t spontaneous. It was first of all a message for my mother, or rather, from my mother, who always repeated to me: “You have to remember where you came from.” On the one hand, it represented her strength to leave with me, alone, our shared journey.
Sebastian Stan and his mother, Georgeta Orlovschi/ photo: personal archive, through the courtesy of the actor
On the other hand, about the support of my stepfather, which was unconditional, and, equally, about my father and the relationship I had with him, about the moments spent together, where he brought to life dozens of stories from and about Romania, about Romanian music we listened to together, about the fact that I spoke with him only in Romanian – which created a very special intimacy between us, like an invisible thread only ours – and up to his own road, which wasn’t easy at all, but also about the stories about him discovered later from his friends, after I lost him.
From my point of view, it would have been inauthentic and unjustified not to say what I said.
I had to speak about our road, and our road – mine, my mother’s, my father’s – began there, in Romania.— Sebastian Stan
Of course throughout my career I thought about this moment, to be on stage and reflect on my path, on my origin, to thank everyone who contributed to this life. So, in a way, it wasn’t spontaneous – in reality, I wouldn’t have been there if I hadn’t had this road and this past, which begins and will always begin with Romania.
Sebastian Stan, on Christmas in Romania/ photo: personal archive, through the courtesy of the actor
It was my way of recognizing where I come from, of showing my pride in my past, of fully accepting it, for my identity and for all the people who were with me and shaped me, from there, from the country where I was born.
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