Sebastian Stan Didn’t Recognize Himself After Fjord Transformation

“My favorite thing actually was, sometimes I actually wish this happened on every movie,” he explained, “was when Cristian went and I said, ‘You know, but I don’t think we don’t need to do any makeup or anything.’ And he said, ‘No no, no. There’s no makeup in this movie.’ And I was like, that’s amazing!”

And while Stan noted that not having to sit through glam saved “so much time” on set, it was an intentional decision on Mungiu’s part. 

“You need to focus on what matters a lot and to use most of your time to be truthful with what you’re trying to express with the actors and try not to be very manipulative with the spectators and to just use their talent as much as you can,” the filmmaker explained. “And this is why I’m so proud of what they did in the film, because the film is not just communicating [to] you what was happening, but you feel this kind of frustration that they were expressing.”

But changing up his look wasn’t the only way Stan prepared for the his role in the film, which also stars Renate Reinsve, Lisa Carlehed and Markus Tønseth. Indeed, the 44-year-old—who was born in Romania and lived there for the first eight years of his life—also had to make sure his Romanian was in tip-top shape. 

“There was a whole crew of Romanian people around me who probably could tell in two seconds if I didn’t sound Romanian,” he said, adding that “the whole experience was very different from anything I’ve ever done and I knew that going in and I liked that I was excited about that.”

Keep reading for more stars who underwent intense transformations for onscreen roles…