Stephen Dorff is one of those names most movie fans have heard of… but can’t quite picture his face or tell what he’s been in. For those who can picture him, they probably think of Blade where he plays the main bad guy, Deacon Frost, opposite Wesley Snipes (Personally I loved him in that flick and thought he was the best part of the movie).
Sofia Coppola is of coarse the daughter of movie icon Francis Ford Coppola who burst onto the directing scene with Lost In Translation. She has her first movie in 3 years in development now called “Somewhere” in which it looks like she’s cast Dorff as her lead. The good folks over at Cinematical give us this:
Wanting to make (in her words) “an intimate story set in contemporary Los Angeles,” Somewhere will follow a “bad-boy actor” who’s forced to reexamine his life after a surprise visit from his 11-year-old daughter. Possibly looking to capitalize on the new born-again-actor trend, Coppola has cast Stephen Dorff, a guy who’s just trying to come back to acting in movies people have actually heard of); one of his last roles was as Ross Tanner on two episodes of XIII last year. Opposite Dorff will be Elle Fanning, doing her best “Screw you Dakota, I can do bitter abandoned child too, b*tch!” Obviously this film and Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler share similar themes with fathers trying to reconnect with their daughters, except Dorff seems to be playing an extension of himself instead of, say, a former Ultimate Fighting Champion. Still, it’ll be fascinating to see what the gal does with this. Definitely a film that will be followed by many.
I really like the “actor come back” theme, but the Cinematical article draws comparisons between Dorff and Mickey Rourke, but I think that’s a bit of a stretch since Dorff has never had the career or potential that Rourke has had… or the very publicized fall from grace that Rourke had. Dorff just sort of faded into obscurity. Still… I can see where they’re coming from.
I wasn’t a fan of Coppola’s follow up film “Marie Antoinette” at all, so I’m curious to see what sort of film she can make now. In my books she’s 50/50 so far.
(picture courtesy of Cinematical)
