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A new Vanity Fair profile on Sebastian Stan chronicles the actor’s pretty remarkable journey to becoming an Academy Award-nominated performer. That journey started in Romania, where his parents “were part of the youth that were standing up to Communism”; both, at different times, fled the country and left their young son behind with his grandparents. His mother eventually brought him to Vienna, and then New York, where he discovered acting as a way to express himself and to assimilate into his new home. Even then, it took years for him to reach A-list, blockbuster level star.
Stan had done some TV work before Marvel (most notably Gossip Girl and the memorable one season wonder Kings), but “I was actually struggling with work” before getting cast in Captain America: The First Avenger, he tells VF. When he was offered the role of Bucky Barnes, “I had just gotten off the phone with my business manager, who told me I was saved by $65,000 that came in residuals from Hot Tub Time Machine.” (Stan had a supporting role in the 2010 comedy as a villainous, patriotic bully.) Hear that, studios? Residuals will help working actors stay afloat until you can discover the Next Big Thing!
Stan, of course, is an unusual kind of Next Big Thing—the rare actor to have won a Golden Globe for one film (A Different Man) and then get nominated for an Academy Award for a completely different one (The Apprentice) in the same year. “Sebastian has always been really fearless,” Chris Evans, the Captain America to Stan’s Winter Soldier, told VF. “You can see that in his choices. He takes big swings. When that Trump movie was kicking around, I remember thinking, I wonder who is going to take this job? It’s just got so many strings attached to it. And I was so unsurprised when I heard it was Sebastian.”
