Paul Walter Hauser

um i vividly remember alice and jannie had one scene in miracle on 34th street the film from like 94 with mara wilson a little girl from matilda she's now a human woman at the time a little girl i remember her in that and i remember her playing the principal in 10 things i hate about you with two of the styles and he bled her and i just remember thinking like that woman every time i see her whether it's those or drop dead gorgeous like she

american beauty she's always so good every time i see her so that was my benchmark of that they probably won't let me star in movies but like i'm gonna be the best person if i have five minutes yeah and uh paul giamatti and my best friend's wedding has a scene with julia roberts in the hallway they share a cigarette and like it left an imprint on me at 13 years old or whatever when i saw that movie i thought

That's the key.

The key is to be really freaking good.

And then maybe they throw you a lead role eventually, but either way, like I'm going to, I'm going to try to be that good all the time.

And, and then Richard Jewell and Blackbird and luckiest man in America and stuff like this, uh, balls up came my way where, where I was like, Oh man, awesome.

Like,

It happened period, and now it's happening more than once.

And selfishly, it's fun to be the lead, and I would like to keep doing that.

But you've got to provide for your family, and you're lucky to be in the business at all.

So you take whatever good stuff comes your way, hopefully.

There are eight, nine year olds who crack me up or they sing a song and you're like, wow, they have something.

So it's a little bit of that.

If it's innate or born into you and then,

You have to mature that and you have to come prepared, whether that's having your lines memorized or having ideas or being able to do something on the fly.

I remember on my first film, I was doing a driving sequence.

They had me driving a real rickety, kind of busted down vehicle.

I forget the make and model, but there was something to where the car broke down mid-scene and the director, Dustin Lance Black, who won the Oscar for writing Milk and wrote this movie, the first one I was in, he didn't yell cut.

So I just started...

improvising in character, like the car had really broken down.