When Hollywood casting directors have to cast the school nerd, they'll usually pick an actor who was the jock in real life and slap a pair of glasses on him. Ashley Springer is much closer to the real deal: though initially shy and self-effacing, he's thoughtful, quick, and possessed of an interesting backstory once you get to know him (as a teen, he was a professional magician). Springer first gained notice as one of Jess Weixler's victims in the Sundance-minted horror comedy Teeth, but he has his largest role to date in the new film Dare, where his geeky Ben comes alive when both he and best friend Alexa (Emmy Rossum) pursue the sexually confused Johnny (Zach Gilford).
On the verge of Dare's release this week, I talked to Springer about the film's adventurous nature, the unique way he snagged the role, and his magical past.
In Dare, the centerpiece scene for your character is pulled almost entirely from the short film the movie is based on. That short has been out there for several years, and you can find it online. Did you take a look at it before you went in for your audition?
No, I avoided it on purpose, actually. Emmy had seen it and she told me a little bit about it -- she was a big fan of it. I tried not to watch it, though.
There was no temptation? You didn't think it might give you an idea of what the writer and director were looking for?
I just imagined myself playing the scene and having someone else's lines in my head. I remember in acting school, sometimes we would try doing movie scenes, and it was a much different challenge than doing a play because you'd have a performance in mind. Even if you were trying not to recreate the performance, you'd have the specific rhythms of how people would say things or the characteristics of the original actor. I just didn't want to be battling that.
So you had already talked to Emmy before you went in...had she been cast, or were you two friends?
The thing was, I did a reading of the movie before they started casting anything because Kerry Barden cast Teeth as well, so he's cast me in a number of things. Kerry was doing the movie and they put together a reading early on so they could hear it, and he put me in the reading. They liked me from there and that's how I got the job more than anything, because I think if I had not gotten that, the audition probably would not have gotten me the job.
You didn't feel like you did as good a job in the actual audition?
I thought it was fine, but it was lucky for me that they were able to see me do the entire thing. Auditions are tricky! When you do a reading -- even more so than when you do the film -- you have a plan that you can ride this arc of the character from scene to scene. You obviously can't do that in an audition, so I was lucky that I was able to audition that way. It's not like anybody has any idea who I am. They had Emmy and Zach, who obviously had careers and have done things that people have seen, and I think that had they wanted to, they could have gotten somebody like that for Ben. They saw me before anyone else, though, so I got to do my own thing.
Ben's arc is very interesting -- he seems so timid when the movie begins, but by the end, he's practically the movie's most confident, sexually assertive character.
I think that's totally right-on. He does start out with very little confidence, especially in the romantic arena. Alexa is his only real friend, and she doesn't exactly have a lot of high status socially in their high school. When he decides to go after Johnny, that's a huge risk for him, and one that he's never taken before in his life, so there's a major change in him. I tend to be more like early Ben in my life -- I have a hard time being assertive and standing up for myself -- so it was fun to discover how assertive he was as we went along.
When I talked to Zach Gilford, he told me that he didn't think Johnny was gay, and that Ben was almost exploiting Johnny's desire for friendship and intimacy by coaxing him into this relationship.
I think that that is the more interesting take on Johnny, right? But I think from Ben's perspective, it's sort of moot. He's not even thinking about it -- any opening that Johnny gives him, he's so hoping that something is going to be there that I don't think he actually steps back and analyzes whether Johnny actually wants it or not. It's like he's trying to sell him on the idea the whole time, and any positive feedback he gets outweighs all the negatives for him.
You used to work in a casting office, didn't you?
I was a casting intern for four years, and I learned a lot. The best thing I got to do was that they let me be the reader in the room a lot, and that was a huge learning experience for me. I was working in one of the best casting offices in New York, so all the best actors in the city who had to audition came in to audition, and I'd get to do scenes with them. Just seeing what worked and what didn't inside the room was really illuminating. When people came in who were great character actors, regardless of whether they'd get the part, you could see from their audition, "OK, this is why they work a lot." They'd give a hell of an audition every time. It was pretty inspiring.
Do any of them ever recognize you now? Are they like, "Hey, didn't I read for you before?"
People my age do a lot. The thing is, people were appreciative of somebody's attempt to actually play the film with them. It happens frequently that you go in and there's a good reader, but oftentimes there isn't, and it makes your job so much more fun and more interesting when you're reading with somebody who's trying to be in the scene with you.
Now that you've been on that side of the room, do you ever leave your own auditions and wonder what exactly they're saying when you step out of the room?
I try not to think about it. [Laughs] It was never the case of people would leave the audition and you'd make fun of them -- it wasn't a horror show by any means. I just don't want to think of that whole aspect of it. I'm generally happy if I feel like I did the best I could for the role, and when I don't feel that way, that's when I'm not happy with an audition. It's just about trying to let go of things that aren't under your control, which is a learned skill, I think.
You've been to Sundance a few times now, which is pretty out-of-control.
There's just so much going on. You have to do all this press business, so there's lot of photo-taking and interviewing, and that's not my forte. [Laughs] I don't like having my photo taken that much in that type of venue, where you have to look nice. If you're an actor, you have to have the camera around, but you're putting your attention on something else, and that's acting. I'm not concentrating on, "What do I look like as a human being?"
You performed as a magician before you were an actor. Did you have an outsized stage character for that?
I definitely had a character when I would do magic, but it was never, "Aaaah, I am the master of the elements!" It was closer to myself. Generally, the magic that I did was sleight-of-hand stage magic in the vaudeville tradition -- I would usually do a ten-minute piece set to music, the type of thing that doesn't really exist all that much anymore. Usually, these guys would do their routine and they'd be part of a bill with jugglers and clowns and whatnot. It was like a little piece of theater as opposed to a bunch of tricks.
Where would you perform?
I would travel around and perform at lots and lots of magic conventions where I'd be part of the bill. I started performing around the country when I was nine, I performed in Japan, things like that. It's not like there's a big market for it these days.
Is there a natural arc from magician to actor?
Yeah, I think so. I had this coach for a number of years when I was a kid who helped me shape the whole thing -- he was a Broadway actor named Robert Fitch. He'd been in a large number of Broadway shows and he was this fantastic magician and actor who had trained with Meisner, so my training was as an actor with the magic being almost secondary. You had to learn how to do all these tricks, but they came alive as a piece of theater. The best magicians are always like that -- not that I'm saying I'm some fantastic magician or anything -- but my favorite magic to watch is like that. It's not just about, "Hey I've got this box, and I'm going to put this girl in the box, and I fooled you!" If it can be about something more than that, and if it can create emotions in you the way a piece of theater would, that's what you're really hoping for. ♦