Bob Stephenson on the Road to Making it Big, From Cary Grant to David Fincher

Bob Stephenson may not be what you'd call a household name, but he might be the closest thing we have to a household face. Stephenson has appeared in countless commercials and played Deputy Jimmy Taylor on the CBS drama Jericho and Walter Bailey in the ABC series The Forgotten. He was the shy slob who dated Jennifer Aniston in Friends With Money and the airport security guard who confronted Edward Norton about his vibrating suitcase in Fight Club. (He's appeared in four David Fincher films, in fact.) And beginning this month, the Oxnard-born actor is about to get a lot more big-screen time with his one-two-three-four box-office punch Larry Crowne, Our Idiot Brother, Hick (with Blake Lively and Alec Baldwin) and Lorene Scafaria's feature debut Seeking a Friend for the End of the World.

In anticipation of this career upswing, Movieline sat down with the affable actor/producer last week to discuss paying dues in Hollywood (including the ones Fincher literally paid for Stephenson), his days on Michael Bay's Transformers battlefield and the time that Cary Grant took him to a Dodgers game.

Congratulations on Larry Crowne! I need to know, is Tom Hanks really the nicest guy in Hollywood?

Yes! He's so great.

I imagine him as cartoonish-ly nice.

Definitely. We met at a party and we weren't even introduced. He was behind the bar, pouring himself a beer. I was waiting there and he came up to me and said, "I know you. I see your work all the time." All I could say was, Bosom Buddies! That was the only thing that came out of my mouth. I grew up with that show, and I don't know why I couldn't think of anything better to say. But I ended up introducing him to my wife and we talked for about 45 minutes.

Previously, you've worked with everyone from David Fincher and Spike Jonze to Nicole Holofcener and first-timer Lorene Scafaria. What are the differences you've experienced between working with male and female directors?

The female directors I've been lucky enough to work with have been very in tune with the emotions of the characters, but that could also be because Nicole and Lorene wrote both of their scripts. They are a little less rigid and open to your ideas. They are very well-respected on set because they know what they are doing as opposed to demanding a militant respect.

Which Michael Bay has a reputation for doing, at least according to a few of his former cast members. What was your experience like working with him on Transformers?

[Laughs] Yeah, that's the other end of the spectrum. I've known Michael for a while though. I was a production assistant for years, right when I got out of college, at Propaganda Films. He was like that back then. He runs around and screams, but what's crazy is that it all gets done. You look at the film after and realize that it is fantastic-looking but during production, you're like, "There's no way this is happening, right?" There's no lunch. Lunch is brought to you while you're working. Michael's got the megaphone going, things are blowing up, he's shouting. He's like a general.

That sounds stressful.

For him it's probably fun! It's like a battlefield, literally. Things are exploding, people are moving constantly. I think the people that work for him like it though because the day goes by pretty quick. I remember, one of the days I was there, he was shouting, "I need Tyrese! Get on an apple box! Get the camera over here! Boom! We're shooting up! Bring in the choppers!" Then you hear him yell into his walkie and these two black Blackhawks come zooming over downtown L.A. Then he's like, "OK, great! We're moving on!" Then, a bus blows up a hundred feet in the air and we move over and shoot something new. The Blackhawks are still circling overhead -- they're not allowed to land in case he needs them for something else. I didn't want to go in a trailer just because I wanted to watch it all happen.

You mentioned that you were a P.A. How long did you do that before acting?

Five years. I was a production assistant and I started writing treatments for commercials and music videos, helping directors get their ideas down on paper so that they could hand them into agencies and win the job. I wrote for David Kellogg [Inspector Gadget], Simon West [Con Air, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider], and I ended up writing for David Fincher for a Michael Jackson video. And once you write for David Fincher, everything changes.

How did it change for you?

There have been like three times in my life where I have gotten literally down to my last can of beans. I was P.A.-ing up until that point and work got really slow. I had two cans of soup in my apartment and I remember that I got a phone call to write for Fincher and things just blew up. I started working with all kinds of directors. The next year, I think I made six figures for the first time in my life. I went from like $30,000 to like $100,000.

And you got to work with Michael Jackson. How was that experience?

It was a five-day shoot [for "Who Is It"] and Michael showed up like three hours one day, a few hours another day and then that was it. [Fincher] had to shoot from the back with a double most of the time, and Michael hated the music video. It ended up only playing in Europe.

How did you make the transition from writer/P.A. to acting for David Fincher?

I acted in a commercial for Spike Jonze because I was writing all of Spike's commercial and video stuff at the time. I went back to working as a P.A. on a Budweiser campaign with Fincher and he said, "I want you to be in this spot. Just sit in this corner." At that time, I couldn't though because I was a SAG must-join, which means I couldn't act in another job until I paid the Screen Actors Guild initiation fee, which was almost $1,300. I told David that I just couldn't afford it and he just said, "Goddammit," went into the office, made a call, came back out and said, "OK, now sit in the fucking chair" and walked away.

That's amazing.

Yeah, I'll never forget it. [Laughs] He paid for me to be in SAG.

You still do a lot of commercial work. Has the audition process changed at all since you first started acting?

Not so much. I will say that there is a big difference between the commercial auditions and TV and film. I think in TV and film, the auditions have a smaller number of people reading and the directors in casting are more confidant in what they are doing. They aren't just cocky. There are a lot of commercial directors that are new that don't really know how to work with actors and are seeing so many in a day without really knowing how to talk to them. If you're not the right guy, they don't care and they don't care if you know they don't care.

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