If you were a movie-watching child of the '90s (or, shall we say, an adolescent girl with a pulse) you knew Devon Sawa as a teen idol golden boy of the decade. But after a little more than a dozen years as an actor — during which time he graduated from kiddie fare (Little Giants, Casper, Now & Then) to Tiger Beat bait (Wild America) to what he calls his “edgy” phase (SLC Punk, Idle Hands, Final Destination, Slackers, and Eminem’s “Stan” video), Sawa departed Hollywood to reassess his career, not knowing if he’d return to acting.
During his self-imposed exile from the spotlight — and the party culture and poor career choices that he admits marked his mid-aughts — Sawa spent time in Southeast Asia. He trained in muy thai. He restored a heritage building in his hometown of Vancouver, British Columbia. By the time a script serendipitously found its way to his mailbox, enticing him back into the acting game after his years-long absence, Sawa was ready to start fresh. A celebrated guest turn as reformed assassin Owen Elliot on The CW’s sleeper hit Nikita followed, along with turns in the Toronto Film Festival thriller 388 Arletta Avenue, the indie horror pic The Sibling, and this week’s After Dark Action slate offering, The Philly Kid.
Movieline met with Sawa to discuss (OK, obsess over) his beloved '90s films and the disparate fan followings they inspired, the unexpected similarities between directors Steven Spielberg and Dr. Dre, how he spent his four years away from acting, and why it’s always OK to give your phone number to the Coen brothers.
What brought you to The Philly Kid in the first place? You aren’t playing the hero here, but rather a more vulnerable character, which I thought was a more interesting choice.
First of all, when I read the script the lead was already cast with Wes [Chatham] and he couldn’t have done a better job, but this was appealing to me because he’s kind of the guy who doesn’t care anymore; he’s got the slouch, and he drinks, and he’s got a gambling problem. It’s a character I’ve never played before and I wanted to be that character that doesn’t worry so much about the way he looks, you know what I mean?
You play the friend who sucks Wes's Dillon back into fighting, part Paulie from Rocky and part Worm from Rounders…
The thing about Jake is that he’s a likeable guy, he’s a loveable guy, and that’s what makes Dillon want to help him out. He doesn’t ever mean to do anything wrong, he’s just got no filter and he makes the wrong decisions… a lot. But he means well.
Given your sports training, have you considered taking the action hero route? Or do you have a different path in mind?
Acting first. I want to do action, but I don’t want to be the guy who does just action. I’ve been working a lot on character, and I want to be able to do what Pacino and Hoffman do. But I still love doing action, so I’m trying to do both.
You’ve done a number of indie movies as well as Nikita in the last few years — where did this project fit in?
It came at the right time. It was the end of season one of Nikita so I knew for sure I wasn’t working on that. My agent called and said there was this MMA script, and I was like, "Oh, let me read it!" Baton Rouge was a big part of it because I love the South, and being from Canada it’s like the polar opposite — the food, the feel... I just love it down there. So it just fell in place.
Obviously many of us have been watching your career from the start, but audiences really caught up with you in recent years thanks to your recurring role on Nikita.
I took a break at the age of 25 just to step away from the business and figure things out — figure out if I wanted to do this anymore because I’d been working straight from the age of 11. And when I came back after four or five years, it was kind of like starting fresh again. People hadn’t seen me in a while, the last things they saw me in were some indie horror movies that I’m not really proud of, and the Nikita people were the first to step up and take a shot at me — "OK, let’s see him." I went in and read with them and it went great, and that opened up a whole bunch of new doors. That’s why I love them so much. A lot of people were like, "Eh, Devon, we haven’t seen him in a while — what’s he been doing?" And Nikita was like, "Sure, this could work." It was supposed to be for two episodes, but I got on there and it’s still going.
It must be curious to have the experience of being famous as a child actor, and getting all the way to age 25 then stepping away and coming back. Between your early work, your Nikita work, and your newfound Twitter fame, what do you think has helped you most get back in the game?
Nikita, for sure. I love Twitter. [Laughs] I don’t know if it’s really helped, but it’s a lot of fun. I have friends that are on The Vampire Diaries now that I met through Twitter. It’s a great thing, but I don’t know whether it’s helped or not.
In ways you’re more candid on Twitter than most actors, which is part of why I think folks like to follow you.
It’s not doing anything wrong, that’s for sure. No one’s told me to stop. I dread the call from my manager saying, ‘Did you really say this on Twitter?’ But you never know.
Let’s go back to the beginning. You began acting at a young age, which is when you first made a name for yourself. Tell me about your childhood…
I had a great childhood! I started doing Nerf commercials — I was the national Nerf spokeskid, which was my first kind of big thing.
Did you know then that you wanted to act for a living?
Yeah, I was a very energetic kid in grade 5 and started doing theater, traveling with this group doing all the elementary schools. I just loved it, I loved being on stage. Then I auditioned for the Nerf thing and got that, loved that — I ran around shooting Nerf guns.
How can any kid complain about that?
Exactly. And at the end of every commercial they’d give me a big box of these Nerf guns that the prop guy would put different springs in to make them shoot farther! So it was great. And then Casper came along. As a kid I was doing school with Christina Ricci and then Jonathan Taylor Thomas, going to Savannah, so it was all great. Then after Wild America when I was 17 I stepped away for two years, and came back, and I was going through that phase where I didn’t want to be in those teen magazines anymore. I was really against those things.
That seems like the toughest transition for a child actor to make, out of adolescence and teen years into young adulthood.
It really was. I wanted to do edgy, weird stuff, like SLC Punk and Idle Hands and the “Stan” video. That’s when I was in my weird phase. I guess it worked out.
I admit I was enamored of Little Giants and Now & Then, but I have a friend who’s obsessed with Slackers. Like a number of your films, it has quite the cult following.
There were a certain couple of years in college when I think that was a big movie! My agent’s assistant was like, "I love Slackers!" And he started reciting a scene that I don’t even remember. I’m like, "OK, dude!" I guess people like that. And I was really, really proud that Idle Hands made it to the New Beverly Cinema last year. That’s when you know you’re in a cult hit.
Did you go?
I didn’t. But the next one…
How often do you go to the New Beverly? Because I swear I saw you there once, which is when I became aware that you were a fan of the theater and a huge movie nerd.
You did. I am. I used to go all the time, but now I’m in Woodland Hills. I go to the Aero theater more, but I love them both. I really am a movie nerd. I love going to see the old films on the big screen. I just saw a new print of West Side Story at the Aero theater and that was great, I went to see back to back Indiana Joneses, back to back Godfathers… it’s the only way to see them.
So, back to this edgy phase. Slackers, Idle Hands — those films came right before your self-imposed break from Hollywood. What prompted that?
That was the point when the fame, or whatever — what club or what party I was going to — became more important. Then I started doing some movies that I wasn’t so proud of. They were kind of straight-to-DVD horror movies and whatnot.
Why do you think you were doing those movies?
They threw a little money at you, and you want to work, and you think they’re going to do better — it sounds good on paper — and then it comes out and somewhere down the line, something didn’t work out. And I wasn’t really proud of them, so I stepped away.
Where did you go during that time?
I went to Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, for months at a time. I started muay thai in Thailand. I fixed up an old heritage building in Vancouver — I bought a heritage building that was kind of run down and went from apartment to apartment…
Are you a house-flipper?
No! That was the first and last time I’ll ever do that. It was an experience, but it was a great experience. I wouldn’t do it for a living, it’s definitely hard work. But I learned so much. It’s kind of a life experience.
When you took this break, not knowing if you’d return to acting, what did you think you might do instead?
I thought I was going to do something in the real estate business, maybe this flipping…
And what was it that brought you back to acting?
An accident. Acting wasn’t even on my radar, but I got a script through the regular mail for Max Payne. Mark Wahlberg was already in it, and this script arrived in my mailbox with a cover sheet. It was from an agent who obviously didn’t get the memo, but there were audition sides and the script. Ludacris’s role — that’s the part I auditioned for. But anyway, my audition tape made it to my new manager’s office somehow and they were like, "Hey, come down and meet with us!" I came down and met with them, but it was a very slow process. I got a furnished apartment in Marina del Rey for a month, and then met with some people and went back home. I eventually moved by that little yellow building by the Santa Monica Pier, and I lived there for a year. Anyway, it didn’t work out, I didn’t get the part, but I got a new manager, and the rest is history.
If you had any of it to do over again, would you do anything differently?
I don’t think I would do it over again. I like where I am now. I think taking the break… I didn’t even know whether I was coming back after the break, and I think it was the best thing for me. I stepped back a little bit and I’m kind of trying to get back to the same place, but I’m happier now. I’m good where I am right now, and I’m in no rush this time. If I don’t work for a couple of months, then so be it. I don’t need to jump on a horror movie about aliens in space fighting zombies or something like that.
Unless it’s the right one…
[Laughs] That actually sounds not bad!
Now that you’re back in the game, do you have a set path that you want to follow?
I always said I was going to be more selective, pick and choose. It took a lot of time for them to convince me to open my mind to TV, because I was always so against it.
As a child of the '90s, I love that the '90s are the new '80s, but it still freaks me out that the '90s are now retro.
Yeah. When I hear people go, "We’re having a '90s party!" I’m like, am I still doing '90s?
Molly Ringwald recently talked about going to an '80s party herself, not really needing a costume.
Wow. I guess if you’re having an '80s party and Molly Ringwald shows up, you have the '80s party. [Pauses] God, I hope I don’t make a '90s party.
But that would be awesome!
That’s true.
Speaking of the '90s, let’s talk about my early favorite films of yours: Casper, Now & Then, and Little Giants. Two in a row with Christina Ricci! What do you remember of those years?
Me and Christina Ricci hung out a lot on Now & Then. It was my first time in Savannah, Georgia, which was cool — a Canadian kid being in the South for the first time. The reason Casper was so cool was because they did this whole nationwide search for Casper — tapes were coming in from everywhere. I sent my tape down and a week later my agent calls and says, "They want you to go down and meet Spielberg. Tomorrow." My parents were out of town on vacation somewhere, so me and my little old grandmother flew down to Los Angeles, and we’re on the set of Universal Studios, there’s this man sitting on the stairs: "Hi, I’m Steven Spielberg." My grandmother could care less! It was wild. After we did the meeting we snuck into the park and rode the rides. I was 13.
What was Spielberg like, in your 13-year-old eyes?
He was great. I did Little Giants back-to-back with that and they were both his movies. He came and worked the camera a lot on Little Giants. Just down to earth and really cool. But, you know – everyone’s staring at the guy. He’s Steven Spielberg! This is the time of Jaws and E.T. and Back to the Future.
So, Little Giants: I was a tomboy, and I was obsessed with it. I always wanted to throw a roll of toilet paper in a perfect spiral…
Down an aisle? You should do it! Just bring your cart in, wheel it down.
When crazy people like me come up to you with all these nostalgic memories of your movies tied to our own childhoods, is it strange or are you totally cool with it?
Yeah — I don’t know why, but I really am. I’m proud of my resume. I’m proud that I was able to make different jumps at different points. And it’s always a different crowd for different movies. There’s the typical Idle Hands pot smoker; I don’t know how many times someone’s said, "Hey, man, you wanna smoke a joint?" I get a lot of different people who loved the "Stan" video. That was one of the highlights of my career, that video. Working with Dr. Dre who directed it — that was the same feeling as Spielberg but in a different way, these guys are ahead of the game at what they do and they’re so smart and they get it.
Have you ever performed “Stan” at karaoke? Because it exists. Karaoke joints have it.
They do? I remember doing that video, and they told me when I got on set that I was going to lip-synch it. The first take, Dre came in and, no joke — his first direction was, ‘That was good! This time, I want you to try it with a little rhythm…’ [Laughs] I was like, that’s the first direction? That’s how this video’s going to go?
So, thanks to your Tweets we know you share your life with your dog and have a "smoking" habit. What’s life like for you now?
Mellow and chill. I came back and I moved to Marina del Rey, then I moved to the beach, moved to Beverly Hills, and now I’m in Woodland Hills. I love Calabasas. I come out here all the time, but then I go back into suburba-land. It wouldn’t surprise me to be home on a Friday night, midnight, bed. DVR. Greatest thing ever.
What are you working up next?
I don’t know. I worked really hard in the last couple of years, with Nikita and the three movies. Went on some stuff in pilot season that didn’t go, but we’re trying to be selective. My fingers are crossed on Nikita. Who knows? I’d like to go back and finish the Owen character, because he’s kind of in limbo now.
You’ve also said you’d love to work with Scorsese. Are you working at making that happen, lobbying for roles in films with directors of that caliber?
I have a list of people that I want to work with. I met with the Coen brothers, and I’ve never actually talked about this but it was one of the greatest days of my life. I was doing a Nikita episode and there was a Coen brothers movie casting and they were only seeing people on tape. I took the train somewhere in Toronto, put myself on tape, came back, sent it to my managers, watched it again and said, no — I want to do it again. Took the train again all the way back, redid it, sent it in, and a week later they called and said, "The Coen brothers want your cell phone number, they want to call you — we want permission to give your number to the Coen brothers." Uh, yeah! So I waited a couple days and then I get another call saying, "They would like you just to come meet with them in New York." So I flew to New York, met and read with them. I remember at one point while doing a scene I came out of it for a second and they were laughing, and I thought, "Holy shit, the Coen brothers are laughing where they’re supposed to be laughing." It was an amazing thing. It was between me and another guy and it went the other way, but you know, we’re getting into those places.
The Philly Kid is one of five films opening under the After Dark Action banner, in theaters and On Demand today.