It’s been less than 12 years since Dan Stevens raised a middle finger to the British aristocracy (OK, the Crawleys), quitting “Downton Abbey” as the show neared its Emmy-amassing zenith and setting sail for America with his family. As he admits, he had “absolutely no idea” what was going to happen to him.
“There was no roadmap,” the 41-year-old actor explains with frank honestly about a decision that, at the time, was considered by many to be sheer lunacy. “I left ‘Downton’ with a blank slate. It was just, ‘I think I want to do other things.’ But I didn’t know what that looked like.”
To have an idea of what that currently looks like, anyone need just head to their nearest cinema, where Stevens is going head-to-head against himself in two of the biggest studio releases of the season. In what has become something of a calling card for the Brit since devastating TV viewers —not to mention Lady Mary —by ending his “Downton” days under an upturned vintage motor at the end of the 2012 Christmas special, they’re two wildly different movies.
In Warner Bros.’ mega monster sequel “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire,” he’s a long-haired, Haiwaiian-shirted ’80s-era action hero and Titan veterinarian —a sort of Brad Pitt meets Ace Ventura —who first appears being air-lifted into the mouth of Kong to fix a colossal aching gorilla tooth. Meanwhile, in Radio Silence’s gory Dracula action mashup “Abigail” for Universal, he’s an f-bombing ex corrupt cop now leading a gang of kidnappers, who, in one of many hilariously OTT scenes, projectile vomits blood for what feels like five minutes (and proceeds to spend the rest of the film soaked in the stuff).
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“Yeah, they’re a little different,” Stevens says with a smile, speaking from his home in L.A. “But that’s part of the fun. It’s been an ambition of mine for a while to be able to do something where you can see one movie in one theater and literally walk down the block and see another movie in another theater and not even recognize the same person. I love that.”
In fairness, Stevens has been doing that for the last decade.
Since his first major post-“Downton” breakout as a charming cold-blooded killer in 2014’s cult thriller “The Guest,” he’s been skipping merrily between genres with impressive —and intentional — gusto. There have been family-friendly hits (“Beauty and the Beast” as the Beast and “Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb” as Sir Lancelot), sci-fis (“Colossal” as Anne Hathaway’s frustrated ex), festive biopics (“The Man Who Invented Christmas” as Charles Dickens) violent folk horrors (Gareth Evans’ “Apostle” as a missionary taking on a cult) and what he describes as a “fireball of silliness” (Will Ferrell’s “Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga,” as a closeted Russian pop prince with a taste for phallically-impressive statues of himself).
And it’s been no different, although less frequent, on TV, where Stevens made a name for himself playing the schizophrenic mutant son of X-Men’s Charles Xavier in the Marvel/FX spin-off series “Legion,” and, more recently, as Richard Nixon’s real-life White House Counsel John Dean in Starz’ Watergate political thriller “Gaslit.”
But with major back-to-back roles in “Godzilla x Kong” and “Abigail,” there’s a sense that Stevens has now steered himself —in typically eclectic fashion — toward the very top of studio call sheets.
“I feel like he’s been waiting in the wings to be a major movie star leading man for as long as anyone,” says “Godzilla x Kong” director Adam Wingard, who cast Stevens in “The Guest” and then reunited with him 10 years later. “He’s proven himself. It’s really just a matter of the studios and producers catching up to that. But I do think we’re there.”
For Wingard, who alongside his writing partner Simon Barrett created the “Godzilla x Kong” role with Stevens in mind, the actor’s “secret sauce” is a singular ability to make every character trustworthy. “No matter whether they’re a villain or a hero, there’s something about the charisma of Dan Stevens that makes everybody, young or old, like him,” he adds. “And of all the actors I’ve worked with, he’s the one that most casual filmgoers are familiar with, I think because he’s done so many different types of things.”
It was Stevens’ growing “appetite” to do different types of things that first saw him head to the U.S. aged 29. Prior to “Downton,” he’d appeared in Jane Austen and Henry James adaptations, and he suggests, although he loved this work, there was a danger of being pigeonholed had he stayed on home soil.
“I think it’s maybe more a British attitude to say, ‘I’ve never seen you do this, I don’t think you can do this,’” he says. “Whereas the attitude I was met with over here early on was, ‘I’ve never seen you do this, I’d love to see you try.’” Shortly after arriving in the U.S., he was told almost exactly these words by Scott Frank, who then cast him as a revenge-seeking heroin trafficker who hires Liam Neeson’s ex-alcoholic private detective in his 2014 neo-noir action thriller “A Walk Among the Tombstones.”
“And as a young actor, that’s all you want to hear. It’s the most encouraging thing,” he says. “So I’ve had a bit of that in the back of my mind ever since, just like ‘I’ve never seen myself do that, I’d love to try it.’ And I think increasingly, I like surprising people so they’re like, ‘Oh, he’s a Russian pop star now? OK.’”
Stevens’ ability to keep surprising people may diminish with each Russian pop star or Arthurian knight or King Kong dentist or blood-soaked criminal he plays. His ability to appear as anyone and anything is fast becoming his USP.
But that’s not to say he still can’t raise eyebrows, as he did in 2021 with Maria Schrader’s sci-fi romance “I’m Your Man.” Stevens’ role as a humanoid male “companion” robot may have felt perfectly within his oeuvre, but the surprise factor was that he played the part speaking fluent German, having learned the language in high school.
“The German is a lovely thing that’s very personal to me,” he says. “We spend a lot of our careers jostling alongside other actors and doing similar stuff, like, ‘Oh, he’s done a biopic’ or ‘he’s done an action movie.’ We’re all sort of doing our thing, but I get to occasionally go over and do a strange little film in German… and sometimes that strange little film finds its audience.”
As he notes, the film ended up getting its world premiere at the Berlinale and was later submitted by Germany as its Oscar submission, making the shortlist. It also dominated the German film awards, where Stevens was nominated for best actor.
The German was recently dusted off again for “Cuckoo,” Tilman Singer’s feature debut unsettlingly weird psychological horror in which Stevens plays an eccentric villain heading up a nightmarish breeding program. Like “I’m Your Man,” the film premiered in Berlinale (Neon is releasing it August 2), although Singer clearly missed his performance in Schrader’s drama three years earlier and was “completely floored” when the actor kicked off their first conversation in German.
Singer—who Stevens initially connected with after seeing his “hugely inventive” 2018 graduation short “Luz” — has now joined a growing assortment of collaborators the actor hopes to keep working with, filmmakers that have either approached him directly or whose work he discovered at festivals or through recommendations. And, naturally, he’s happy to do pretty much anything with them, but ideally with an emphasis on projects that are a “fun ride.”
“Abigail,” he claims, is a perfect example. “It’s a beautiful film with a rich classic tone, yet what’s happening on screen is deeply absurd,” he says. “That contradiction does something to your brain in way where you’re thinking, ‘This looks and feels gorgeous, yet there’s 5,000 liters of blood coming out of this man’s mouth… what’s going on?’”
A potential new collaborator —or just someone he’s admiring from afar —is Zelda Williams, having loved her recent directorial debut, Focus Features’ comedy horror “Lisa Frankenstein.”
“It’s terrific, and for a first film, absolutely extraordinary,” he says. “It may not be the perfect movie, but it doesn’t need to be. What it does is absolutely demonstrate the hallmarks of somebody with style and taste and a sense of humor.”
Like Singer and Wingard, Stevens says Williams has the ability to pick a great soundtrack.
“And if you know you’re going to be in a great looking shot with a great sounding tune, then most of the work has been done for you and it’s yours to fuck up,” he notes. “And Zelda has that in spades. So I’m excited to see what she does next.”
Whether Stevens has time to work with Williams is another thing.
He’s just finishing off shoots for Netflix political conspiracy thriller series “One Day” as part of an ensemble cast including Robert De Niro, Lizzie Caplan and Jesse Plemons, while Wingard —currently riding high off the soon-to-top $500 million box office success of “Godzilla x Kong” —says he’s got another “juicy role” in a script he’s been working on with Barrett. Stevens is also talking about new projects with Singer, someone he’s “really keen to champion.”
And although Stevens seems to bring his own set of ideas to many projects (he originally wanted to play his “Godzilla” role with a South African accent), he’s currently “figuring out” a move behind the camera to start working much closer with writers and begin producing, having been given the confidence to do so by filmmaker friends. “That’s an exciting new chapter,” he says, adding that there are a “few things on the stove.”
Meanwhile, he’s only too happy to see whichever random direction the creative relationships he’s already forged take him next, with Stevens pointing to the actor-director partnership enjoyed by Rutger Hauer and Paul Verhoeven as a source of inspiration he’s had for many years.
“You could see them go, ‘Oh, we’re going to do a medieval epic now, or we’re going to do an intense domestic drama now… it was just point a stick and go, ‘Let’s make one of those,’” he says.
“So if Adam Wingard or Tilman Singer or Radio Silence or Gareth Evans came to me and said, ‘Actually, I just want to do a rom-com,’ I’d be like, ‘Absolutely, fucking sign me up,'” Stevens adds. “I don’t care what they’re doing next, I just want to be a part of it.”
