>Stephen Dorff’s career turned up! Somewhere…

>With a pleasant slice of irony Stephen Dorff’s return from obscurity to eminent fame owes a big thank you to Sofia Coppola, who cast him in her latest picture Somewhere (which is all about the emptiness that often surrounds those of eminent fame).

In a recent interview with The Independent Dorff talked openly about his fascinating follow-up plans for a career comeback.

Acting since age twelve, when he first appeared on TV assuming small roles on shows like Married With Children and Roseanne, Dorff, now thirty-seven, seems to consider himself something of “an old man”. And given his role in Somewhere it’s unsurprising that he would finish filming and think he might well be approaching his sell-by date.

For Dorff, Somewhere is an “original” and “real” film that represents what’s missing in an otherwise monotonous spate of paradigmatic genre films the studios insist upon churning out year after year. He says of his character Johnny Marco:

“Sofia gave me, single-handedly, the best role in the last five years for a young man. Nothing compares to it. I’ve read everything and it is the best.”

Whilst there is no denying that Dorff is a talented actor and that his performance in Somewhere is both plausible and engaging, one can’t help but wonder why a character so disconnected from the world and so disillusioned by his own craft should be “the best” role to surface for the last five years.

Perhaps the ebb and flow between Hollywood blockbusters like Blade and counter-mainstream cinema such as John Waters‘ Cecil B. DeMented have afforded Dorff too much insight into how the Hollywood fame machine operates, including its many pitfalls.

A fan of “character films” and following his own foray into Executive Producing with Felon just two years ago, Dorff isn’t giving up, just changing direction a little.

Currently between writing the treatment and the script, Dorff is in the process of working on a comedy with Adam Sandler’s company and apparently it’s going to star his long-time friend- Jack Nicholson!

Something of a realist when it comes to what motivates movie-making, Dorff openly told The Independent his cunning plan:

“I’ll get Sony to give [Nicholson] his $15m and then we’ll go and make the movie – because he likes money. Just the way I like money too.”

A little rusty and definitely over-honest, Dorff is certainly in need of the “media training” he’s been advised to re-take. Luckily, he seems willing:

“I actually want to have media training because I sometimes don’t know what to say.”

Despite his aspirations to make comedy with Nicholson it seems as though Dorff is a little defeatist about his own options as a middle-aged male character actor amongst Hollywood’s contemporary glitterati machine. Reading through Dorff’s painfully honest comments makes one wonder if there isn’t a little of Johnny Marco still rattling around in there, Somewhere.

Discuss: Should Stephen Dorff fight to stay in front of the camera or is producing a comedy with Jack Nicholson actually a good idea in disguise?