The quiet, soulful confusion projected by actor Lou Taylor Pucci has turned him into an indie film It-Boy and something of a fixture at the Sundance Film Festival, an actor who has often seemed just on the verge of bigger things.
In "The Answer Man," opening in limited release on July 24 and already available via video on demand, Pucci plays a fresh-from-rehab alcoholic who is simultaneously battling with his addiction, struggling to keep his used bookstore afloat and dealing with a disaffected home life. When he strikes up a provisional friendship with a reclusive, world-renowned author (Jeff Daniels), it has unexpected consequences for them both. The feature debut as writer-director for John Hindman, the film also features Lauren Graham, Olivia Thirlby and Kat Dennings.
To make plain the inner torments of his character, Pucci improvised an unusual process of inspiration.
"I grabbed all the alcohol I could find and hid it in my apartment," the 23-year-old Pucci recalled recently over lunch at a Hollywood taco stand. "In the fridge, in the cabinet, under my bed, and I didn't touch it for the whole shoot. It got me frustrated to just see it everywhere. It was perfect -- the exact thing that I wanted to get out of myself I uncovered by tricking myself into feeling like an alcoholic. It's so simple and so difficult, to have it all around and not drink it."
Pucci got the part on extremely short notice. Still living in his native New Jersey at the time -- he moved to Los Angeles about 10 months ago -- he got a call about a script he had read many months previously. Another actor had dropped out, and if Pucci could get to Philadelphia the next day he could audition for the production that would begin shooting less than a week later.
"He drove down and never left," recalled Hindman.
Hindman had already been a fan of Pucci's for some time, and his wife had actually been pulling for the actor to get the part all along.
"He's able to be still," said Hindman of what attracts him to Pucci's performances. "He's able to stand still long enough for you to watch the character's inner working. He doesn't feel compelled to always be doing something, and that's rare. He's able to just sort of exist."
Pucci began acting as a youngster, appearing on Broadway in "The Sound of Music" at 12. He appeared in his first film at 16, Rebecca Miller's "Personal Velocity," which won two prizes at the Sundance Film Festival in 2002 and landed Pucci with the agent he is still with.
