It’s easy to suggest there is a formula for Hollywood success. Youth, good looks, famous other half and well-connected (or pushy) parents do a celebrity make. But occasionally someone stumbles on to our screens who appears not to fit into any of these categories at all, a hexagonal peg in the square hole of showbiz.

Paul Dano, it seems, has become one such rarity. Following in the footsteps of Philip Seymour Hoffman before him, the once awkward kid of indie cinema has – in characteristically subtle fashion – emerged as one of the “greatest actors of his generation”, according to those who have worked with him.

In cinemas, you can currently find him swaggering, bejewelled, through Oscar-winning director Paulo Sorrentino’s Youth as a conceited LA actor, alongside Michael Caine, Harvey Keitel and Rachel Weisz, while his recent portrayal of a young Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, in Love and Mercy, earned him his first Golden Globe nomination in December.

Pivotal moment: Dano as Pierre Bezukhov in War and Peace. Photograph: BBC/Laurie Sparham

But it is his performance as Pierre Bezukhov in BBC One’s adaptation of War and Peace that feels like a pivotal moment for the 31-year-old. Lauded by critics for many years, in the space of five weeks, Dano has become the toast of British television, his subtle and complex depiction of the ever-suffering Bezukhov stealing almost every scene in Andrew Davies’ £10m Tolstoy adaptation.

Tom Harper, who directed War and Peace, said he was convinced it was Dano’s curiosity in one of Tolstoy’s most challenging characters that had driven his “risky” decision to move from Hollywood to a relatively small British production, even when the adaptation still had no international broadcasters attached.

“The thing about Pierre is that he’s a bit of a misfit and most leading actors tend not to be,” said Harper. “There was really only a handful of people across the world who could play the role – and Paul was top of that list.”

Harper flew out to LA to meet Dano, and while the pair got along, Dano didn’t say yes until he had read both the script and Tolstoy’s novel, and in Harper’s words “asked around about me to make sure I wasn’t shit”.

Over the next seven months, Dano threw himself into researching the part of Pierre with academic vigour, meeting with Harper several times to discuss the role. He re-read all Tolstoy’s essays and novels, all Tolstoy’s own 19th-century reading material and Orlando Figes’ non-fiction tome, A Cultural History of Russia – but left the script alone until filming began.

“He slips into this plain where you get this magical performance, which comes from ... well I don’t know where, but it’s wonderful,” said Harper. “When he hits that magical place, it’s electrifying. I think he is one of the finest actors of his generation.”

Dano’s entrance into the acting world was far from predestined. Born in 1984, he spent the first few years of his life in a small apartment in East Side Manhattan. His parents were “not artsy”, Dano has said, his father working as a financial advisor while his mother stayed at home to raise Dano and his sister.

It was after his family moved to the suburbs in Connecticut that he got involved in the local Powerhouse theatre, and having developed a taste for the stage in regional plays, he went to a few auditions in New York. At 12, he landed his first role on Broadway in Inherit the Wind, directed by the don of New York theatre, George C Scott.

With Daniel Radcliffe, who plays a flatulent corpse, in the upcoming Swiss Army Man. Photograph: Allstar/Blackbird Films

At this point, he was still harbouring ambitions to be an NBA basketball player, and even now admits it was kind of an accident that his acting career flourished. “I was acting then because, you know, I liked it the way I liked basketball and I kind of fell into it. I guess I was good at it but I wasn’t fierce about wanting to be an actor when I’m older then.”

Dano said he fell in love with film after watching Dazed and Confused and Midnight Cowboy repeatedly. It was at 16 years old that he landed his first major role on camera in L.I.E, depicting a young boy who becomes entwined with a paedophile played by Brian Cox. Dano and Cox would go on to act together again, eight years later, in The Good Heart, and again in War and Peace.

Cox described Dano as one of the most “remarkable young actors I had ever worked with. He is very unusual as a standard American actor because he’s incredibly bright and incredibly intuitive, but also has great wit,” said Cox. “He is an inhabitor of roles. That’s why his Pierre is so strong, why he was so good in The Good Heart and why he was wonderful as Brian Wilson. He is, without question, one of the best young actors in America.”

But after playing a disappointingly shallow role in the 2004 film The Girl Next Door, Dano had toyed with the idea of giving up on acting altogether and pursuing a career in music instead. He told Backstage: “I consider myself a dork, and [in The Girl Next Door] I was playing somebody who was so dorky ... I was so scared because I knew I wasn’t going to be an actor at that point if I wasn’t going to get to play different types of roles, I’d just find something else to do.”

Paul Dano lives a quiet life away from the cameras with long-term girlfriend Zoe Kazan. Photograph: Variety/Shut/REX/Shutterstock

The turning point, he acknowledges, came with The Ballad of Jack and Rose in 2005, starring opposite Daniel Day-Lewis and directed by Day-Lewis’s wife, Rebecca Miller. The film, about a farmer and his daughter who live on a secluded island, divided critics, but Dano said it reignited his love for acting.



Miller, who also wrote the screenplay, said it was apparent Dano was “so clearly wonderful” from the moment he had auditioned.



“He was very much like he is now, very open and hilarious on set and utterly committed. I never had a moment where I didn’t feel he wasn’t real. He’s both very intense and very easy going at the same time.”

He first captured the imagination of audiences in Little Miss Sunshine in 2006, playing the tortured teen Dwayne Hoover, who had taken a vow of silence. A year later, his chilling depiction of twins Eli and Paul Sunday, the evangelical adversaries of Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood, seemed to secure his Hollywood credentials.



Yet, after filming Little Miss Sunshine, the then 22-year-old decided to enrol in university, studying literature at the New School in Manhattan, rather than throw himself on to the blockbuster treadmill. Explaining his decision, Dano later said: “When Little Miss Sunshine came out, it was a big deal but I decided to go back to college for a year, because, you know, I was getting offered movies just like that movie. Now more than ever I want to be ambitious about what I do, but I think still, at a certain age, I wasn’t looking to get rich quick.”

Instead, over the next two years, Dano cropped up as the lead in a series of low-budget indie films and even an off-Broadway play, drawn to characters wracked with inner conflict and turmoil – be they a suicidal young man or a cross-dressing writer. By his own admission he is “overly conscientious about the kind of choices I make, almost to a fault. I overthink the hell out of things, and I’m very ambitious.”

It was from 2010 onwards that Dano’s career began to gather pace, though continued to zigzag between obscure arthouse and big-name box office. He starred in Knight and Day, alongside Tom Cruise, and in Cowboys and Aliens with Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig, but also twee indie flick Ruby Sparks, alongside his long-term girlfriend Zoe Kazan, and acclaimed 2012 low-budget drama, For Ellen. “This is Dano’s film, and he gives it his all,” was the Guardian’s verdict at the time.

Dano as Brian Wilson in Love and Mercy. Photograph: Allstar/Roadside Attractions

Dano’s film credits may now include critically acclaimed Prisoners and Oscar-winning 12 Years a Slave but the actor is also notable for how little he has courted the world of showbiz. Dano speaks very openly about his 10-year relationship with Kazan, who he met while working on the off-Broadway play Things We Want, and the pair live together in Brooklyn, virtually undisturbed by the showbiz cameras. Any career achievements are usually celebrated quietly by going out for sushi.

Nonetheless, Dano recently expressed annoyance at the image-driven nature of his industry, where looks play a major part in who lands the leading roles. “If a superficial choice is made, then it’s very annoying,” he said.

Whatever is next for the enigmatic actor, he shows no signs of settling for the commercial mainstream. His most recent project, Swiss Army Man, sees him play a suicidal man stuck on a desert island, when a flatulent corpse, played by Daniel Radcliffe, washes up on the beach, and he has spoken openly about his desire to turn his hand both to writing and directing.

Bill Pohlad, who directed Dano in Love and Mercy, spoke of the great ease that Dano brought to the filming process.



“He’s a very quiet guy and a very gentle guy and takes a measured approach to everything, but clearly there’s a lot going on behind the scenes because he brings so much to the role,” he said. “A lot of actors will make you think that going through all that pain and agony is what gets them to the characters, and while Brian was at times a very dark and troubled character, externally Paul was always calm and easygoing.”

The pair are in discussion about collaborating on another project. “He’s just one of those actors you are always excited to see do something different,” said Pohlad. “With his potential, who knows where he will go next.”



Paul Dano – a potted biography

Born Paul Franklin Dano on 19 June 1984 in New York City



Career Made his acting debut on Broadway age 12. Starred in several low-budget indie films but broke into the mainstream in Little Miss Sunshine in 2006. Has since starred in There Will Be Blood, Looper, 12 Years a Slave, Love and Mercy and made his BBC debut in War and Peace in 2016.



High point Has starred alongside some of the biggest names in cinema, including Robert De Niro, Brian Cox, Daniel Day-Lewis, Michael Fassbender, Brad Pitt and Benedict Cumberbatch

Low point His widely praised portrayal of a young Brian Wilson in Love and Mercy was snubbed by the 2016 Oscars



What he says “Acting, it’s kind of mysterious and ineffable”

What they say “So electric that the movie sags whenever he’s not around” – critic on his performance in There Will Be Blood.

