The subversive talents of Dan Stevens | Little White Lies

Acting Up

The sub­ver­sive tal­ents of Dan Stevens

20 Aug 2024

Words by Carly Mattox

Four men standing in front of a vibrant pink and orange background.
Four men standing in front of a vibrant pink and orange background.
From Down­ton Abbey to an Alpine hor­ror via plen­ty of unnerv­ing roles, Dan Stevens is forg­ing his own fas­ci­nat­ing path through filmmaking.

If he want­ed to, Dan Stevens could be a huge Hol­ly­wood movie star; a prop­er lead­ing man for the ages. He’s con­ven­tion­al­ly hand­some, after all, with light eyes and sandy brown hair – phys­i­cal con­ven­tions shared by ris­ing star du jour Glen Pow­ell. At the same time, he’s chameleon­ic in his capac­i­ty to por­tray dif­fer­ent arche­types; the rugged adven­tur­er, the clean-cut Amer­i­can war hero, the love inter­est, the mys­te­ri­ous bene­fac­tor, the Dis­ney prince. He embraces dif­fer­ent accents as if he’s try­ing on cos­tumes at a wardrobe fit­ting, slip­ping in and out of each char­ac­ter with ease; in Cuck­oo, he has adopt­ed a light Ger­man lilt, as con­vinc­ing a part of his ensem­ble as his wide-rimmed glass­es or care­ful­ly carved wood­en bird call flute.

Off-screen, Stevens is charm­ing and charis­mat­ic; a clip of his good-natured amuse­ment in response to a newscaster’s unwit­ting innu­en­do has gone viral on social media. For Let­ter­boxd, he named With­nail and I and Being John Malkovich as his favorite films along­side The Mup­pet Christ­mas Car­ol. In anoth­er life, it would be Dan Stevens Sum­mer, with Tik­tok fan­cams ded­i­cat­ed to can­did inter­view clips and thirst traps, and his name attached to head­line a new tent­pole block­buster. How­ev­er, his resume reflects a dif­fer­ent path than many of his con­tem­po­raries, with a focus on inde­pen­dent work and col­lab­o­ra­tion with auteur film­mak­ers exper­i­ment­ing with genre. With his recent turns as the mys­te­ri­ous Dr. Koenig in Tilman Singer’s Cuck­oo, as well as the crim­i­nal cop Frank in Abi­gail, Stevens show­cas­es per­haps the most impor­tant weapon of his arse­nal: a sus­tained ded­i­ca­tion to genre cin­e­ma which has accept­ed his ver­sa­til­i­ty in kind.

It’s impor­tant to note that the break­out role which served to estab­lish Stevens to both British and Amer­i­can audi­ences was as the uptight heir-appar­ent Matthew Craw­ley in Down­ton Abbey. We were first intro­duced to Matthew as a reluc­tant upper­class­man, unashamed of his own sta­tus of hum­ble solic­i­tor and imbu­ing his char­ac­ter with a cer­tain affa­bil­i­ty. Much of his screen­time is spent attempt­ing to woo the de fac­to pro­tag­o­nist of the show, Mary Craw­ley – that is, when they’re not argu­ing about who is more fit to inher­it the epony­mous estate. Such a fraught will-they-won’t‑they dynam­ic served to pro­pel their nar­ra­tive for­ward for the first few sea­sons of the show, and in this role as a love inter­est, Stevens seemed com­fort­able play­ing sec­ond fiddle.

With wide, watery blue eyes and blonde hair fine­ly cropped and coiffed, Stevens con­veyed a naïveté about the real­i­ty of life as a gen­tle­man, one which even­tu­al­ly hard­ened into a world-weary roman­ti­cism. It was strate­gic, then, when Adam Wingard cast Stevens as the mys­te­ri­ous David” – the usage of quo­ta­tion marks a point­ed one – in the low-bud­get inde­pen­dent thriller The Guest (2014), now cel­e­brat­ing its tenth anniver­sary. Though his depar­ture from Down­ton Abbey had been abrupt and, at least nar­ra­tive­ly, quite trag­ic, Stevens’ shift away from Eng­lish her­itage shlock served as a kind of rebirth for his career.

Such a tran­si­tion was accom­pa­nied by a dra­mat­ic phys­i­cal change. Per­haps the charm of Matthew Craw­ley was in the character’s capac­i­ty for wit, or his hon­or and loy­al­ty toward his fam­i­ly, but not nec­es­sar­i­ly for any abun­dance of shirt­less scenes. For The Guest, how­ev­er, Stevens ini­tial­ly lost near­ly thir­ty pounds, before then pack­ing on enough mus­cle to be rea­son­ably con­vinc­ing as an Amer­i­can soldier.

At the begin­ning of the film, David arrives on the doorstep of the Peter­son house­hold, a fam­i­ly whose son was recent­ly killed in action. He claims to be their son’s best friend pay­ing his respects and a pho­to of the two on the family’s mantle­piece seems to prove his sto­ry. How­ev­er, the daugh­ter Anna Peter­son, played by Mai­ka Mon­roe, remains wary while the rest of the Peter­son fam­i­ly begins to accept this mys­te­ri­ous man into their home. Of course, it helps that David is also polite, endear­ing­ly genial with a good ol’ South­ern boy nature; it’s a nim­ble per­for­mance by Stevens, as he threads the nee­dle between charm­ing and sinister.

Man with long blond hair and beard, wearing a white shirt, holding a cigarette and looking intensely at the camera.

Wingard is on record as say­ing that Stevens’ phys­i­cal change serves a the­mat­ic pur­pose; David func­tions as the femme fatale to Mai­ka Monroe’s noir detec­tive, trad­ing shad­owy shades of black and white for the neon-lit house par­ties and Hal­loween mazes which offer the film its visu­al flair. The scene where David emerges from the bath­room shirt­less – in a cloud of steam with a tow­el wrapped around his waist – is per­haps the most sig­nif­i­cant of its kind. It’s cer­tain­ly a scene of eye can­dy first and fore­most, but as David manoeu­vres around Anna in the tight hall­way of the mod­est Peter­son house, Anna’s eyes stay trained on his slick six-pack, and there is a clas­sic ten­sion between phys­i­cal attrac­tion and trustworthiness.

The deci­sion to cast Dan Stevens in such a role is what facil­i­tates this ten­sion; even Amer­i­can audi­ences rec­og­nize the actor and asso­ciate his sig­na­ture baby blues with kind­ness and warmth; we are ini­tial­ly drawn in by his famil­iar­i­ty. It’s the same qual­i­ty of charm which David uses to first dis­arm the Peter­son fam­i­ly, and then to infil­trate their home. We know Dan Stevens; we like Dan Stevens. We are as sur­prised as any­one when he turns vio­lent, deft­ly nav­i­gat­ing action sequences with an ath­leti­cism we haven’t seen from him before. Stevens’ trans­for­ma­tion is more than sim­ply phys­i­cal; to accu­rate­ly embrace a true South­ern accent, he steers away from stereo­types and low­ers his reg­is­ter to a soft­er, deep­er drawl, which com­ple­ments his increas­ing­ly sin­is­ter nature. The Guest is effec­tive in the way it lays bare the shiny, attrac­tive façade of the Amer­i­can war machine, which belies some­thing more cru­el and vio­lent; as ambi­tious as such a project might be, it is Stevens’ per­for­mances which ele­vates the material.

Admit­ted­ly, Stevens’ appear­ance as the Prince in Disney’s live-action Beau­ty and the Beast is some­thing of an out­lier in his fil­mog­ra­phy. From his Down­ton Abbey depar­ture onward, Stevens’ career had been punc­tu­at­ed by the likes of Nacho Vigalondo’s Colos­sal, Alex Ross Perry’s Her Smell, Gareth Evans’ Apos­tle, and Maria Shrader’s I’m Your Man; assured, ambi­tious auteur films. His cast­ing per­haps served to cap­i­tal­ize on his pop­u­lar­i­ty at the time, fol­low­ing a well-received turn in Noah Hawley’s eclec­tic FX show Legion; how­ev­er, the role show­cased the rare dual­ism which Stevens has pos­sessed through­out his career, an abil­i­ty to play both the beau­ti­ful prince and the tor­tured beast. If noth­ing else, Stevens man­ages to push through the film’s night­mar­ish CGI and offer some­thing which resem­bles a ground­ed per­for­mance at the cen­ter of the film, where oth­er­wise stale per­for­mances per­vade famil­iar sto­ry beats.

This is the same dual­ism which Stevens wields as Dr. Koenig in Cuck­oo, who wel­comes new fam­i­lies to the idyl­lic Resort Alp­schat­ten in the Bavar­i­an alps. While he comes across as lik­able to par­ents and chil­dren, it is only the teenage daugh­ter Gretchen, played by Hunter Schafer, who seems sus­pi­cious of such effu­sive ami­a­bil­i­ty. As the film descends into increas­ing chaos, alter­nat­ing lay­ers of Dr. Koenig’s cour­tesy and cru­el­ty are slow­ly revealed; a mem­o­rable scene briefly show­cased in the trail­er shows Gretchen recov­er­ing from a car acci­dent, with Dr. Koenig vis­it­ing her in the hos­pi­tal under the pre­tense of con­cern. Despite Gretchen’s eye near­ly swollen shut, her head wrapped in a ban­dage, her arm in a sling, he low­ers his voice to near­ly a whis­per as he tells her, I wouldn’t want you to get hurt even more,” while inch­ing for­ward toward her hos­pi­tal bed.

Stevens has empha­sized in a recent inter­view with Van­i­ty Fair that, We can still shoot this incredibly…difficult scene, but everybody’s still friends at the end of the day and nobody needs to have months of ther­a­py after­wards.” If this year has proven any­thing about Dan Stevens, it is that he pos­sess­es the gen­eros­i­ty of a team play­er; often, his best work shines the bright­est in an ensem­ble of equal­ly ded­i­cat­ed performers.

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