Dane Dehaan

“It’s such a manly movie, and then there’s this kid who’s essentially the house dog,” says Dane DeHaan of his role as a mechanical genius with rickets in the upcoming Prohibition-era bootlegging–crime drama The Wettest County in the World. Scored and adapted from a Matt Bondurant novel by Nick Cave, the film co-stars Tom Hardy, Shia LaBeouf (with whom DeHaan actually drove from Los Angeles to the set in Georgia at the beginning of filming), Gary Oldman, Guy Pearce, Jessica Chastain, and Mia Wasikowska—impressive company for a young actor from Allentown, Pennsylvania, who only made the leap to Los Angeles from New York last October. DeHaan’s résumé already includes a number of nuanced performances in his relatively short career, most notably OffBroadway in Sixty Miles to Silver Lake, End Days, and The Aliens, for which he received an Obie. His portrayal of a Brooklyn hipster with ADD who acts out through sex on the third season of the HBO series In Treatment elicited critical praise. This summer his ascension as a Young Hollywooder includes his role as a romantically inclined soldier in JohnSayles’s Philippine–American War epic Amigo, in addition to his turn on the current season of True Blood as an inbred junkyard werepanther. “[True Blood creator] Alan Ball called me up and told me he wanted me on the show,” says the 25-year-old actor, clearly thankful to have circumvented the grueling audition cycle. It doesn’t stop there: DeHaan recently jetted to South Africa to star as a teenage superhero in Josh Trank’s Chronicle. While comparisons to a young Leonardo DiCaprio are inevitable, DeHaan is making his own path in the industry.“Coming out of school I was fully prepared for a lifetime career in regional theater,” he says. “But as it’ssnowballing, I become hungrier and hungrier.”

Photo: Dane DeHaan in Los Angeles, March 2011. Jacket and shirt: Diesel Black Gold. Styling: Moses Moreno/Margaret Maldonado Agency. Hair: Michael Long/Frank Reps. Makeup: Dawn Broussard/ Frank Reps. Prop styling: Jimmy Gamboa.