The Sensually Subversive Talents Of Dan Stevens

Feature By: Matt St Clair

One of the year’s best cinematic joys thus far? The underrated Dan Stevens getting his proper due. With three films released this year: Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, Abigail, and Cuckoo which is now hitting UK cinemas, Stevens has earned consistent scene-stealing praise while exercising his amazing idiosyncrasies as a performer.

From the beginning, Dan Stevens has fully embraced the “character actor in a leading man’s body” title compared to some of his peers who’ve flirted with being a mainstream Hollywood leading man before going the same route like Charlie Hunnam or Nicholas Hoult. Even after leaving Downton Abbey, the show that got him his big break, with his dashing looks and wily off-screen charm, he could’ve easily parlayed his fame to become the Hugh Grant of his generation. Instead, he’s gravitated toward more eccentric character roles, ranging from villains to oddballs. Interestingly, he’s still managed to tackle roles that play into his leading-man appearance. 

Take, for example, his performance as the titular villain in the 2014 cult thriller The Guest directed by Adam Wingard. In the opening scene where his character, David Collins, first arrives at the Peterson household, he immediately wins over the mother, Laura (Sheila Kelley), as he tells her he is the best friend of their deceased Army soldier son. Despite appearing on their doorstep out of nowhere, he still swiftly earns the family’s trust, including the only living son, Luke (Brendan Meyer), whom he protects from school bullies. 

During the scene where Laura and David visit the principal’s office after Luke gets into a fight with one of his tormentors, David exercises his ability to prove he can be a master manipulator in addition to the skilled marksman we see in the film’s third act. As he demonstrates a protective big-brother facade toward Luke, David imposes the principal threatening to expel Luke even without raising his voice.

Meanwhile, David captivates the women with epicurean mystique, including the film’s central heroine, Anna, played by reigning scream queen Maika Monroe, in arguably the movie’s most famous scene. It is the scene where Anna waits to get into the bathroom before David comes out wearing a towel after a steamy shower. David keeps still momentarily, allowing Anna to observe his well-chiselled appearance before walking away. While David seems to pretend to lose his words, Anna is awe-struck. According to Monroe in an MTV News interview, Stevens’ physique was so pivotal to the scene that it was filmed towards the end of principal photography to allow Stevens to bulk up enough to give the moment its needed effect. 

While we’re still discussing Dan Stevens having sexy scene entrances, there’s also his character intro from the Oscar-nominated comedy Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga. As Russian contestant Alexander Lemtov, Stevens immediately ruptures the screen with his performance of the tune “Lion of Love” where he lustfully struts across the stage while surrounded by muscular backup dancers. Given how Sigrit (Rachel McAdams) is in such awe of Alexander’s performance, Stevens and the screenplay have the viewer expecting a standard rom-com triangle before turning on a dime.

Alexander carries such a flamboyant aura on and off stage with Stevens imbuing almost each line reading with sultriness that Lars (Will Ferrell) inevitably sees him threatening his potential relationship with Sigrit. That is until it’s subtly revealed that Alexander is queer. It’s clearer that he marvels at statues modelled after him and gets sultry with his muscular backup dancers on stage, because, at Eurovision, he’s given a space to be his more colourful, authentic self as opposed to in his more conservative home country. For all of Stevens’ colourfulness that is well in-sync with the film’s offbeat humour, the way he quietly says “Mother Russia does not agree” when Alexander is told he can live happily both underscores Alexander’s struggle to live as openly in a way he’d want to and helps give what is mostly an escapist comedy an added layer of profundity.

Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams do capably play friends-turned-lovers looking to make their big hope come true, exercising their proven comic talents. But thanks to Stevens’ supporting performance which blends exuberant humor and hidden dramatic depths while oozing sensual movie-star charm, by the end of Eurovision, you’re left wanting to follow Alexander’s escapades after the big show. 

Stevens’ appearance is similarly well-utilized in Maria Schrader’s I’m Your Man. In the award-winning sci-fi romance, Stevens plays Tom, an android designed to be a romantic ideal. Similar to The Guest and Eurovision, Stevens gets an alluring scene entrance only instead of using his physical body, his character initially seduces the protagonist with words. During the opening scene with Alma (Maren Eggert), a scientist taking part in a dating experiment with Tom to obtain research funds, which is  structured like a blind date before being revealed as part of the experiment, Tom tries wooing Alma with knowledge before they slide onto the dance floor. 

Once the experiment goes further, Tom aims to fulfil Alma’s romantic and personal needs in a film that ponders the ongoing debate of AI by not only examining whether they might surpass humanity in activity and knowledge but in love as well. Given how Tom easily takes in small life pleasures, like going for a coffee stroll, compared to Alma who’s more devoted to her work than human interaction, one indeed wonders whether we’re heading in such a direction.

As for Stevens, he seamlessly finds a delicate balance between playing up that Tom’s an android thanks to his robotic vocal patterns and physicality and pulling off enough smooth charm so that his performance doesn’t feel fully robotic. Between all that and how he shows his fluency in German, you have more proof of how the man can do it all.

Whether it’s action-horror like The Guest, broad comedy like Eurovision or straightforward horror like Cuckoo, Dan Stevens shows he’s got the versatility and, indeed, the otherworldly looks and sex appeal of a leading man. Yet, his ability to demonstrate movie star magnetism even if he isn’t the film’s main star makes him a wonderfully peculiar performer. One who easily knows how to make a scene entrance.