Teller keeps it real in 2 new movies
For any actor, playing a living, breathing person carries its own special weight. That goes double when you’re chronicling the most traumatic moments in that person’s life.
“If you take pride in what you do, you always have a bar you’re trying to hit,” Miles Teller said. “But playing a real person, there’s an extra obligation.”
Teller has been feeling that obligation a lot lately.
In the action drama “Only the Brave,” which opened in theaters last week, Teller stars as Brendan McDonough, a heroin addict who received a shot at redemption when he joined an elite Arizona wild-land firefighting crew called the Granite Mountain Hotshots, who got caught in one of the deadliest firefighting disasters in American history.
In “Thank You for Your Service,” opening this Friday, he plays Iraq War veteran Sgt. Adam Schumann, exploring how he and a handful of fellow soldiers struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder and the difficult readjustment to civilian life after returning home from combat.
Teller, 30, has played fictional heroes before, in movies ranging from the acclaimed “Whiplash” to the panned “Fantastic Four.” But stepping into the shoes of McDonough and Schumann has given him a deeper kind of fulfillment.
“It seeps into your skin a bit more,” Teller said.
Teller initially hesitated when he approached “Thank You for Your Service,” adapted from journalist David Finkel’s 2013 book. At first, he resisted the idea of playing a soldier with PTSD.
It just didn’t feel like his place somehow. “A lot of my really good buddies served in the military, and I think that’s a sacred fraternity,” he said. “The core of what we do as actors is pretend — we’re faking it. I was like, ‘That doesn’t feel right to me. I don’t want to act that.’ ”
In the end, though, Teller decided that the benefits of raising awareness of the struggles Schumann and other vets have faced far outweighed his own discomfort.
Teller has seen up close how cathartic it has been for Schumann and McDonough to tell their respective stories and how much it has helped others as well. With “Only the Brave,” he has spent time with the family members of the fallen Granite Mountain firefighters. With “Thank You for Your Service,” he has watched veterans hugging one another and crying after screenings.
“These two projects have felt so much bigger than all of us in terms of how it affects these people,” Teller said. “These movies will affect these people’s lives forever.
“If a movie can actually work as therapy, then dude, it’s so much more than a movie.”