Mark Eidelstein’s career should takes off in Hollywood after the warm reception of his movie, Anora.
In Sean Baker’s raucous comedy the young Russian actor plays Ivan, the hilariously energetic, fast-living son of an oligarch happily spending his parents’ millions while decamped in their New York mansion. In the process, he falls in love with Mikey Madison’s Manhattan sex worker Ani.
It’s a wild ride from start to finish, awash in drugs, sex, violence, gangsters, Vegas weddings and a lounge full of expensive ornaments getting smashed to pieces.
Eidelstein was sent a script like nothing he’d ever seen before, littered in what he describes as “flash, flash, flash, bam, bam, action, action, action.” It was full of sex scenes.
For his self-tape, Eidelstein wanted to mimic Ivan by dressing up in the sort of expensive designer clothes that are stuffed in his wardrobe. Sadly he didn’t own any.
I Had to Be Nude in My Audition Tape
“So I immediately realized I had to be nude,” he says. He also read the script on camera between puffing on a vape (something he says “gave him the time to remember his lines”). It proved an instant hit.
“Sean said, ‘Mark, it’s amazing – and the vape! – it’s so Ivan! It’s his character, you’d really captured it! Wow!,” he says.
Anora – which Neon acquired for the U.S. – has now proved to be one of the standout hits of Cannes, a rare film in competition to have been met with universal acclaim.
Madison’s star-making lead turn as Ani has already propelled the actress, who had small roles in “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” and 2022’s “Scream,” into exciting new territories.
Eidelstein’s naive, childlike energy as an insanely rich kid gone bad provides much of the laugh-out-loud moments.
It’s a grand introduction to English-language cinema, and not just for audiences – he admits he hadn’t heard of Baker before.
“I didn’t know anything and it was scary, so I just chose the position of a kid.”
In finding Ivan, he delved into thoughts he’d had in his younger years. Born in the city of Nizhniy Novgorod, Eidelstein never had “lots of money growing up” and would look on enviously at those with extreme wealth.
“I wanted to be Ivan at that moment – some guy who could buy everything and could shut out his troubles,” he says. “It was my dream to have expensive clothes and just be like an Ivan.” These dreams disappeared when he moved to Moscow and started studying and became an actor, but he dragged them back up again while developing his character with Baker.
“So now it’s me! And now you see me. But it’s a bad energy. And now I’m realizing it’s a big challenge and maybe people like Ivan have more problems than others.”
Russian Timothée Chalamet
Eidelstein was described as being like a Russian Timothée Chalamet. He certainly looks the part, sporting long untamed curly hair. But he also has a similar awkward, energetic charm as the star.
It’s a comparison that has followed the actor back home since his very first film. “It’s a mind-blowing situation, because in Russian people are saying I’m a Russian Timothée Chalamet and now you’re saying it in English … it’s crazy, it’s like a joke that has gone out of control,” he says. But it’s not something he’s overly opposed to.
“It did become a little annoying, but then I watched ‘Dune,’ and now I think he’s probably one of the best actors of my generation. Him and Barry Keoghan.”
Eidelstein is hoping to find more projects outside of Russia and is working to lose his accent.
In America he said people didn’t think he looked Russian, so he wants to follow the “dream” of playing different characters in different languages.
“It’s the purpose of work is try as many different things as I can and talk about different problems through film,” he says, noting that through “Anora” he’s able to be in a project that discusses the issues faced by sex workers. “I’m very happy and proud that I can talk about it with Sean, because in Russia, I can’t. I want to do more work in Europe and America, because it’s a chance to discuss something that I can’t talk about in Russia.”
He admits that his parents are a little “conservative” and might well be shocked by what they see in his English-language breakthrough.
All Eidelstein told them when he shot the film was that he would be appearing in an “American movie” with one of the stars from “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” and that it would be a “romantic story.” While those facts may be true, they don’t really capture the sheer amount of sex, drugs and violence on screen.
“I don’t know what they will say,” admits Eidelstein. “Maybe, after five or 10 years, I will show this movie to my parents.”
