Actors sometimes talk about going to some dark emotional places when preparing for a difficult role.
Dallas native Scott Haze took that a step further prior to filming Child of God, a raw and visceral portrait of sexual and social defiance directed by actor James Franco and based on an early Cormac McCarthy novel.
Haze plays Lester, a man whose life descends into sociopathic madness following the loss of his home and family, leading him to mumble incoherently as he wanders through the woods of rural Tennessee. As he resorts to brutal violence against any intruders, a sheriff and others try to retaliate.
“I tried to honor Cormac McCarthy as best that I could,” Haze said during the recent Dallas International Film Festival. “This is a guy who is a legendary figure in American literature. People have been circling who’s going to play Lester Ballard. When I was blessed enough to get it, I wanted to go all-out. I knew what a special opportunity it was. This is an actor’s dream role.”
Haze lives in California, but the novel is set in the Appalachian wilderness of Sevier County, Tenn. So he relocated there for about three months of physical and mental preparation before the cameras rolled. He ventured off the grid, lost almost 50 pounds, grew a large beard, and even spent several weeks living in a cave while perfecting his character’s voice and body language.
“I isolated myself from everybody. I searched for the authentic accent for that time frame,” Haze said. “I kept in that mode until I got to the set. I didn’t want to lose focus when I showed up on set and saw all my friends. I just stayed in that mindset.”
Specifically, Franco has been close with Haze for almost a decade, since they met while acting together at Playhouse West in Los Angeles. The two have collaborated on various projects since, although nothing as prominent as Child of God. Another of Haze’s friends, Allen native Jim Parrack, plays a supporting role in the film.
Franco didn’t know of Haze’s preparation plans for the part of Lester. When he arrived on set in West Virginia, he was almost unrecognizable. Franco just smiled.
“I had complete freedom. James really trusted me,” Haze said. “I was completely ready for anything that happened. A lot of that was just me living in that world. They gave me my space. They respected the work I did enough to support that.”
Haze, 33, still has family in the Dallas area, where he first fell in love with acting by re-creating scenes from Carlito’s Way, Fight Club, and other movies he admired. His family moved from Dallas to Allen, where he spent some teenage years before attending a boarding school in Virginia. Then he moved to Hollywood.
After Child of God, Haze started work behind the camera on a couple of documentaries. He has supporting roles in Franco’s upcoming films Bukowski and As I Lay Dying, the latter based on a William Faulkner novel. Currently, he’s playing the lead in the off-Broadway play The Long Shrift, also directed by Franco.
None of them, however, require the same level of physical and psychological transformation for what has been hailed as a breakthrough performance by many in the industry.
“Being isolated and being alone affects you. It affected me emotionally,” Haze said. “When we finished, I just ordered a pizza and watched some basketball, and laid there for about a week.”
