Mark Eydelshteyn Had to Convince His Teachers to Let Him Star in Sean Baker’s Cannes Winner ‘Anora’

Talking to Russian actor Mark Eydelshteyn, it is easy to understand why Sean Baker cast him in Anora — set to screen at TIFF — as Ivan, an incredibly likable goofball who marries a Brighton Beach sex worker but also happens to be the son of a Russian oligarch.

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Eydelshteyn, with limbs that seem to move at twice the regular human speed, is earnest, quick with a compliment and adept at self-deprecation despite English being his second language. When asked how he got into acting, he says, “It’s the only one thing that I can do.” He adds, “When I [was] graded in school, I realized that I was not really good at other spheres. I’m zero in maths, in biology or geography.”

But Eydelshteyn, whose mother is a speech coach, did like literature and entered him in speaking competitions, where he performed excerpts from works like J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye . He proved adept at memorization and performance, and, he says, “I realized I can’t do anything, but I can learn Catcher in the Rye by heart. I will do this.”

He began booking films and television series, which is where he met Yura Borisov, the popular Russian actor. “Between takes, [Borisov] just asked me, ‘Do you know who is Sean Baker?’ ” remembers Eydelshteyn. “He said, ‘Sean Baker is looking for some teenager from Russia who can speak in English.’ I said, ‘No, no, it’s not me.’ ” Eydelshteyn, 22, could speak English with some fluency but was too nervous to consider the possibility of acting in an American film. While he tried to keep his composure in front of his co-star, inside he was freaking out: “A real American director? Asking for auditions? Self-tapes? I can’t believe it. I can’t do it.”

But it was too late. Borisov, who was set to play Anora ’s resident fixer-with-a-heart-of-gold, had already told Baker about Eydelshteyn and shown him photos. Instead of sending sides, Baker asked for a self-tape where Eydelshteyn just talked about himself.

So, in his small bedroom, complete with bad lighting and a tiny swarm of mosquitos, Eydelshteyn gave it a shot. “I said, ‘Hi, I’m Mark Eydelshteyn. What can I say about myself? I am an actor, well, not yet really, but I want to be a real actor. I have a little bit of experience in movies, and I worked Yura Borisov. Now, I am on that third step of my education. And what I really hate is [mosquitos] in my room. Thank you for attention. Bye.’ ” It wasn’t Salinger, but two days later Baker asked for a Zoom.

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“Directors I usually work with are really serious guys with eyes that look inside you. In Russia, it’s like this. But then I saw Sean Baker, and he is just the perfect guy. With the hairstyle that is not, honestly, nice, but it’s not bad, but with very deep and very kind eyes. What’s very important about Sean Baker is his kind eyes,” says the actor of meeting the award-winning indie auteur for the first time. In Baker, Eydelshteyn found someone with a similar sense of humor and energy. He got the part.

It was four months in between landing the part and shooting Anora . Eydelshteyn spent the time studying his script and trying to persuade his university teachers to let him skip out of some classes. “When I talked with my teachers, I said, ‘I really have to go away from our institute for three months. Can I?’ They asked, ‘Why do you have to go?’ ” Because he was told not to tell anyone about the movie, he told his professors it was a secret. Eventually, they acquiesced, telling him, “We hope that you will do something important and you will do something good.”

After meeting up with Anora lead Mikey Madison in the U.S., the duo rehearsed with Baker, further cementing their onscreen chemistry. In the film, Madison is required to do the heavy lifting with an energetic and emotional performance with plenty of dialogue. Eydelshteyn saw his role as supporting Madison in whatever way he could. “I have to help out every second,” he thought to himself.

Anora became the toast of this year’s Cannes Film Festival, winning the Palme d’Or and heading out on the fall festival circuit ahead of its awards release via Neon on Oct. 18. But before all of this, when it was first announced that his movie was headed to Cannes, Eydelshteyn got a note from his teachers. He remembers, “They said they are proud of me and they are proud of themselves for saying yes to letting me leave school.”

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