Local Actor Lands A Big Role

Actor Michael Nathanson is no stranger to movie sets.

The East Hampton part-timer knows the first-day film routine well. He arrives on location, checks in, typically reports to the makeup trailer, introduces himself and settles down into his chair, ready for his close-up, or long shot, depending on the shooting schedule.

But until this past spring, he had never before experienced sharing a makeup trailer with an actor as well known as Jude Law. That’s because Mr. Nathanson had just landed his biggest role to date in the same project as Mr. Law, “Side Effects,” by director Steven Soderbergh. The crime thriller also stars Rooney Mara, Channing Tatum and Catherine Zeta-Jones and will be released on Friday, February 8, in theaters nationwide.

On Thursday, January 31, Mr. Nathanson walked the red carpet for the film premiere outside AMC Lincoln Square Theater in Manhattan like a natural—granting interviews to a slew of major news outlets and rubbing elbows with the biggest stars in the industry, including actors Matt Damon and Michael Douglas and director Julie Taymor.

But back in the “Side Effects” makeup trailer 10 months ago, he was a bundle of nerves.

“I’m sitting there thinking, ‘Do I say hello? Do I go over to him—Jude, Jude Law?’” Mr. Nathanson recalled during a telephone interview last week from his home in Manhattan. “I wanted to say the perfect thing. I didn’t want to screw it up.”

Mr. Nathanson didn’t have a chance to. After he was finished, Mr. Law walked the length of the trailer, clapped his hand on his co-star’s shoulder and said, “Michael, right? Hi, I’m Jude, nice to meet you.”

“Hi, nice to meet you, too,” the star-struck actor replied.

“I’m looking forward to working together,” Mr. Law said.

“Yeah, thank you so much,” Mr. Nathanson managed to say as the superstar exited the trailer.

And the next thing he knew, Mr. Nathanson found himself in a tiny room on set, sandwiched between Mr. Law and Mr. Soderbergh—the man behind the “Oceans 11” trilogy, “Traffic” and, most recently, “Magic Mike.” Mr. Nathanson was about to tackle his first big scene opposite Mr. Law.

“I was scared shitless,” Mr. Nathanson laughed. “You have to reconcile the fact that you’re freaking out inside and you’re so excited and overwhelmed by the moment because it’s something you’ve been working your whole life for, and then remind yourself, ‘You’re not a fan anymore. You’re accepted into their world and you need to think you’re good enough to play with these guys. So strap on your confidence boots ... and do it.’”

Growing up, Mr. Nathanson was obsessed with films, he said, but he never saw himself becoming an actor. He wanted to be involved behind the scenes. Until college.

Miserable and homesick for Manhattan and Springs—where he spent every childhood summer—he tried out for a drama production at Northwestern University in Chicago out of pure nostalgia for the plays he’d done in high school.

To both his and the competition’s surprise, he landed the lead.

“Everyone was like, ‘Who the hell is this guy?’” he recalled. “That experience totally changed my life. It threw all of these memories into focus and all these passions and all these ideas. This was what I was supposed to do and this was what I felt connected to more than anything else. Right after that play, I switched majors and joined the theater department. The rest is an up-and-down history. A crazy history.”

Originally a theater man, Mr. Nathanson has acted in and directed a number of productions at Guild Hall in East Hampton, and has toured with the national company of “The Lion King.” But that didn’t pay his bills, he said, and he often found himself working two or three jobs at a time in order to make ends meet.

Several years ago, he broke into the television world as the green-shirted Mucus in a national Advil Congestion Relief commercial, which, to his dismay, still follows him to this day. Since then, he has worked on more than a dozen TV shows and films, he said, including 2011’s “Time Freak,” which was nominated for the Best Live-Action Short at the Academy Awards the following year. That was the first gig to put the actor in the limelight and onto the red carpet.

“My love for movies as a kid resurfaced,” he said. “I realized I was working all these years in theater, grinding it out, to be better at conquering film. And maybe that’s what I was supposed to do. You just have to understand that it’s all going to be stages and phases, and if you can chart some sort of slope upward, then you’re on the right track.”

In March, Mr. Nathanson’s manager caught wind that Mr. Soderbergh was having a hard time wrapping up casting on his newest project, “Side Effects.” He was stuck on one role, the Assistant District Attorney, and with production just three weeks away, the director was in a bind.

“My manager called the casting director, Carmen Cuba, and said, ‘We have the guy you’re looking for,’” Mr. Nathanson said. “I put four different scenes on a tape and sent it out to LA. And a week later, I got a call from my manager saying, ‘I would never call you unless I thought there would probably be good news, but I don’t have news yet so don’t get too excited. Get a little excited.’ I thought, ‘Oh my god, this could actually be happening.’ Two hours later, they conference called me and we were all sort of screaming. They cast me off a tape.”

From day one, and for the next four weeks, Mr. Nathanson was awed by the blockbuster process on set in Manhattan, taking over a number of locations from criminal courts downtown to a “frightening” psychiatric hospital, he said. To get into his character, who is extremely authoritative, the actor shadowed an assistant district attorney for a day, Mr. Nathanson said, at the suggestion of the director.

“Working with Soderbergh was like, ‘Holy shit,’” he said. “To me, there’s nothing bigger than working for someone like that. He’s so efficient and clear and doesn’t want to waste his time. He doesn’t do a million takes. Half the time, he uses the first take of any scene he films because he loves that energy of doing, instinctively, what comes out of you. It reminded me of doing theater, where you don’t have a second chance to give a line. Whatever you gave is what came out of you in that moment. He’s very much of the moment.”

Four months later, and with a newfound confidence, Mr. Nathanson found himself standing in another small room, this time between a different actor-director sandwich. Leonardo DiCaprio was on his left and to his right stood Martin Scorsese on the set of his latest film, “The Wolf of Wall Street.”

His false sense of ease quickly dissipated, Mr. Nathanson said.

“The three of us are talking about a scene I’m doing and I was like, again, ‘Holy shit. Take a mental photograph of this moment and never forget it,’” Mr. Nathanson laughed. “There’s DiCaprio with his electronic cigarette and Scorsese talking really fast. They, like, jumped out of a magazine or some caricature of themselves. It’s hard to take it seriously. Like, that’s my job? And they are talking to you? They know who you are and they are still talking to you? Those two guys are icons. That was insane. I feel like I’ve crossed some kind of finish line.”

This is a new chapter in his life, Mr. Nathanson said, and he’s just getting started.

To watch the “Side Effects” trailer, visit youtube.com/watch?v=ZcjicOO_iZQ. For more information, visit sideeffectsmayvary.com.