During this year’s awards season, my algorithm ended up getting skewed to the point where I was seeing a lot of news and gossip about Sebastian Stan. It was nice, and I learned a lot about him as he won a Golden Globe (for A Different Man) and picked up his first Oscar nomination (for The Apprentice). I knew he was a naturalized American citizen who was born in Romania. He moved to America as a tween, basically, and he tried hard to fit in, learn English and lose his Romanian accent. I saw so many Romanians talking about how Sebastian is regarded as a god in Romania now, and they were so proud of him for getting that Oscar nomination and winning his Globe. I bring up his Romanian background because he’s started talking about it more often in interviews, and a huge chunk of his Vanity Fair cover story is about growing up in Romania under communist rule and how much he loves America. Some highlights:

He went to acting camp as a kid: “I just remember how fun it was to try to change everything. You’re dressing up, you’re putting on fake beards, you’re walking differently, you’re changing. You take big swings. You take bigger swings than you do when you’re a young actor coming to LA to go on pilot season auditions and they try to cast you as yourself—and you’re only allowed to play yourself.”

He believes Trump has seen ‘The Apprentice’: “I would put money down he’s seen it 100 f–king times, of course, because he’s a narcissist. And I bet you there’s certain things he likes about it.” Such as? “How he looked,” Stan replies with a smile.

His relationship with Annabelle Wallis: “I feel like it’s really difficult nowadays to be able to have any privacy whatsoever. It’s the one part of my life that I try to keep somewhat for myself, even though it sort of ends up being out there.”

His parents: “They were both very strong individuals with very strong personalities. Neither wanted to be justified by the other. I think they both had a rebellious spirit.” His father later disappeared completely, going into exile in the States. Constantin Stan was a cargo-ship worker who helped fellow countrymen evade government persecution that pervaded Romania in the decades after World War II. “He was a bit of a hero in my town. My parents were part of the youth that were standing up to Communism. My father was helping people escape the country illegally, to the point where he was a wanted man. And he himself had to flee.”

His mother fled Romania when he was 8 years old: Stan was about eight years old when his mother fled Romania to set up a new life for them abroad. Throughout his childhood, government mismanagement and corruption had led to food scarcity, fuel shortages, and electricity blackouts. The eventual revolution culminated in the downfall and execution of dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu in 1989. “I watched him get shot on television,” Stan says. “I remember that.” The aftermath wasn’t necessarily better. “It was chaos,” Stan says, noting “how many orphaned kids were in Bucharest after the revolution because everybody didn’t have money. Nobody knew how to live. They’d been so suppressed.” He spent a year with his grandparents before joining his mother in Austria. “She came and got me when she finally had a job and established herself enough there in Vienna,” he says.

Life in Austria: “She was working. She was playing piano at night when she could, and then she was teaching piano all day long. So at 9 or 10 years old, I was taking the trolley to school myself. I was taking the subway back myself. Then I was coming home and I was alone, and I would have to make myself food and I’d do my homework and I’d wait for her to come home. That was a lot of alone time for a kid in a foreign country.”

He learned independence: “I remember waiting for her to get home and worrying: What if she doesn’t come home? I can see how that’s worked against me in certain ways and how it’s totally benefited me in other ways. You have a lot of time with your imagination when you’re a kid like that alone. So I feel I’m very good at using my imagination to believe certain things, which helps me in a way. But then there are times where I’m feeling a degree of uncertainty and lack of control over my life that can be paralyzing.”

He was 12/13 when his mother met & married Anthony Fruhauf: When they got married, Stan’s mother made plans to move with her son once again, this time to the United States. “He was really kind. My stepdad was a real influence in a good way. In those early years in America, speaking English with him at home I think probably led to how I lost my accent.” He was all right seeing it go. He wanted to belong. All this surfaced when Stan was onstage accepting his Golden Globe. “This is for my mom who left Romania in search of a better life, and for my stepfather, Tony, who took on a single mom and a grown-up kid,” he said, hoisting his award as his voice broke. Pointing heavenward, he added: “Thank you for being a real man.”

His father Tino passed in 2021: Stan sometimes thinks his father’s story might make a good movie. In Romania, Tino was legendary for sneaking contraband Western goods like blue jeans and bananas into the country while smuggling dissidents out aboard the same vessels. “He worked hard and he loved America and he believed in being free. I have always made the argument that immigrants to some extent are more patriotic than even the people that are born here because they don’t take things for granted. At least that’s what I saw in my father.”

[From Vanity Fair]

As the child of an immigrant who became a naturalized American citizen, this is very true: “I have always made the argument that immigrants to some extent are more patriotic than even the people that are born here because they don’t take things for granted.” Most immigrants in America see the flaws, for sure, but they believe in the American ideals much more than home-grown Americans… the same home-grown Americans who got bored with a booming economy and wanted to burn everything down for sh-ts and giggles. Anyway, I find Stan’s background fascinating and brutal – a kid behind the Iron Curtain, whose parents were just trying to fight back and find a way out. All of those incredibly lonely years in Austria… and then coming to America with a stepfather who looked after him and raised him? What an incredible story.

Photos courtesy of Cover Images, cover courtesy of Vanity Fair.