TDB: Meet the New Han Solo: Alden Ehrenreich, Discovered by Steven Spielberg at a Bat Mitzvah

The Daily Beast: Back when Ehrenreich was just 14, he made a home movie for his friend’s bat mitzvah, which played during the ceremony. Steven Spielberg just so happened to be in the crowd, as his daughter Sasha was friends with the guest of honor.
“It’s a piece of shit,” the actor later told Rolling Stone. “It’s a video that this girl asked us to do. I mean, there wasn’t a script: We would go and just film whatever made us laugh. I’m this 14-year-old, skinny little kid with long hair. I break into her house, try on her clothes and make up a song. All of this is just us literally taking a camera and going like, ‘Okay, ha ha, do this.’ We showed it to our parents—‘We’re gonna play this at her bat mitzvah!’—and they were like, ‘You look like an idiot in this. I don’t think you should really do that.’ We didn’t care.”
Spielberg was impressed with Ehrenreich’s performance and gave him a meeting at his studio, Dreamworks. He later introduced the actor to his legendary filmmaker pal Francis Ford Coppola, who gave Ehrenreich his first big break, casting him as the lead opposite Vincent Gallo in his Argentina-set 2009 film noir, Tetro. While the film earned just $2.6 million at the global box office, Ehrenreich’s dazzling turn received rave reviews, with the late, great Roger Ebert writing, “In his first major role, Alden Ehrenreich, the newcomer playing Bennie, is confident and charismatic, and inspires such descriptions as ‘the new Leonardo DiCaprio.’”