Rewrite
Fresh from his hilarious and piercing breakthrough turn in Sean Baker’s Palme d’Or-winning paragon Anora, the 22-year-old covers Wonderland Winter 2024, documenting his cross-continent odyssey to securing the role, reflecting on the lessons he learned working with the film’s auteur director, and looking ahead at a future career of multifarious opportunity.
Mark Eydelshteyn has been documenting the current crescendo in his life through film photography. At times, it has proven difficult for the doe-eyed 22-year-old to remain fixated in the present—what with the incredulous nature of the events that have been unfolding. But through this precious endeavour, this foundation of memory, Mark remains the boyish romantic that once saw Hollywood as a stained-glass obscurity.
“Everything is like one thing, one flash. It’s a little bit scary,” he laughs at the admittance, fumbling with a perpetually messy head of hair. From a dimly-lit dressing room, the zany but thoughtful young thespian is animatedly characterising his topsy-turvy year through his light soft spoken inflections. As we speak, he’s back in his native Russia, having spent much of the last zenith of his tender existence jetting across North America and Europe for the filming and ensuing press tour of Sean Baker’s tonal-mish-mash masterpiece, Anora. “To understand that you are tired, you have to be right now and right here,” he says, referencing Russian theatre practitioner Konstantin Stanislavski’s methodology on acting. “But I can’t. I’m not in my body. Every interview, every Q&A, every screening, we are sharing energy with the audience and they are sharing energy with us.”
Delving into public reactions to Anora, Mark Eydelshteyn admits, has become a guilty pleasure. “It’s interesting to me how different people understand the sense, purpose and meaning of this movie,” he ponders. “It is like the Black Square by [Kazimir] Malevich; people look at it and they create their own sense of why Malevich did it—what it means, and for whom he did it. Everybody is burning their own ideas; Anora is the same.” The Neon-distributed feature from visionary auteur Sean Baker is Mark’s first foray into Western cinema. And what a way to enter; Anora is an irrefutably fearless spectacle that received a 10 minute standing ovation at Cannes Film Festival, before picking up the Palme d’Or award, the pinnacle achievement at the annual celebration of cinematic excellence.
Mikey Madison—in a breakout performance for the future superstar—plays the titular role as a stripper who enters a money-come-love marital escapade with the stupendously wealthy Ivan (played by Mark), the son of a Russian Oligarch. What follows is a wildly hilarious, rip-roaring and heart-quaking chronicle of materialism and matrimony, of perception and reality. It’s rare for a film to capture as delicate a topic as sex work with such vibrancy and understanding—except in Sean’s own catalogue with the likes of Red Rocket and Tangerine. Anora is pervasive yet playful, maximalist and riotous with tender splashes of stoicism and humanity. Sean’s loose, lampooning script is brought to life by an exhilarating cast who live their roles through the joy and strife of their characters. “You can play [the role well], but to be in Sean Baker’s movie means something more than just doing your work because he gives everything to the movie,” Mark Eydelshteyn says. “You feel that you have to, by some metaphysical knife, cut out a part of your soul to give to the movie too, it’s your sacrifice to be here. It was the biggest challenge but also the biggest reward.”
The Russian is the latest in a long line of Sean Baker disciples. Working with the director has inspired him in wanting to transition behind the camera himself; a conviction that began chiselling itself during Anora’s production. “[Sean] taught me a lot,” he says. “It wasn’t like lessons, but I just looked at him and tried to grab some moments, some of his tools.” Mark’s blithe admiration is reflected back by the 53-year-old New Jersey native too; it is he, after all, that plucked the young actor from anonymity and into the consciousness of the global zeitgeist.
Born in Nizhny Novgorod, a city in Western Russia, Mark Eydelshteyn was raised by a “very intelligent” family; his father a journalist and his mother a dialect coach. “I grew up with literature and poetry,” he reminisces. “We talked a lot about words, their meanings and some unique things about how you can speak.” When Mark was in trouble as a child, his mother would send him to his room to think about his behaviour, with a poem or a section of a prose to learn by heart. It was only when he had memorised it that they would discuss the situation, and analyse how the elegy reflected the incident. “Now I can say that it was really useful,” he quips nostalgically. “And when I have kids, I will do the same thing.”
After an ephemeral first job as a children’s entertainer, dressing up “in outfits from fairy tales, [like] the guy in Times Square,” Mark Eydelshteyn had a modelling stint. “I understood that it’s not really…” he begins, searching for the right phrasing. “When you are a model, you have no responsibility because it’s just you. Your responsibility is [to] be handsome, and that’s it. But I’m looking for responsibility because when you have it, you feel a taste of life. You have some risk, and that’s important for me.” From his thought process, acting became his central ambition, and Mark followed his new-found dream to Moscow Art Theatre School. There, Mark would pick up theatre roles, but grew frustrated by being type-cast as the virtuous male protagonist, “like Romeo or Holden Caulfield from The Catcher In the Rye.” It became a thread in his career following graduation from the school, as Mark established himself as a prodigy in Russian TV and cinema, with early roles in Julia Trofimova’s Strada Sasha, which premiered at Berlinale 2022, and a six episode stint in one of Russia’s most watched TV series, The Monastery. “I played some romantic characters,” he says. “And they were not simple—they were complicated—but it was comfortable for me to play. I dreamed about another type of work. The most important thing [about] acting is that you have to be different from role to role, from character to character, to find something new in yourself and put it in your new character. With Anora, I got this opportunity.”
To read the full interview, pre-order the issue now.
Photography by Chris Noltekuhlmann
Styling by Amanda Lim & Luca Kingston
Words by Ben Tibbits
Grooming by Mr Sarah at The Wall Group
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Fresh from his hilarious and piercing breakthrough turn in Sean Baker’s Palme d’Or-winning paragon Anora, the 22-year-old covers Wonderland Winter 2024, documenting his cross-continent odyssey to securing the role, reflecting on the lessons he learned working with the film’s auteur director, and looking ahead at a future career of multifarious opportunity.
Mark Eydelshteyn has been documenting the current crescendo in his life through film photography. At times, it has proven difficult for the doe-eyed 22-year-old to remain fixated in the present—what with the incredulous nature of the events that have been unfolding. But through this precious endeavour, this foundation of memory, Mark remains the boyish romantic that once saw Hollywood as a stained-glass obscurity.
“Everything is like one thing, one flash. It’s a little bit scary,” he laughs at the admittance, fumbling with a perpetually messy head of hair. From a dimly-lit dressing room, the zany but thoughtful young thespian is animatedly characterising his topsy-turvy year through his light soft spoken inflections. As we speak, he’s back in his native Russia, having spent much of the last zenith of his tender existence jetting across North America and Europe for the filming and ensuing press tour of Sean Baker’s tonal-mish-mash masterpiece, Anora. “To understand that you are tired, you have to be right now and right here,” he says, referencing Russian theatre practitioner Konstantin Stanislavski’s methodology on acting. “But I can’t. I’m not in my body. Every interview, every Q&A, every screening, we are sharing energy with the audience and they are sharing energy with us.”
Delving into public reactions to Anora, Mark Eydelshteyn admits, has become a guilty pleasure. “It’s interesting to me how different people understand the sense, purpose and meaning of this movie,” he ponders. “It is like the Black Square by [Kazimir] Malevich; people look at it and they create their own sense of why Malevich did it—what it means, and for whom he did it. Everybody is burning their own ideas; Anora is the same.” The Neon-distributed feature from visionary auteur Sean Baker is Mark’s first foray into Western cinema. And what a way to enter; Anora is an irrefutably fearless spectacle that received a 10 minute standing ovation at Cannes Film Festival, before picking up the Palme d’Or award, the pinnacle achievement at the annual celebration of cinematic excellence.
Mikey Madison—in a breakout performance for the future superstar—plays the titular role as a stripper who enters a money-come-love marital escapade with the stupendously wealthy Ivan (played by Mark), the son of a Russian Oligarch. What follows is a wildly hilarious, rip-roaring and heart-quaking chronicle of materialism and matrimony, of perception and reality. It’s rare for a film to capture as delicate a topic as sex work with such vibrancy and understanding—except in Sean’s own catalogue with the likes of Red Rocket and Tangerine. Anora is pervasive yet playful, maximalist and riotous with tender splashes of stoicism and humanity. Sean’s loose, lampooning script is brought to life by an exhilarating cast who live their roles through the joy and strife of their characters. “You can play [the role well], but to be in Sean Baker’s movie means something more than just doing your work because he gives everything to the movie,” Mark Eydelshteyn says. “You feel that you have to, by some metaphysical knife, cut out a part of your soul to give to the movie too, it’s your sacrifice to be here. It was the biggest challenge but also the biggest reward.”
The Russian is the latest in a long line of Sean Baker disciples. Working with the director has inspired him in wanting to transition behind the camera himself; a conviction that began chiselling itself during Anora’s production. “[Sean] taught me a lot,” he says. “It wasn’t like lessons, but I just looked at him and tried to grab some moments, some of his tools.” Mark’s blithe admiration is reflected back by the 53-year-old New Jersey native too; it is he, after all, that plucked the young actor from anonymity and into the consciousness of the global zeitgeist.
Born in Nizhny Novgorod, a city in Western Russia, Mark Eydelshteyn was raised by a “very intelligent” family; his father a journalist and his mother a dialect coach. “I grew up with literature and poetry,” he reminisces. “We talked a lot about words, their meanings and some unique things about how you can speak.” When Mark was in trouble as a child, his mother would send him to his room to think about his behaviour, with a poem or a section of a prose to learn by heart. It was only when he had memorised it that they would discuss the situation, and analyse how the elegy reflected the incident. “Now I can say that it was really useful,” he quips nostalgically. “And when I have kids, I will do the same thing.”
After an ephemeral first job as a children’s entertainer, dressing up “in outfits from fairy tales, [like] the guy in Times Square,” Mark Eydelshteyn had a modelling stint. “I understood that it’s not really…” he begins, searching for the right phrasing. “When you are a model, you have no responsibility because it’s just you. Your responsibility is [to] be handsome, and that’s it. But I’m looking for responsibility because when you have it, you feel a taste of life. You have some risk, and that’s important for me.” From his thought process, acting became his central ambition, and Mark followed his new-found dream to Moscow Art Theatre School. There, Mark would pick up theatre roles, but grew frustrated by being type-cast as the virtuous male protagonist, “like Romeo or Holden Caulfield from The Catcher In the Rye.” It became a thread in his career following graduation from the school, as Mark established himself as a prodigy in Russian TV and cinema, with early roles in Julia Trofimova’s Strada Sasha, which premiered at Berlinale 2022, and a six episode stint in one of Russia’s most watched TV series, The Monastery. “I played some romantic characters,” he says. “And they were not simple—they were complicated—but it was comfortable for me to play. I dreamed about another type of work. The most important thing [about] acting is that you have to be different from role to role, from character to character, to find something new in yourself and put it in your new character. With Anora, I got this opportunity.”
To read the full interview, pre-order the issue now.
Photography by Chris Noltekuhlmann
Styling by Amanda Lim & Luca Kingston
Words by Ben Tibbits
Grooming by Mr Sarah at The Wall Group
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