Paul Dano turned 21 while filming the 2006 dramedy “Little Miss Sunshine” — but didn’t tell the rest of the cast, the actor revealed in an interview with People published Saturday. “I remember being like, ‘Oh, I don’t … how should I [tell people]?,” he explained.
“I hid turning 21 while we filmed,” he said. “Because I remember you were supposed to celebrate that birthday, right? 21. … I don’t want people to know how old I am.’”
The now 41-year-old actor played a 15-year-old in the film.
In an interview on “The Tonight Show” in 2018, Dano recalled an incident that happened while the movie was being filmed. Directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris suggested the cast go bowling together as a kind of bonding activity, but things went off the rails fairly quickly.
The group took the film’s iconic old VW van, but, “The second we pulled out of the lot to go on our excursion, Alan Arkin, playing the grandpa, said, ‘I have to pee,’” Dano said.
Arkin and Greg Kinnear exchanged words. “Arkin was like at the next red light, I’m getting out to pee. And Greg Kinnear ran the next red light, just because he did not want to give in to grandpa, who clearly needed to pee just to piss him off,” Dano said.
“Greg, I’m sure, did it safely, as safe as you can run a red light,” Dano also said.
The movie also starred Abigail Breslin, who won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress at age 10 for her portrayal of Olive Hoover. In a 2024 interview with fellow former child star Christy Carlson Romano, Breslin revealed that she still has issues with how Hollywood treats child actors.
“That’s the thing I feel about child acting and everything is that, you’re given all of the responsibility but none of the respect,” Breslin said, before Romano laughed and agreed.
