Sam Barrelhouse smiled when a reporter asked him how he managed to snag a prominent role in every major American film released this year.
“I have perfect hair,” he said ironically. “They all want me.”
It was true. Barrrelhouse’s wavy, breathtaking hair shimmered in the exquisite light of a sunny LA morning. Sometimes it looked blond and other times black, but it was always perfect, as is Barrelhouse himself.
But Barrelhouse was being modest. The hair is just part of it.
“I’m doing body scans even as we speak,” he revealed. “It’s like meditation thing where you tense all the different muscles in your body individually and try to let out your feelings.
“Plus I’m writing a script for Spielberg.”
Barrelhouse, who was dressed casually yet looked formal/traditional, epitomizes the new breed of ferociously ambitious and over-organized Hollywood marvel. He depends on multitasking and enhanced concentration to accomplish all the different goals he must meet daily as Hollywood’s busiest young surefire almost superstar.
I was finding out just how busy he is, virtually lunching with him via video (he at an LA restaurant, I in a New York restaurant) while at the same time he was body scanning and writing that script for Steven Spielberg’s forthcoming “The War of 1812,” in which Barrelhouse plays Francis Scott Key as an American spy who broke the British war code.
“I’m a War of 1812 buff,” Barrelhouse said, downing a morsel of poached sawgrass. “It’s our most under-rated war. Hollywood never gets it right.”
“When I mentioned the Battle of Bladensburg, and this kid drew a map of the battlefield on a passing cocktail waitress’ thigh,” Spielberg told me in a text, “I knew he was no ordinary superstar. He’s an actor/writer/director/producer/cinematographer/ key grip. He even knows what a Foley artist does.”
Barrelhouse is currently starring opposite Lora Ludley in “Depraved Homicidal Maniac,” a slick rom-com directed by Barry Fulkin, and will soon open in Ricardo Buskin’s much-anticipated “Yodeling Techie,” but he is also appearing in every other movie you may see this year. For example, in “Oppenheimer,” Barrelhouse was the title character’s crazy brother, Abe; in “Poor Things,” he was the seductive priest, and in “In the Zone of Interest,” while Barrelhouse’s face was unseen, he did all the screaming.
“Sam has off-the-charts breakout quality,” said Pam Steampaddle, the super-aggressive agent/mass-murder suspect who discovered Barrelhouse making a docudrama in a Nashville barber shop. “When he was shooting the Netflix series “Dakota Flatbread,” they had to keep stopping, because the director wanted Sam’s autograph.”
Barrelhouse apologized profusely and raced out of the restaurant, leaving his wombat cutlet untouched. He was late for a rehearsal with his rock/rap/jazz band, Corpuscle, which was about to cut its fifth platinum album (Barrelhouse is lead singer and harpsichordist) and then had to get to the gym, where he instructs a class of karate black belts.
I had a feeling this wasn’t the last Sam Barrelhouse profile I’d be writing.
Beneath the Scenes: This piece was inspired by yesterday's NYT profile of actor Glen Powell. The paragraph on body scans I lifted pretty much word for word from another NYT celebrity profile in the same edition.
He’s a GenZ Buscemi. (With a little bit better hair).