It was exam week at the University of Texas at Austin and Jeremy Dozier's sheets were missing. For a night, his dorm room doubled as a stage, with the sheets tacked to the wall and borrowed lamps illuminating the foreground. It was 3 a.m., and he was making an audition tape.
Four years later, a chipmunk-cheeked Dozier would end up starring alongside Juno Temple, William H. Macy and Milla Jovovich in the '80s-style comedy, "Dirty Girl." He plays Clark, a mouth-breathing closet case from Oklahoma who learns self-acceptance while on a slapdash road trip.
A now-25-year-old Dozier sat down with HuffPost to talk about landing his dream job, dancing in his underwear and how to pronounce twat.
How was the stripping scene?
I had gone over the dance so many times so by the [time of the shoot] and everybody was very supportive and felt like kind of a big family. Of course it was nerve-wracking standing up there in your underwear in front of a full room of extras and all of the crew and stuff like that but I trusted everybody.
I hear that you and Juno are best friends now.
We met at the chemistry read and afterwards -- she doesn’t drive -- we were riding the elevator down and she said she had to catch a cab and I off-handedly said, ‘Oh, I have a car. I can give you a ride.’ And I never expected her to say yes because we were complete strangers -- I knew her for 30 minutes. But she took me up on it and I drove her home and we talked and clicked and have been best friends ever since.
Did you relate to Clark?
I mean, I was picked on in high school, nothing to the effect that Clark was -- thank god. Clark and I are really, really different. It was hard for me to play him in the beginning because that’s not me at all; I’m very confident and outspoken. So playing him towards the end, once he’s made the transformation, was a lot easier for me to do.
Do you remember the '80s?
Well, I was like, one whenever this film supposedly took place so not really. But, it’s so pertinent to today, I mean, with all of the gay teen suicides that are going on and all of the issues that are still happening today and the film touches on all of that. Even though it’s set in the '80s, you don’t have to have lived in the '80s to get the comedy.
How was it to work with such big stars on your first film?
Amazing. I would sit on set and kind of stare at William H. Macy and try and study what he was doing and I’m sure he thinks I’m a creepy stalker. And the same thing with Mary, I mean, an Oscar winner playing my mom in the first film I ever did. The first scenes that I ever shot in the film ... she pulled me aside and said she knew what it was like to be in my shoes because the first film she ever did, she starred opposite Jack Nicholson.
Were you kind of like the southern authority on set?
Kind of, because I am from Texas, so there were a couple of times where Juno would have to say "twat" in the movie and she would say, "twaght." And I was like, "No, Juno. That’s not how you say it."
Dirty Girl hit theaters Oct. 7
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