CORY MICHAEL SMITH has been in the spotlight for a long time, and with every new project, his disarming charm and depth as an actor continue to surprise us. After wrapping two films this spring – Mountainhead, a fast-turnaround project with Succession’s Jesse Armstrong and a quietly poetic role in Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value – he now prepares to take the lead in A24’s upcoming thriller October, directed by Jeremy Saulnier. Caught between projects, he’s telling us about refining the pace, deepening the process, and stepping into unfamiliar terrain.

Left Full look **Dior Men**
Right Full look **Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello**

When you're preparing for a role, where does your creative process usually begin? Are you more focused on internal world-building or the physicality of a character?

Sometimes this is dictated by how early you're brought onto a project. I just shot Jesse Armstrong’s Mountainhead this spring, and it was released a couple of months later. I was brought on about four weeks before we were shooting, and we didn't have a script until two weeks out. And that was a wild experience because it was 120-plus pages of text, and Jesse is a master of language.

Usually, when I'm reading a script, I first have an emotional connection to the character because of what they’re experiencing or because their history seems interesting to me. To be fair, I’ve played some rotten people in the past, and it’s still really interesting to try to understand what their motivations are. I enjoy bringing something sensitive, vulnerable, or mysterious to characters who make questionable choices. There’s usually a reason why people are doing terrible things.

Left Full look **Massimo Dutti**
Right Full look Dsquared2

Was there ever a moment in your acting career that felt like it had changed your path?

One of the things that I really love about this career is the thrill of chasing jobs that you would really love to have. You're competing with a lot of people. It's a competitive sport. And sometimes, you don't get chosen for the role that you're chasing. But when you do, it’s a thrill. You're in the right place at the right time. It feels like a rare moment of alignment, a stroke of luck, when that happens. Looking forward, I guess it would be the film that I will be shooting this fall, an A24 feature called October, with Jeremy Saulnier directing. At this point, it feels like the biggest shift. It's a crazy script, Jeremy is an excellent filmmaker, and it's a really huge responsibility for me as the leading man in this film. It's something very different for me, in terms of the genre. It's an action-thriller fugitive film set during Halloween. This character is going to look very different to what I've ever looked before, and spiritually will feel very different from anything I've done. So, this summer is really about preparing for that. We're sort of designing who this person is at the moment.

You have worked with some brilliant directors and actors. Who has recently shaped or surprised you on set?

I've certainly been shaped by a lot of directors I've worked with. Recently, I had a small role in a film by Joachim Trier that premiered at Cannes called Sentimental Value. It's a very small role, but when I met him, he told me that he likes to build community, which is something I value in this industry. He said, “I work with a lot of the same people over and over. I'm a fan of your work, and I would love it if you would just come and join us and do what you can with the role.” And it was really nice because the pressure was off of me. I wasn't responsible for this film working or not, and I really got to just watch him work. And he works incredibly differently from any other director I've worked with. I think, partially, it's a European sensibility. And the shooting time for this particular film was really long and quite luxurious. He develops it and funds it in such a way that he can work like that. With our system here in the US, time is money, and sometimes you really just gotta get what you need and move along. And so it was nice to see some luxury of time.

Todd Haynes has put me in three of his films, for which I'm incredibly grateful. The first one was Carol, then Wonderstruck, then May December. I was shooting the pilot for Gotham at the same time as shooting Carol. I was still quite new to working on camera, so Todd was one of the first masterful directors I got to watch. He creates these extensive photo books showing how he wants things to look and feel. All of this felt so new to me, the nuance and the detail and the sense of attending to the holistic feel of everything on set, not just the bodies in space and what they are doing. There was so much trust from Todd for the actors to bring that feeling, and he was filling in every other space with emotion. And I was like, oh my God, how amazing, listening to the detail and specificity of this while also knowing that he trusts me to do exactly what I need to do in this time and space with him. Then he invited me to two other films. The best compliment a director can give is asking you to work with them again. So, it was nice to have validation early in my career of being able to deliver something that Todd enjoyed.

Looking ahead, is there a role or genre you are craving, something no one has offered yet, but you know you could bring something surprising to it?

I just shot a film that has not been announced yet. It was about two tangled romantic relationships. I haven't played a lot of romantic leads in my career. It's such fertile ground for storytelling. It's essential to our lives. The desire for love, to be loved, to feel and understand love. So, I really look forward to having more jobs that deal with romance and love. Aside from that, there certainly aren't any genres that I'm staying away from, and I'm always trying to explore roles that feel really different. I’ve never done a horror movie. I'd love to do a really sophisticated horror. Also, I would love to do more period work.

You’re in this quiet moment now, preparing for what’s next. If you had to describe where you are emotionally now, just with natural elements, what would it be?

I was just watching this video that explains how the tide works. My mind was blown because it shifted the way I thought about it. The moon is always pulling the tide. As the Earth rotates, the water is constantly being pulled toward the moon. The tide isn’t just going out and in. The Earth is rotating, and the water is attracted to the moon. I’ve just finished shooting two movies, and I have this summer before October begins filming, so I’m taking time for myself. What I feel right now is that I’m on the side of Earth facing away from the moon. It’s like being in a bay when the water pulls back, and suddenly the beach stretches far and wide. It’s really peaceful and quiet. That’s where I feel like I am this summer, because I’ve chosen to take a pause and prepare for something momentous, exciting, and eventful. So, I’m breathing slowly and meticulously putting this thing together so that when the tide comes back in, I’m ready to go.