Ellen Burstyn And Two Young Actors Join Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar

By Nick Venable | Published

This article is more than 2 years old

burstynIt’s fun sometimes to go back and watch Christopher Nolan’s 1998 mystery drama Following, marveling that the entire cast isn’t made up of immediately recognizable people. His next film, the spacey mindbender Interstellar, continues to “enter stellar” casting deals, and has added another Academy Award winner to the mix.

Ellen Burstyn, who in my eyes will forever be Sara Goldfarb from Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream, has been added to the star-studded cast, along with 12-year-old Mackenzie Foy, most famous for her role as the daughter of Bella and Edward Cullen from The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn films. They are joined by Timothée Chalamet, recognizable to Showtime’s Homeland fans as the Vice President’s son Finn.

This should come as a surprise to no one, but details on everyone’s roles and how they fit into the plot are slight. And by slight, I mean non-existent. The only thing really known about the film is that Christopher Nolan and his brother Jonathan based their screenplay on wormhole theories proposed by the internationally recognized physicist Kip Thorne, and that the plotline follows a group of explorers who encounter a wormhole and end up somewhere at the farthest reaches of human understanding. (Maybe they can tell us if there’s a restaurant at the end of the universe.) These stars join the already-cast Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Casey Affleck, Michael Caine, and Bill Irwin.

I had it in my head that Interstellar would take place entirely in space, but the addition of children means either they’ll go back and forth between space and Earth, which could get quite maudlin, or perhaps we’ll experience Foy and Chalamet’s characters through the memories of the space crew, which is much more up Nolan’s alley. (And if not a memory, then a dream. Or maybe a dream within a dream.) Given the uncapped age limit on scientists and space personnel, both Caine and Burstyn are fair game to be part of the onboard posse.

Burstyn was last seen in a couple of TV miniseries, USA’s Political Animals and A&E’s Coma, and has a handful of films on the way, including Ivan Reitman’s football comedy Draft Day, Jason Stone’s thriller The Calling with Susan Sarandon, and Darnell Martin’s family drama Wish You Well, which she’ll star in with Foy.

Besides that film, Foy will also star in Erica Dunton’s drama Plastic Jesus with Hilarie Burton and Paul Schneider, and is set to join the all-star voice cast of Mark Osborne’s The Little Prince adaptation. You can catch her in theaters this weekend in James Wan’s ghostly horror flick The Conjuring.

Chalamet, meanwhile, has a recurring role on USA’s Royal Pains, and starred with Mira Sorvino in Trooper, a recent pilot from director Craig Gillespie.

You’ll be waiting a while for this one, as Interstellar won’t hit theaters (IMAX included) until November 7, 2014. Unless you have a wormhole handy.