ScreenTime Interview With Ryan Merriman (Hallmark’s Elevator Girl)

You may know Ryan Merriman, even if you aren't familiar with the name, from a large body of work when he was a child actor. A staple of the Young Artist Awards from the mid-90s through 2003 for such things as The Pretender, Taken, The Deep End of the Ocean, and more, Ryan is getting more and more ScreenTime in recent years, and may well be one to watch.

Recently coming to you in an episode of Smallville, The Ring Two, and Final Destination 3, Ryan teams up now with Party of Five's Lacey Chabert for The Hallmark Channel's Elevator Girl. He's also coming up in quite a few interesting things: The 5th Quarter with Andie MacDowell and Aidan Quinn, The Hard Ride, a western with Val Kilmer and Elisabeth Shue, just to name a couple scheduled this year.

Elevator Girl premiered on the 13th (although the show's website now says it premieres on the 19th?), but will air again on Hallmark.

I got a chance to talk with Ryan recently, and if you're familiar with ScreenTime, you know that I want to get some feel for who he is to share with you. The short version of that story is that he seems to be a fabulously nice guy, and a bit of an older soul than his age might lead one to believe.

I had to ask the fairly obligatory question about his favorite, recent films, and he threw out Crazy Heart pretty quickly. He struggled somewhat for some more titles, and finally came up with In Bruges, which is a great choice for getting to know someone's sensibilities, and added that he watched Goodfellas once a month.

On the television front, Ryan gave me Sons of Anarchy, gem of an answer Archer, and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

Because his recent work has jumped genres pretty wildly, from Horror to Western to Sports Movie, and the rom-com Elevator Girl (about a stuffy-ish lawyer who falls for the free spirit he gets trapped in an elevator with) seems to stick out among these, I asked him about his role selection and working on the movie. We discussed roles for a bit, and the general idea seemed to be that while he really liked most things with an action base, he also likes the idea of mixing things up a bit. We all know that one too many horror movies can get you stuck, and while I may be pulling ideas out for Ryan here, I think it came across that a good variety kept the game fresh for him.

A day in the life of filming Elevator Girl is, according to Ryan, a less stressful affair if nothing else, and moving from perhaps somewhat silly horror, to cutesy rom-com, to emotionally-charged sports film certainly keeps you on your toes, while providing (I imagine) a note of variety that is a rather welcome addition to the long days of an acting work schedule.

With all these types of roles at the top of his list of credits, I had to ask who his favorite person he's worked with recently was, and there was no hesitation in coming up with Aidan Quinn, and though talent was obviously mentioned, the "avid golfer" connection came up as well. I really encourage you to keep your eyes open for The 5th Quarter, which has Ryan in a lead role as football player Jon Abbate.

Trying to get a little more insight into Ryan, I asked him what his favorite movie that no one else has seen was, and he was pretty quick to give me Willow. Not being nearly as young as Ryan, I snapped back that everyone had seen Willow. Who hasn't seen Willow? Well, I had to admit, the odds are that you haven't seen it. The merits of Willow as an answer aside, we started talking film, and a very interesting flow starting coming from him. Not in the "no one has seen it" category really, but we started talking Cool Hand Luke, Labyrinth, Snatch, and others that made for a great diversity of interest.

Then, and you may be familiar with this turn of mine, I went for the "make your own role" question, and Ryan put together a nice movie pitch. Starring in a kind of Bourne/Mission Impossible feature, Ryan teams up with Brad Pitt as his mentor, Robert Downey Jr. as the "cool tech" specialist, and together they try to foil the plans of villain Arnold Vosloo. You can use your imagination, but I rather suspect there is a decent soundtrack to this film.

An interesting character, Ryan was a lot of fun to chat with. You can probably guess that mentioning such an eclectic mix of films won't hurt you when talking to movie critics, but more importantly there is a charismatic guy behind the mere list of movies.

Check out Elevator Girl on The Hallmark Channel, and look for Ryan in The 5th Quarter, Palominas, The Hard Ride, The Last Horseman, and Johnny Kidd.

Ryan's wife's favorite movie, by the way, is Fried Green Tomatoes.

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About Marc Eastman

Marc Eastman is the owner and operator of Are You Screening? and has been writing film reviews for over a decade, and several branches of the internet's film review world have seen his name. His reviews have brought him personal praise from the director of a major motion picture, and have been used as required reading in a course at a major University. These priceless rewards, along with just bags of cash, keep him from straying from freelance writing. He is also a member of The Broadcast Film Critics Association and The Broadcast Television Journalists Association.

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