Why Kodi Smit-McPhee Describes Acting in ‘The Power of the Dog’ as ‘Entering Another World Through a Portal’

thewrap.com:

A version of this story about Kodi Smit-McPhee and “The Power of the Dog” first appeared in the Awards Preview issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine.When Kodi-Smit McPhee thinks back to his days on the New Zealand set of Jane Campion’s “The Power of the Dog,” he remembers the darkened barn.

In the film, playing the shy teenager Peter, an outcast on a Montana cattle ranch in the 1920s, Smit-McPhee had a crucial late scene with Benedict Cumberbatch in which the two men share a cigarette in the barn – which, on this day during production, had been wrapped in a tent of blackout curtains in order to simulate nighttime. “It was so bright outside, but when I went into the barn it was quiet and very dark, ominous but kind of peaceful,” he said. “It was like entering another world through a portal.”Thinking back, the actor was keen to spot the allegory in the moment. “I don’t think I’d ever felt like that before in my career,” he said. “It’s so fascinating how that feeling of diving deeper into something translated so perfectly.” That scene, among many others in Campion’s sensual, mysterious mood piece, have thrust Smit-McPhee through another type of portal.

Though he’s been acting since childhood (appearing memorably as Viggo Mortensen’s son in 2009’s “The Road”), now, at 25, he’s scored rave reviews, a big haul of critics awards, Including from the groups in New York and Los Angeles, and likely his first Oscar nomination. (Were he to take home a gold statuette in March, he’d be the second youngest supporting actor Oscar winner ever, after Timothy Hutton, then 20, for 1980s “Ordinary People.”)And that buzz helps explain why Smit-McPhee, after a three-month press tour to promote “The Power of the Dog” around the world, is now.