Brandon Sklenar on ‘Iron Jane,’ Body Dysmorphia and His Rapid Hollywood Rise

Brandon Sklenar is taking a moment to catch his breath. Over the past few years, the 36-year-old actor has watched his career explode with co-starring roles in Taylor Sheridan’s Paramount+ series 1923, the much-discussed Blake Lively drama It Ends With Us, the South by Southwest sensation Drop and The Housemaid, Lionsgate’s $400 million-grossing erotic thriller starring Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried.

And he has four more star vehicles expected next year — Paramount’s contemporary Western The Rescue, Warner Bros.’ special forces thriller F.A.S.T., scripted by Sheridan; Ramin Bahrani’s romantic thriller Vegas: A Love Story, opposite Maika Monroe; and Lissette Feliciano’s female bodybuilding drama Iron Jane, co-starring Eiza González.

“I’ve pretty much been going nonstop for the last few years, and only just very recently, in the last couple months, have I had a moment of stillness to take stock,” Sklenar says. “And now that I can stop and look around, I’m like, ‘What the fuck? This is crazy.’”

He adds: “I mean, I can sort of see the linear progression of my career, but the opportunities that have been afforded to me in the last year or so have made me feel incredibly lucky.”

Sklenar grew up in New Jersey, and his journey to Hollywood stardom is the stuff of vintage kid-makes-good stories — the sort of old-school outsider triumph that has grown increasingly rare in the era of nepo babies, influencers and YouTube crossovers.

“I was with a girl at the time, and we just put all our shit in garbage bags and didn’t tell anybody,” he says of his move west right after high school. “And we just drove, literally in the middle of the night, like a Bruce Springsteen song. It’s so cliché, but it’s true. We just left.”

A month or two after arriving in Los Angeles, Sklenar approached a stranger outside Mel’s Diner on Sunset Boulevard to bum a smoke. The man turned out to be a manager, who told him he “had a great look” and invited him to perform a scene from A Streetcar Named Desire, later helping him find an agent. Years of background work, acting classes, plays and small film roles followed before 1923 gave him his breakthrough as Spencer Dutton, the adventurer at the heart of Sheridan’s Yellowstone prequel.

Before his next wave of projects reaches audiences, Sklenar now says he’s taking a moment to focus on his well-being (he just recently kicked smoking).

“I’m trying to check in and just see where I’m at — mentally, physically and spiritually — so I’m ready for whatever the next chapter is,” he explains. “I want to try to strengthen my foundation a little before the next train leaves the station, because the last one went like a fucking rocket.”

Iron Jane is among the projects Highland Film Group is presenting to buyers at this week’s American Film Market ahead of an expected festival launch next year. Written and directed by Lissette Feliciano (Women Is Losers), the film stars Eiza González (Baby Driver, 3 Body Problem) as Janie John, a woman who turns to competitive bodybuilding after a childhood marked by neglect. Under the guidance of a former champion played by Sklenar, she embarks on a punishing physical transformation, finding recognition and a sense of control even as her pursuit of perfection threatens to consume her.

Sklenar is a first-time producer on the project through his recently launched Vista Lane Pictures banner. CAA Media Finance and WME Independent are handling U.S. rights.

The Hollywood Reporter recently caught up with Sklenar by phone from Atlanta to discuss the creation of Iron Jane and why it’s an especially meaningful film for him.

Where are you? I understand you were shooting something today. How’d it go?

I’m in Atlanta right now. I’m doing additional photography for this movie, The Rescue, I have coming out next year. We’re adding some extra scenes to the movie. I had been off for a bit, doing home stuff and whatnot, and now I’m back on set, and I’ve got a fake mustache on and a wig — and it’s kind of tormenting me! It’s always so funny when you have to put on a fake mustache and have to try not to feel like an idiot. You know what I mean?

I’ve never been in that situation, but I can certainly imagine.

It just feels so ridiculous. (Laughs.) There’s something about wearing a fake mustache that makes you acutely aware of the fact that you’re wearing a fake mustache.

OK, let’s talk about Iron Jane. I think there are no fake mustaches in that one.
No fake mustaches.

I understand this was a film you were trying to help get made for a long time. Can you take me back to the start of the project for you?

So I met Lissette Feliciano a couple years ago at a festival party. Jay Glazer, my partner in my company, Vista Lane, had met her and he introduced us. He mentioned she had this really great script about a female bodybuilder, and he thought I would respond to it. So I met her and we just really got on. She came to Santa Barbara, where I live, and we chatted and got to know each other. And I read her script, and I thought it was a really special story. I just loved the texture and the point of view that she has. The story was really coming from a deep, personal, emotional place for her and I really thought it was something I wanted to see.

So I was like, “If I can have any hand in helping this become a reality, then it would be crazy for me not to do that.”

And then over the next couple years, I was fortunate enough to step in enough good puddles that I somehow got to the place where I was able to help someone get a movie made. I woke up one day and I was like, “Oh, apparently I am now in that position. So let’s make your movie.” Eiza coming on board was also a huge part of that. So it was a best-case scenario, really.

Tell me a little more about the story and your character. You play a former bodybuilder, right?

Iron Jane is an inspiring, classic underdog story in a sense, but it’s also very fantastic. It has a very hopeful spirit, and it’s very cinematic, colorful and vibrant — very much like the world of competitive female bodybuilding. There’s a sense of pageantry to the whole piece. There’s the glitter and the lights, and their bodies are just insane, but at the core, it’s a heartfelt story about a woman trying to take control of her life and better herself.

I personally was drawn to it because I grew up in northern New Jersey working in an underground bodybuilding gym. When I was 15, I was cleaning the floors, and by 18, I was a trainer, training everybody and running the whole gym. There was an MMA gym upstairs, and I would just train MMA all day and then train other people. I started doing martial arts when I was really little, like six.

So I was living in that bubble for years, and I understood this world very specifically. I’ve trained with Mr. Olympias and seen them pose — the diets, the steroids, everything. And there is an element of Iron Jane that really goes into body image and body dysmorphia, which is something that I just really feel needs to be talked about more, especially in this age of social media and fitness influencers. This is something I’ve struggled with, so we really wanted to translate that, and Lissette was really open to working with me on getting across [my character] Josh’s dysmorphia and what he goes through.

Josh is a former bodybuilding champion. He was on that path a decade ago, and then he got injured. His body just couldn’t do it. He didn’t have the genetics. Now he trains people and coaches them to be champions and compete on that stage. He meets Jane and takes her under his wing, and he just really puts himself into her entire world — her burning desire to feel better about herself, physically and emotionally. So he trains her to take control of her body and become Iron Jane.

Are you comfortable talking about your own experience with body dysmorphia? How do you cope with that?

Yeah, for sure. It’s something I’ve had since I was a kid. I was a little kid — short, chunky. I swam in a T-shirt and got made fun of. Then I had a growth spurt and became really lanky, and I got made fun of for that. So I started training a lot and got obsessed with working out, like, “I’ll show them.” And then it became a kind of obsession, and it becomes a very weird thing, where you see yourself completely differently than pretty much anybody else does, and usually in not a good way.

It’s very much an ongoing process. Therapy helps for sure. If you look at me now as a 36-year-old man, you’d never guess it, but I still very much feel like that 12-year-old chunky kid — that sense of nothing is ever good enough. You have to find a way to check your self-talk, because that’s really where it begins and ends — but it’s easier said than done.

I imagine you and Eiza had to train quite a lot and put on muscle to prepare for the film?

I trained in a very specific way for the film, but it wasn’t necessarily about bulking up. I put on a bunch of size for another film I had done earlier in the year. I’m starring in this film Taylor Sheridan wrote called F.A.S.T. for Warners. It’s coming out in May. I played a Delta Force operator, and I got massive. So I was still kind of working with that foundation. For Josh, I wanted it to feel real. He’s a guy who used to be really big, but he’s not broadcasting his body anymore. He’s just a fit guy now. So I didn’t want to overdo the preparation, because you can tell when actors do that. Where there’s a shot of their body, and it’s like, “This was my shirtless day,” and they’ve done the water-dehydration thing, and now they’re unnaturally cut. I wanted Josh to feel much more lived-in and natural.

There is a scene where my body is fully on display, and I’m posing, and the camera’s panning up and down — and I was so nervous. I’ve been pretty much naked in a film before, but it’s a whole different thing to literally be posing and have the camera panning up and down your body, detailing everything. When I was shooting that scene, I was so uncomfortable. Dealing with my issues, it was very challenging to work through that. But at the same time, I was thinking about Eiza, because she had to do that the entire fucking film. Every scene is about her body on some level. So, I was like, “Goddamn, if I feel this way, I can’t imagine how she feels.”

She trained for I don’t know how many months, but that woman put in serious fucking work. It’s really hard for women to put on that amount of muscle. My partner is a trainer and a nutritionist, and I know how difficult it is. You’ve got to eat so much. But Eiza trained her ass off, and she got in incredible shape for this film. I just have so much respect for her.

As you mentioned earlier, you’ve started your own production banner, Vista Lane Pictures. What is the motivation and vision behind that?

Well, when I first set out to be involved in film, I always wanted to produce and direct. So the idea that maybe I could help shape the projects I’m involved in was very appealing to me. I’ve been fortunate enough to work with some great producers, who I’ve been able to learn a lot from. The company is still in its infancy. We got this first-look deal from Lionsgate, which we’re incredibly grateful for. I’m just trying to soak up and learn as much as I can. I love acting more than anything in the world and I want to make interesting choices. I want to be involved in films that are purely about the spectacle and taking people on an exciting ride, and also I want to do films that aren’t purely commercial, where we tell a unique, universal story — and maybe I can even change my own life by playing a character that will help me understand how to be a better son, father or husband. Selfishly, I just want to play the widest range of characters I possibly can. So if I’ve hit a point in my career where maybe I can help myself do that by starting my own company, why wouldn’t I, right?