Robert Berlin got his blood pumping thanks to Backstage after he was cast in the action-packed thriller “The Closer.” He plays Steven, an entrepreneur with a dark past.
“[Steven] comes back to the U.S. from a troubling experience as a special ops military leader of three guys in Afghanistan,” Berlin explains. “He recruits these guys from the war and opens his own business in Brooklyn real estate development during the biggest boom and bust of the subprime meltdown. He hasn’t fully gotten over his Afghanistan experience.”
Those signs of post-traumatic stress carried over into Berlin’s portrayal of Steven. He describes the character as “extremely intense,” a role that required “discipline, endurance, and creativity,” even off-set, while Berlin was working as a waiter.
“I had to stay focused at all times on- and off-set to maintain the intensity and rhythm of the character I was creating, while also making Steven as human as possible so he wasn’t just a caricature of a madman,” Berlin says.
As for what’s next, this actor knows exactly what he’s good for, joking, “Did you see my face? I play bad guys!”
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