Noah Schnapp

Noah Schnapp, born and raised in Westchester, New York, is an actor who used to make short movies with his twin sister Chloe; who both wrote and edited, and he directed. After attending the Broadway performance of Annie around the age of 6. Noah realized he too wanted to be on stage: "I remember watching the show and seeing the people up there on stage and I felt like I wanted to be that person on stage," he says. "That's when it clicked with me and I wanted to become an actor."

For one of Noah’s first roles, around age 8, he worked with Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg in the movie Bridge of Spies. After noting how amazing the experience was, Noah recalls a moment on set in which the entire cast surprised him on his birthday: “They told me that I had to go to get schooled and they walked me out of the set because it was October third, which is my birthday, and everyone started singing ‘Happy Birthday,’” he says.

“I had a picture with me in front of the cake and behind me was Mr. Spielberg and Mr. Hanks. That was something.” Noah praises both Hanks and Spielberg on their genuine kindness: Spielberg would show him videos of his daughters in college and Hanks would always be putting Noah in the light.

A month after Bridge of Spies was released (November 2015), Noah landed another iconic role: he lent his voice to Charlie Brown in The Peanuts Movie. Meanwhile, he was in the midst of filming one of his most ominous roles yet-Will Byers from the Netflix show Stranger Things.

Normally, after memorizing his lines, Noah goes through each part of the script and thinks about what his character would be thinking in that moment, so when it’s time to audition he can fully embody that character.

Since the log line of Stranger Things was dedicated in part to eighties Steven Spielberg films, and Noah had worked with him in the past, the role had sort of a full circle effect. “In the Spielberg movie, I played a character in the 50s and I think it's really cool playing a character from a different time period,” he says. “I liked being in the 80’s time period, my parents were always telling me how ‘Oh, I remember wearing this certain shirt’ or something like that, and I love how it brings everyone back to that time.”

For the show’s audition, Noah originally went in to read for the part of Mike Wheeler (played by Finn Wolfhard), but after his callback they asked him to read for Will. The scripts they used were progressive, and for one of the last callbacks they even read scripts from Stand By Me (1986).

In the first scene of the series, Noah was put to the test. There’s a solo scene of him being chased by the Demogorgon where he has no lines and has to simply use facial expressions to convey his feelings. Noah explains that the movie All Is Lost (2013) starring Robert Redford helped helped him a lot when it came to acting this out: “It was a movie where he was all alone on this boat and he didn't talk the entire movie, it showed that he didn't even need to talk, the expression on his face … made such a significance.”

Back in Spring 2015, Noah actually met Redford when he took part in the Sundance Directors Lab and played the lead in director Brent Green’s Untitled Loveless Fable, where out of two hundred directors, actors, and screenwriters, he was the youngest person invited. During this lab he learned that it was ok to improvise lines and experiment with scenes. “I was actually lucky enough to be among many people and I was the only kid there,” he says. “It was definitely a learning experience.”

Noah was attending summer camp when the call that he landed the role came. When the show premiered a year later (July 2016), he was once again at summer camp, and since he was cut off from media, he missed the viral commotion the show caused.

Noah says his favorite thing about acting is the ability to be someone else: “Where you don't have to be your own person, you could transition into this whole different characters, demeanors, I love being in another time period where everything's all different.” It seems most of his roles comprise of him being in a different time period, including his role in the short film The Circle with Ryan Phillippe that was based during the Great Depression: “It was pretty cool because the entire film was filmed on one drone.”

Aside from being in movies and television shows, Noah can also add acting in a music video to his resume. The music video was for the song “LA Devotee” by Panic! At The Disco: “My mom had a few friends who actually wanted to do it with me and we worked together and I said ‘Oh, that sounds so cool, a music video. It's so different from everything I've done before.’” Noah also mentioned that when they told him he was going to do the video, he remembers having to memorize the lyrics so he could mouth the words. He walked around in circles in the basement repeating the words continuously, “and now I can't get it out of my head anymore.”

For Noah and his Stranger Things future, he’s most looking forward to seeing what his character has in store for him: “I'm excited to see where my character goes and how they write, if he becomes evil or what happens.”

Saying that since Will Byers throws up that slug at the end of the season, it’s hinting that something's going to happen with that monster inside him. As far as other endeavors are concerned, his latest movie role was in We Only Know So Much, which is in postproduction and slated for release this year.