works most of the time with Al Pacino – and he has been a huge fan of Pacino’s since childhood. “He is like the foundation for everyone’s film knowledge. You start with the greats and you think of a handful of people and Al Pacino is one of them. I watched all of his work when I was a kid. I used to fake sick from school and try to just watch movies and I’d find myself watching his films a lot, especially Dog Day Afternoon and the Lumet classics,” Lerman told HFPA journalist Scott Orlin.

Lerman and Pacino play Nazi hunters in late 1970s New York. Between takes they had long conversations. “He has so many incredible stories. We’d find ourselves kind of getting off track of what we were talking about for work that day and just getting into Al’s amazing history. It’s incredible just to hear it coming from his mouth and all the things that people don’t know.”

He was amazed to hear how some iconic pieces of work and performances came together. “They aren’t just a stroke of god-given talent and things that happen, just a stroke of genius right in that moment, that it’s the culmination of a lot of hard work and exploration. And there’s a lot of things that don’t work when you’re exploring and it’s about how you bounce back from that and keep exploring on the day and how things come up in the moment and how these iconic moments in film just happen by chance. But it’s really just the culmination of hard work.”

Heath Ledger on the set of The PatriotMel Gibson helped his career; why he called himself stupid when he was nine years old; why he stepped back after filming The Butterfly EffectJack & Bobby was like film school to him; why he learned a lot about himself on the set of HootJim Carrey became his mentor; why he fought to get the lead role in the Percy Jackson franchise; why words excite him more than action; why he fell in love with the script for The Perks of Being a Wallflower