B.L You have about 90 percent of your scenes with the great Morgan Freeman and I must tell you that I have just come from his room and he told me that one of the main reasons he decided to be in the film was because of you.
T.S. Wow!

B.L. What do you have to say to that?
T.S. (long pause) That’s really moving, that’s great and terrific to hear. Wow, you really just floored me with that comment.

B.L. What was it like working with that man, because I would think he was quite the mentor?
T.S. Wow. You really took me by surprise by telling me that about Morgan. I know that he enjoyed working with me, he did tell me that, but I didn’t know that he was that impressed with me, wow! He’s one of the greatest actors in the world and we had a great time together. Mentor wise, Morgan taught me something that was very important and that is stay calm to the point of sleeping between takes. He is the calmest, most controlled man that I have met in motion pictures and probably in life. At the same time he is daring and on the money with his work. He is not walking dignity, but he is one of the more dignified men in the world that I know.

B.L. That’s nice of you to say.
T.S. I am having a hard time giving the interview now because I am getting all misty-eyed here. I had a great time with Morgan and I really admire him. As for being a mentor, that’s odd because in the movie he is my mentor and for loss of a better term he is like my father. My character had lost his father as a young man.

B.L. So you had a lot to play off of with him on many levels.
T.S. What was interesting to me in this movie and why the character of Owen interested me were a couple of reasons. Number one, he was non-verbal and the things that he went through he did without talking about them. Simultaneously he is very reserved with his emotions so it’s very subtle shifts that he has regarding his relationship with the most important person in his life, played by Morgan. The initial scene when we meet him there is a bit of skepticism when he talks about the alien invasion and my character sees that Morgan’s character is a bit of a loon. It’s hard for Owen to accept this fact because he knows that his "mentor" has gone mad and has lost his ability to reason. It was a challenging role to play but thoroughly enjoyable.

B.L. In your opinion what makes a really great scary film? What scares you?
T.S. The press!

B.L. Come on, I’ve been really nice!
T.S. Not you! The tabloid press!

B.L. What do you like to see in a scary movie?
T.S. The Shining scared the crap out of me. The fear of the unknown is a great thing. There’s a shot in Frenzy that I think is very scary, and there are probably elements of it in all scary movies, is when the killer goes into one of the apartments. All you see is the door open and the door shuts on the camera. Then the camera pulls down the hallway and down the steps and out the door of Fifth Avenue, goes across the street and then you see all these people living their lives and you know this horrible event is going on and you’re not watching it but you leave it up to your imagination to what is going on behind that door. It’s how Hitchcock did more of his horrific type things.

B.L. He was the master, that’s for sure.
T.S. In this movie (Dreamcatcher) you see a lot of the scary stuff but at the same time it’s what we do not understand. It’s that feeling that you get when you hear a sound in your house when you are half asleep and you go "there’s someone in my house" and you can’t move. What I do is I grab a baseball bat and all I can think is "I have to save my life" and you run down the hallway and open the front door and it’s empty and you breathe a sigh of relief. You were almost certain that someone was there and there isn’t. So it’s that fear of the unknown.

B.L. That’s what does it for me too.
T.S. And I have to add, that in a way what is going on in the world right now and hopefully it will be peacefully resolved, but people are on edge because we don’t know what’s going to happen and let’s hope it is all peacefully resolved.