Who Plays Woodrow In Asteroid City & What Other Wes Anderson Films Is He In?
Auteur filmmaker Wes Anderson has provided moviegoers with yet another fascinating feature in the form of "Asteroid City" — a comedy-drama that wears its love of science fiction and post-World War II interest in extraterrestrial life on its sleeve. Per usual, this Anderson film features a stacked cast from top to bottom, including such names as Scarlett Johansson, Steve Carell, Tilda Swinton, and more. Alongside them in the role of Junior Stargazer winner Woodrow Steenbeck is Jake Ryan. For those unfamiliar, he has become quite the frequent Anderson collaborator over the years.
With his professional acting career picking up steam, Ryan's first time working on an Anderson production came in 2012 for "Moonrise Kingdom." There he plays Lionel, and evidently, he left the director impressed. Ryan and Anderson then worked together for a second time on 2018's "Isle of Dogs," with Ryan voicing Junior Interpreter Ernie. That brings us to 2023's "Asteroid City," which is Ryan's third Anderson-directed movie. Since their first collaboration in 2012, the actor didn't appear in two Anderson movies, "The Grand Budapest Hotel" and "The French Dispatch" from 2014 and 2021, respectively.
As it turns out, Anderson and Ryan's friendship goes beyond the film sets they work on.
Anderson and Ryan are friends as well as collaborators
Away from the big screen, Wes Anderson and Jake Ryan once worked side-by-side on a rather unlikely project. Back in 2012, Ryan — roughly nine years old at the time — wrote a stop-motion commercial for Sony, which Anderson ultimately wound up directing. Between this smaller gig and "Moonrise Kingdom," Anderson and Ryan's working relationship was off to a great start. According to the actor, the director saw something in him, hence why he stayed in contact. "I guess he saw something in me, and we've kept in touch ever since," Ryan told The Hollywood Reporter.
Building on that, Ryan delved deeper into his friendship with Anderson, which has now been going strong for a decade and then some. "There's this gravitational force, almost, that surrounds him, that he can use to bring people together," he explained, referring to Anderson's energy as "cozy." Still, just because Anderson and Ryan are longtime friends doesn't mean he just went ahead and put him down on the "Asteroid City" cast list. Ryan had to audition like anyone else, and seeing as he landed the role of Woodrow, he must've crushed it.
As he approaches his 20s, the future is indeed bright for Jake Ryan.