Milo Manheim on the power of heart and humanity

While theater has always felt natural to Manheim, his roles at Disney allowed him to appreciate acting and entertaining in an entirely new light. Instead of letting the script unravel sequentially on stage, he discovered how disjointed shooting scenes could be — out of order, over and over. Losing that chronology and adapting to the repetitive nature of filmmaking, as well as the intrusion of cameras, proved to be challenging at first. “A lot of the time, 20 seconds of the film takes 12 hours to shoot,” he explains. “I used to be really frustrated by that because I liked being a part of the story and getting lost in it. But now, I’m finding new beauty in trying something many times and being very specific and nuanced with the way I want it to be seen.”

Manheim has also learned how to find the balance between dramatized acting in often imaginary circumstances without overexaggerating every detail. “I think Disney is a lot more, ‘tell don’t show,’ and things outside of Disney are ‘show don’t tell,’” he says. “What do I want to put in your face right here, and what do I want you to infer? A lot of acting is not only what you do, but what you don’t do. Not only is it a different acting approach outside of Disney, but it’s a different approach for every single character. Sometimes, you focus on the physicality of it all, and sometimes, you focus on how you want to say your words. There are different actions and goals and restrictions for every project, so the beauty of it is that it’s new every time and you have to solve this riddle — this unsolvable riddle.”

According to Manheim, the first step to cracking the unique code to each character is thinking about the common ground that holds us together. As an actor, he draws from universal emotions like anxiety, fear, and sadness to color his performances. In Prom Pact, another Disney Original set during the peak of high school prom season, Manheim plays Ben Plunkett, the “socially awkward and anxious” best friend who tries to score a date with the girl of his dreams. “I know what it feels like to be incredibly anxious,” Manheim explains. “I know what it feels like to not want to make eye contact with somebody. I know what it feels like to be uncomfortable in someone’s presence. I try to remember that feeling and bring it to the character. I like to focus on the ways my characters are similar. A lot of the time, it’s harder to connect those dots, but I’m always trying to find myself in my characters.”

Acting has allowed Manheim to reflect inward and learn more about himself. “Art imitates life, life imitates art. So many times, I watch a movie, and not only does it inspire me to be a better actor, but it inspires me to get off my ass and go live my life.” He cites a recent rewatch of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty as an example, where a magazine editor (Ben Stiller) grows tired of his tedious life and swaps his briefcase for a backpack, traveling across Greenland in search of a missing print and its even more elusive photographer. “Let me take a deep dive into my acting the same way Ben took a deep dive with Walter. Let me try to direct something. Let me try to evoke inspiration through a different lens. Life comes from you, not at you. It’s a matter of choosing where to find the beauty, because it’s really all over if you just take a second.”

From movies like The Secret Life of Walter Mitty to books like The Creative Act by Rick Rubin (“It’s a good reminder that you can find this beauty everywhere,” he says), Manheim tries to consume media as consciously as possible in search of lessons he can use to enrich his own life. “As human beings, we can be so different, but we all enjoy art and movies because they evoke universal emotion in us.”

While he embraces the unknown with open arms, Manheim hopes that his future is “weird” at the very least — weird enough that he wants to be cautious about diving headfirst into the deep end of his dreams. “David Bowie says, ‘if you feel like you’re treading water, then you’re doing the art correctly.’ I never want to feel like I have a good grasp on it. I want to feel like I’m always figuring it out.”