Stuhlbarg in A Serious Man.. Photo courtesy Focus Features.

Michael Stuhlbarg, a Long Beach-born Julliard graduate, has an impressive resumé on the stage. He’s earned many a theatrical award in his thirteen years of acting. Now, on the big screen, Stuhlbarg plays the part of Larry Gopnik, a Jewish physics professor in the 1960s Midwest, in the Coen brothers’ hotly anticipated new film, A Serious Man.

Despite Stuhlbarg’s extensive acting experience, this is his first leading part in a major film, and quite a part it is. Certainly, none of the critics will forget Stuhlbarg’s last name after his stunning depiction of Larry Gopnik. The film follows Gopnik as his life, relationships and career fall apart before his eyes.

Stuhlbarg sat down with North by Northwestern to talk about transitioning to the screen and his role in A Serious Man.

You mentioned last night that you originally auditioned for the part of the Yiddish speaking man in the prologue. What do you think made the Coen brothers pick you for Larry?

I don’t know. I just, um, maybe… Maybe when I came in for my first audition, I had grown a beard out, and I was speaking in Yiddish, and maybe they saw me as being more… I don’t know, a possibility for a middle aged man with young children. And when I came back in they just gave me a shot. That’s all it was. Like everybody gets when they come into these auditions. They threw some material at me, I let it resonate with myself, and there seemed to be some resonance for me in these roles. I’m just grateful they gave me a chance.

So, you started your career as a theater actor, and you were really good at it from what I’ve heard. What made you switch to film?

Well, it’s one of those things I never really stopped doing. It’s just that, at the moment, I find myself being offered a lot of film and television work — and that’s been fantastic, but I’m never going to stop doing theater. It gives me a different kind of challenge and excitement and rush that one gets when one’s in front of a live audience as opposed to a camera. So I hope to go back and forth and keep doing both.

How much latitude were you given as an actor? Did Joel and/or Ethan ever question your choices?

Absolute latitude. They gave me freedom to do whatever I wanted and they never questioned what I did. They just offered me other options. They said, “That’s great, now try this,” and then we’d do it that way. I didn’t have too much of an agenda in what I wanted to do, I just set up the circumstances and said, “I think this is where Larry is in his journey” and threw myself into it. And they said, “That’s fine.”

How did the character’s Judaism play into your acting choices? How did the Midwestern town play in? And how did the 1960s play in, as well?

How does his Judaism play into his characterization? He is a part of that community, probably more of a cultural Jew than a spiritual or religious Jew, and so I think it’s a very human story. I think those things are the texture of the movie, but at the same time I feel that things are thrown at him and circumstances arise that make him question things. So I think it’s the circumstances that make it a universal story. And I think the Judaism makes the texture of the movie. I hesitate to suggest how they influence the movie, because I think of it as a universal story in a Jewish community.

And what about the town around Larry? Acculturation is part of the texture but also part of the intrinsic value of the story. So how did the period and the place intersect?

Well, it’s interesting. We don’t see much how the Jewish community rubs against the other communities. We see the the neighbor and a student that comes to visit Larry, but mostly we are submerged within this family and community. In terms of the period, that is the world in which these characters function, but Joel and Ethan don’t go out of their way to bring the outside world into this story. So though it is the world where this story thrives, it doesn’t explore it too much. It suggests it here and there.

Was Larry inspired by anyone in your life?

When I got the part, I asked Joel and Ethan if there are any movies I should see and they said, “Well, take a look at The Graduate, and take a look at La Dolce Vita, because these characters are period appropriate, and these characters go on this circuitous journey where they get bounced around inside their stories. So I watched those and let them wash over me. Those were some influences.

How did the parallels between this film’s setting and the environment in which the Coen brothers grew up play into your acting choices?

Well, I asked them lots of questions. Very meticulous questions. But they never said it was based on anyone. Joel and Ethan left it to me. Their father was a professor, though, and the names of [Larry’s son’s] friends are people they grew up with. And the Metacullus [Larry’s brother’s work of deranged mathematical genius] was real, so that’s a truth stranger than fiction for you.