<\/p>\n
Vanessa Eng fully expected to become a lawyer,\u00a0but now all evidence points to her becoming a successful film star.<\/p>\n
The 27-year-old who grew up in Jericho is about to make her feature film debut in director Yorgos Lanthimos’\u00a0sci-fi comedy “Bugonia,”<\/a> which opens in Manhattan on next Friday and on Long Island on Oct. 31. In the movie, she plays the dutiful assistant to a high-powered CEO (Emma Stone) who is kidnapped by aliens.<\/p>\n And in a turn of events\u00a0that seems as quirky as any scene in one of Lanthimos’ typically surreal films, Eng wasn’t even aware of what the film was about when she answered the cast call and then won the role.<\/p>\n “The casting director called me and said ‘You got it.’\u00a0And I didn\u2019t even know who it was for, I was just sobbing hysterically. It was like somebody saw me and is giving me a chance,” said Eng, who now lives in London.\u00a0“And then she\u00a0said, “Yorgos really liked your take on the character,’ And I was like, ‘Yorgos, what are you talking about?’ ”\u00a0<\/p>\n Getting to work with Stone, whom Eng calls Emily,\u00a0was a truly rewarding experience, she said. “She makes your job easy. She’s such a great actor that it just comes naturally when you\u2019re opposite her.”<\/p>\n Eng especially loved witnessing the interaction between Stone and Lanthimos, who’d previously worked together on “The Favorite”<\/a> and “Poor Things,”<\/a>\u00a0as they’d work through scenes. And Eng also relished her moments on the set with Lanthimos.\u00a0“Yorgos is one of those directors who\u2019s like ‘You guys do your own thing and if I have a direction I’ll\u00a0tell you, But her rarely does that. He very much trusts his actors in the process.”<\/p>\n Collaborating\u00a0with such high-caliber talent was a long stretch from Eng’s first acting venture, when she played Dorothy in a fourth-grade production of “The Wizard of Oz.” She got cast, Eng recalled, because the teacher thought she was “loud and obnoxious enough” to play the lead. “I said, ‘I don\u2019t think that\u2019s what Dorothy\u00a0is.’ But I think\u00a0their feeling was that I wouldn’t be afraid to do this in front of a crowd.” Eng said. “It was superfun but\u00a0I remember being a lot more nervous than I thought I\u2019d be.”<\/p>\n She waited five more years to try again, this time in a school production of “Seussical: The Musical” as Vlad Vladikoff, a “human bird running around on stage,” she said. When she played her first dramatic role in high school, she was hooked. “The first day I set foot\u00a0on stage, I said my lines and I thought, ‘I love this.’ It felt like a really transformative moment for me.”<\/p>\n Still, when it came to time for college, her parents convinced her that law would be a safer career\u00a0choice than acting. But even after getting a doctorate in political science from the University of Miami, Eng knew she’d rather be on a movie set than in a courtroom.<\/p>\n In her last year at graduate school, she took some acting classes and appeared in a few short films, which led her to answer that fateful “Bugonia” cast call.<\/p>\n Eng just signed with a manager and an agent in the United States, which she hopes will open even more doors. And even her parents have no problem with her career change.<\/p>\n “When I told my mother I got the part,” Eng joked, “she said ‘Tell Emma Stone I say hello.”<\/p>\n