John Robinson knows firsthand how the life of a typical teenager can change in an instant. Last fall, he was just another student at a Portland, Oregon, high school, playing lacrosse, wakeboarding, and taking acting classes in his free time. Then he showed up for an open casting call for Elephant, director Gus Van Sant’s stripped-down, unflinching take on a Columbine-like mass murder. “I heard from a friend they were casting extras,” says Robinson, 18. “So I took along a copy of [Chuck Palahniuk’s novel] Survivor and waited four hours in line.” After the audition, Van Sant (Good Will Hunting, My Own Private Idaho) asked Robinson to star in the film, which would go on to win the Palme d’Or and Best Director prizes at this year’s Cannes film festival.

 

A similar impulsiveness is on display in Elephant, a baffling, bloody nightmare that provides many scenes of graphic violence but few clues as to the motivations of its teen killers. "It's a movie about how school can make kids feel insecure, desperate, trapped," says Robinson. "People who don't want to think will hate it." It's his easy, natural performance, as a quiet kid with a troubled home life, that holds the story together?Robinson wanders through campus courtyards and hallways while the mundane existences of football jocks and cliquish glamour girls play out around him. He's in no hurry to find a purpose in his offscreen life, either. "If I made one movie a year," he says, "that would help pay back my mom for all she spent on acting lessons. But right now, I'm more worried about getting through my junior year."