Alden Ehrenreich has a thing for stepping into roles that come with a certain shadow. First it was Han Solo, a part baked into the DNA of anyone who ever saw a Star Wars movie. Now the conversation has turned to Tom Ripley, Patricia Highsmith's charming, conscience-free con artist who has been played by everyone from Alain Delon to Matt Damon to Andrew Scott. Ehrenreich's name keeps surfacing in and around that world, and in a new chat he opened up about what it takes to bring a character like Ripley back to life without turning him into a rerun.
The short version: Ehrenreich is under no illusion that he's inheriting a blank slate. When you take on Ripley, you're taking on a lineage. And he seems to find that idea more invigorating than intimidating - a puzzle worth solving rather than a legacy to protect.
A Character That Refuses to Be Pinned Down
Part of what makes Ripley such a juicy role is that Highsmith never quite lets you get a clean read on him. He's a killer, sure, but he's also a striver - a guy with a taste for the finer things and a talent for becoming whoever he needs to be. Ehrenreich zeroed in on that slipperiness, describing Ripley as a figure who's constantly performing and never fully knowable.
That inscrutability is exactly what makes the character worth revisiting. Ripley isn't a horror villain who shows up with a mask and a motive. He's the guy at the party who seems effortlessly fascinating until you realize you have no idea what he actually wants. Ehrenreich's take leans into that ambiguity rather than trying to resolve it, treating the audience's unease as an asset instead of a problem to fix.
It's a smart instinct. Ripley stories live or die on whether you're rooting for him, terrified of him, or - ideally - both at the same time.
No Impersonations Allowed
The easy trap with a role this well-worn is doing karaoke. Channel the famous version, hit the familiar notes, collect the goodwill. Ehrenreich made clear he wasn't interested in that approach, and he pushed back on the idea that playing Ripley means paying tribute to whoever came before.
That tracks with his instincts as an actor. He's never been the type to chase the obvious version of a part. Instead, he talked about the character as a psychological problem to solve from the inside - finding the specific logic of a person who can do terrible things and still function, who can love something beautiful and ruin it in the same breath. The appeal, as he framed it, isn't the con itself. It's the interior machinery that makes the con possible.
For anyone who's watched a dozen actors play the same role and quietly ranked them in their head, that's the right thing to hear. The bar isn't imitation. It's conviction.
The Han Solo Hall of Mirrors
Ehrenreich has been here before, and he's honest about it. Taking on a character with a thousand fans and a few legendary predecessors means living inside a hall of mirrors, where everyone arrives with a version already in their head. He's described that experience as a strange kind of pressure - the knowledge that your performance is being compared to something you'll never fully see, because it exists somewhere in the audience's memory.
But it's also given him a thick skin and a clear philosophy. Don't fight the shadow. Don't pretend it isn't there. Just build the character so thoroughly that it eventually casts its own.
That mindset seems to be what draws him to Ripley. Where Han Solo is a character the audience already loves, Ripley is one they already suspect. The work is different, but the challenge rhymes: find the human being underneath the icon and let everything else follow.
What This Means for the Revived Ripley
So what does a revival of Ripley look like with Ehrenreich at the center? Based on how he's talking about it, the answer is: probably less homage than reinvention. He seems more interested in the uncomfortable, modern read of the character - the con man as a product of wanting more than you're given, the killer as someone who treats other people like tools in a project of self-improvement. That's a framing that fits the Highsmith novels as snugly as it fits the present moment.
And there's a certain logic to the timing. Ripley has never really gone away, but the culture's appetite for stories about smooth operators and the cost of a beautiful lie has rarely been sharper. A performer willing to play him as a genuine mystery rather than a smirk in a nice suit feels like the right bet.
Ehrenreich, for his part, seems happy to leave the verdict to viewers. He's spoken about the fun of building a character whose motives slide out of reach, and about trusting that audiences enjoy the vertigo. Given how many versions of Ripley we've already had, that confidence is its own kind of con. The question, as always with Ripley, is whether we'll fall for it.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter