Devon Sawa, the actor who played the title character in Eminem's 2000 music video for "Stan," made a public appearance this week at age 47 to promote his upcoming film, The Girl in the River.
Sawa appeared onstage Thursday at The Meryl Streep Center for Performing Artists, just up the street from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, for a SAG-AFTRA event. He wore a powder blue sweater polo with a couple of top buttons left open.
From child star to Stan
Sawa first rose to prominence in the 1990s playing juvenile roles in films including Casper and Little Giants. In 2000, at age 22, he led the cast of the original Final Destination and then portrayed the title character in Eminem's video for "Stan."
Stan is an Eminem superfan whose obsession with the rapper leads to disaster for both himself and his pregnant girlfriend, played by English singer Dido.
Promoting The Girl in the River
Sawa joined his The Girl in the River co-star Sara Murphree and the film's writer and director, Brando Benetton, for a panel discussion moderated by critic Stacy Yvonne. The film is led by Tiffany Haddish and Karate Kid star Ralph Macchio.
Sawa has been married to producer Dawni Sahanovitch since 2013.
Working alongside Eminem
Last August, Sawa spoke exclusively to the Daily Mail about working on "Stan" with Eminem, whose given name is Marshall Mathers. "He was there [on set]. He did the scene where he comes out in the cold. He does the [meet and greet at the] table and then his bus stop [writing the letter] was separately, so we didn't have a lot together," Sawa said. "But I remember him being focused and just there to work. He was there to work - that's what I remember."
A fallback for Macaulay Culkin
A couple of years ago, Sawa revealed he was actually a fallback option to play Stan after the role was turned down by Home Alone star Macaulay Culkin. "They went out to Macaulay Culkin first. I think that they wanted him, and he wasn't available, or didn't want to do it or whatever," he told Entertainment Tonight.
Dr Dre then "suggested" Sawa for the role because of his admiration for Final Destination, in which Sawa had starred. "There happened to be somebody in the casting office that knew somebody who was friends with me, and they called me that way...and it ended up working out pretty good," Sawa recalled. "It's also one of the proudest things I've been a part of."
Shooting the iconic video
In the video, Sawa's character adopts an uncannily similar look to Eminem and lip-syncs the song's lyrics. His descent into madness ends with him locking his pregnant girlfriend in the trunk of his car and driving off a bridge to their deaths.
Sawa recalled feeling awkward on set, saying: "I'll never forget, they told me on the day that I was going to lip-sync it." He added: "I remember, after the first take I did, Dre running in and being like: 'It was good, but can you try it with some rhythm this time?' And I was like: 'Oh my God.' And that was kind of how the day went."
The Vancouver native looked back fondly on the "iconic video," recalling that "Dr Dre was there, D12 was there, I think Snoop was wandering around, Cypress Hill. It was just such a wild three days of filmmaking, it was amazing." Of the lyrics, he said: "I know it better now than I did that day. Because I've heard it millions of times since."
Sawa previously described the on-set atmosphere as "a huge party." He also said he "was already a little dark in my early 20s," which made the character easier for him to play. Eminem, who recently shared the contents of a private letter he received from the late Dolly Parton, was photographed at a Kamala Harris campaign rally in 2024.
A hiatus and comeback
Three years after the "Stan" video, Sawa took a five-year break from acting after feeling "burnt out" from a string of disappointing indie movies and being typecast as a horror actor because of Final Destination, he told Us Weekly.
He was drawn back into the industry by accident, he said, after someone at his agency "didn't get the memo that I quit" and sent him an audition, prompting him to realize "this is what I love" and "what I really want to do."
Nikita and Chucky
Sawa starred from 2010 to 2013 on the CW series Nikita, led by Maggie Q and adapted from the 1990 French thriller La Femme Nikita by Luc Besson. Since then, his work has included the Syfy/USA comedy series Chucky, which ran from 2021 to 2024 and saw Brad Dourif return to voice the killer doll.
