I sat down earlier this evening with There Will be Blood costar Paul Dano. We know the same people and have talked at a couple of parties, but this was the first interview. Dano plays a dual role — twins, actually — in There Will Be Blood. “Paul” is a bright, mature, realistic fellow; “Eli” is an opportunistic evangelical creep. Dano delivers on the intensity and then some. He and Daniel Day Lewis have a helluva final scene together.

Here are two mp3 files of our talk. The first is longer than the second.

For my money Dano had a slyer, deeper, more interesting thing going on in Little Miss Sunshine than did his Oscar-winning costar Alan Arkin. Dano and Steve Carell obviously share the film’s richest and most intimate scene.

Our common denominator is having both lived in Wilton, Connecticut, for a few years. Dano, 23, graduated from Wilton High School in ’02. He’s currently living in Manhattan’s East Village and starring onstage in Jonathan Marc Sherman‘s Things We Want, directed by Ethan Hawke and costarring Peter Dinklage, Josh Hamilton and Zoe Kazan.