Up and coming actor and New London native Josh Caras scored his biggest role yet in the recently released film "The Glass Castle." The chance provided Caras not only an opportunity to work on a major film production, but to also act alongside Oscar winner Brie Larson and Oscar nominees Woody Harrelson and Naomi Watts.

"When I took the role, I don't think I knew that those actors were going to be in the film. But once I found out, it was certainly intimidating. Not only are they famous actors, they were really good actors that I respect. Woody, Naomi and Brie are really good at what they do, and you want to be able to hold your own next to them," says Caras by phone last week.

But such an opporunity, however intimidating, led way to a great learning experience.  

“Seeing their professionalism shine through or Woody’s methods in his own acting were truly fascinating. He is an organic actor and you can tell that he is very much living in the shoes of the character that he is playing. He was, at the same time, so vicious and so vulnerable,” Caras says.

The film is based the memoir written by former New York magazine columnist Jeannette Walls in 2005. It recounts her unconventional, poverty-stricken upbringing in West Virginia — namely due to her deeply dysfunctional parents. Caras plays the role of her brother, Brian Walls.

Caras, 30, has been acting since he was a child. He lived in New London and attended the Regional Multicultural Magnet School until the second grade before moving to Essex. Since moving to New York City after graduating from Valley Regional High School in Deep River to further pursue his acting ambitions, he has been seen in several other television and film projects, including a role in the 2008 film “Definitely, Maybe” and appearances in “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.”

“'The Glass Castle' was a big get for me, and it was super exciting and way more high profile than anything else I had ever done,” he says.

The film, which was partly filmed in Montreal, required Caras to be on-set for a total of two months in 2016 following a several-month preparation period that required the actor to undergo voice-acting lessons to learn how to perform a West Virginia accent and to shed 20 pounds in weight. Besides the physical demands of exercise and practicing a new accent every day, Caras also needed to study Brian Walls' personality.

“It’s always a challenge playing a character who is still living because it is impossible to do them justice in just one film alone,” he says. “I spoke with him on the phone before the film, and he was really interesting because I felt like I knew him after reading the book. Maybe that’s unfair to him because no book can capture the entirety of a real person, but it was really informative just to have a chance to get a sense of him as a person. He was a very nice, shy type of guy, and I felt that my own personality was similar with his, which maybe made acting in the role easier.”

Caras, who “sort of just fell into” his acting career, began acting as a child, but never dreamed of turning it into a career.

“I didn’t even know it was a possibility. In all honesty, my parents aren’t show parents in the least,” he says.

It wasn’t until Caras attended an acting summer camp in Suffield while in high school that his acting career started to take off.

“The director of the camp encouraged me to audition with an acting agent in New York City. So I went into the city and auditioned to be represented by this agent, and he said, ‘Are you sure you are ready for this?’ and I said, ‘Sure, why not?'”

What followed was an incredibly busy time, going to and from New York City for auditions while balancing the demands of high school. Once graduating, Caras moved to the city to pursue a degree in history at The New School, while continuing to act on the side.

“More and more parts kept coming in. I even had to take off a semester at one point and go part-time at another point while acting in other films,” Caras says.

And while being on the set of “The Glass Castle” wasn’t drastically different from other sets that he has played on in the past, acting in this film gave him a window of opportunity to observe the professionalism displayed by Larson, Harrelson and Watts.

“For example, the arm-wrestling scene, which was really a pivotal moment in the movie, took an entire day to film. The shot of the arm-wrestling alone took dozens and dozens of takes. I mean, you need dozens (of takes) for each actor in the scene, and then wide-shots, two-shots. It’s really a lot, and I don’t think people realize that.

“Naomi had just gotten off a red-eye flight from Los Angeles, and there wasn’t any air conditioning allowed on the movie set, and she had to wear a fat-suit for that scene — which meant that she was wearing it for the entire day. We weren’t able to get to her coverage until the end of the day, but she didn’t complain even once. When they finally did go to film her, she knocked it out of the park. It was certainly a lesson on professionalism and on being there for the other actors, and that was very informative. I learned that, as an actor, you just need to do the job.”

m.biekert@theday.com