This Breakout 'Hunger Games' Star Is "No Damsel in Distress" in Ryan Phillippe's Gritty Action Thriller

3 hours ago 8

Published Feb 21, 2026, 7:00 AM EST

Summary

Collider's Perri Nemiroff moderates an exclusive Q&A with One Mile: Chapter One director Adam Davidson and stars Ryan Phillippe and C. Thomas Howell.
In this interview, the trio discusses their "guerrilla-style" filmmaking while shooting two movies back-to-back.
They also talk about the physical demands of action movies, stunts, creating grounded, realistic antagonists, and Amélie Hoeferle's scene-stealing performance.

Adam Davidson, the director behind hit series like Community, Six Feet Under, and Parenthood, returns to film with his gritty action-thriller, One Mile: Chapter One, and clearly, he had no interest in easing back into it. Making the most of a tight budget and time constraints, Davidson teamed up with star and producer Ryan Phillippe to not only tackle one movie, but two, daring to film back-to-back with the sequel.

In the movie, Phillippe flexes his action star muscles — a genre he tells Perri Nemiroff he feels quite at home in — as Danny, an ex-special forces operative, who sets out on a roadtrip with his daughter Alex (Amélie Hoeferle) to visit potential colleges. He’s hoping to reconnect with Alex, but when an unexpected detour forces them to set up camp in the woods, they soon discover they aren’t alone. An off-grid community, led by C. Thomas Howell’s Stanley, begins to hunt the two of them. Equipped with only his mind, his military skills, and a backpack, Danny will stop at nothing to protect his daughter.

After Collider’s advanced screening, Phillippe, Davidson, and Howell joined Nemiroff on stage for an exclusive conversation, revealing the behind-the-scenes details for One Mile. The trio discusses using “every trick imaginable” for their “guerrilla-style” approach, working through constant weather delays, and shifting for spur-of-the-moment scenes and fight sequences, reliant on their unpredictable filming location. They also talk about why Hoeferle was perfect for the role, her breakout performance, Phillippe’s intense physical training and dedication, and Howell’s iconic ‘80s horror inspiration for embodying a grounded antagonist. You can watch the full interview in the video above, or read the transcript below.

‘Community’ and ‘Six Feet Under’ Director Pulled Out “Every Trick Imaginable” for ‘One Mile’

“I’m still learning all the time.”

Adam Davidson discusses One Mile at Collider's Q&A.

PERRI NEMIROFF: Adam, I'm going to start with you because it's been a good while since you've directed a film, so I've got two questions about that. Is a film something you were looking to make, or was it more about this material coming your way at the perfect time?

ADAM DAVIDSON: The answer is both. For a long time, I've been looking for something that just resonated, and happily doing a lot of different genres in TV, and that's where Ryan and I first got to work with each other. I just loved the opportunity that television has given me in terms of exploring different genres, different lengths, and working with incredible actors. But then this material came before me, and I just love that it was this genre movie, this thriller, with so much action and tension and all the jump scares and everything like that, but that at its heart, it was a father-daughter story. I'm a father of three daughters, so it just resonated. I always feel that if you're emotionally involved and engaged in the story, it makes it such a better ride, so much more fun.

In an effort to highlight some of your incredible TV work, first I'll just shout out Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist because it was one of my favorite shows. It's a delight. But to highlight a little more, can you tell us some past TV experiences that surprised you in terms of how much they came in handy here?

DAVIDSON: Oh, everything, including making movies as a 13-year-old in my backyard, because we were doing every trick imaginable for this one. It was definitely boots-on-the-ground, guerrilla-style filmmaking. But I think probably a little bit of everything works its way in there, the different shows I've done. I've done everything from Six Feet Under to Deadwood, Community’s one of my favorites, Parenthood, and Hell on Wheels. We have producers and an actress from Hell on Wheels. In fact, the connection of Hell on Wheels brought us up to Canada. I'm dying up here. That's a long list. [Laughs]

Truly, a massive and extremely impressive list.

DAVIDSON: But I'm still learning all the time.

Ryan Phillippe Brings a “Rich” History to His Action

He discusses collaborating on the script and his intense physical training.

Danny dodges an off-grid community member's knife attack.

Ryan, I'll come your way now to talk about signing on. The first thing I'm curious about is signing on not only as a lead actor, but also as a producer. When this material comes your way, what is it that makes you think to yourself, “I can best serve these movies by wearing two hats instead of one?”

RYAN PHILLIPPE: Well, initially, there wasn't material. We were there from the ground up. I was there from the ground up, helping to shape the script and various drafts and being part of the development process. A few years ago, Adam and I worked on a TV series I did called Shooter, and there are elements of this character in that character that I played, Bob Lee Swagger, on this show, Shooter. I like doing action. I said at the beginning, when I was introducing the movie, that this movie was birthed out of a true situation between a father and daughter, and the heart of our movie is a father trying to reconnect with his daughter, initially, until things go off the rails. I'm a dad, as well, of two daughters, and that resonated with me the same way it did with Adam.

We put together a team that was complementary to my strengths, in regards to, I'm very physical as an actor. I mean, I did a lot of the stunts in this. In Shooter, I think I was doubled once in three seasons. I helped choreograph fight scenes on that show, and so I get really into the action. Also, specifically military. I come from a very military family — my dad and my uncle served, I have cousins enlisted right now, both of my grandfathers fought in World War II — so it's a rich part of my family's history, and I take that aspect really seriously.

I'll lean into the training that you have to do now. I'm always fascinated by the broad strokes training one has to do in order to jump into a fight-heavy movie like this, but I also really like discussing the specifics required in order to fight like your character has a history. Can you tell us some specifics about training to become someone who is ex-Special Forces?

PHILLIPPE: Well, I've done it a couple of times in my career, so I had a base knowledge. Of course, you always have to brush up and get back into that tactical mindset. And there are things you want to make sure are as accurate as they can possibly be when you're emulating or playing an enlisted man or woman. You want to make sure you're doing the proper diligence to be sound in those regards, and that it doesn't look fake to the military men and women who might watch. That's important to me. That actually is something that I think about when I go into a piece that is related to the military.

I also have an extensive background in martial arts. I started when I was eight years old and I competed in tournaments. So, all of those things kind of factor in. I've trained with Navy SEALs, I've trained with Marines, I've trained with various branches of the Army, and all of that comes into play when you're putting a piece like this together.

Of all the skills you've picked up over the years, is there any particular one that came most naturally to you, but then I also want the opposite, a particular skill you had to pick up to do these kinds of fight scenes that took the most legwork to be able to master and convey in a real manner?

PHILLIPPE: I think what came in most handy was Epsom salt in my bathtub at the end of the workday. Truthfully, you would probably imagine this, but you get minor injuries when you do movies like this because you're repeating the same action over and over again at an intensity level. There were times I’d get home at night and look at my legs, and there’s a bruise, bruise, bruise, bruise, to the point where when you're doing the non-action scenes, you're super uncomfortable, because we're not shooting in sequence.

I hope you guys watch movie two, but we were shooting them concurrently, and we weren't shooting them sequentially, you know? So there would be days, Tommy and I have talked about this, where we would start the day doing scenes from movie one, then go to movie two, then go back to movie one. It was important for us to keep track with each other, even though we didn't share a lot of screen time together in the first one — we may in the second, not to give anything away — but he'd be like, “Wait a minute, wait a minute, which movie is this?” I'd be like, “I think it's the first one. I'm pretty sure.” [Laughs] So, there were those challenges, as well, logistically and practically, when you're shooting two movies at once, which is something that is rarely, if ever, done, to my knowledge. And same with our release. To release chapters one and two of a story on the same day, I think, is pretty novel.

As though making one movie isn’t hard enough!

PHILLIPPE: [Laughs] Exactly! Each movie made is a minor miracle, particularly at a certain budget level and with time constraints, but the fact that we managed to pull off making two is wild.

DAVIDSON: My hat’s off to both of these guys. Ryan might have gone home to Epsom salts, but we never heard about it or saw it. He was always the first one on set, backpack on, ready to go, and fully committed. Also, the action stuff is great, but how awesome is he as a father?

This Iconic ‘80s Horror Slasher Inspired C. Thomas Howell’s Approach to Antagonists

“Scared the hell out of me.”

John Ryder (Rutger Hauer) in a car with a teddy bear in 'The Hitcher'

Tommy, I feel like with this kind of narrative, playing the antagonist could very easily become playing a cookie-cutter villain, a one-dimensional character. So, when this script first came your way, what was it about Stanley that made you think to yourself, “I'll be able to play him in a way where maybe people don't agree with what he's doing, but at least they understand where he's coming from?”

C. THOMAS HOWELL: That was important to me. When I read the script, I realized this was a guy who was capable of doing bad things, but he wasn't necessarily a bad person. When I was 17, I worked with the late, great Rutger Hauer on a film called The Hitcher, and we had lunch together one day. As he was staring out the window of his dressing room, smoking a cigarette, I was silently eating and finally mustered up the courage to start some small talk. I said, “Rutger, everybody says how amazing you are at playing villains. What's your secret to playing bad guys?” He took a long drag off his cigarette and sort of leaned in, and with that thick Dutch accent, stared into my soul and said, “I don't play bad guys.” Scared the hell out of me, so I slowly backed out of the trailer there, and that rattled around in my head for 20-plus years.

I finally got a chance to play a villain in a TV series called Criminal Minds, where I played the Boston Reaper. I had enough life experience, and I started recalling that moment with Rutger, and the value finally struck me with how he approached playing a villain. He would stick that knife to my throat and look at me squirming in my seat, but he would emote empathy, he would emote pain. He would emote everything other than just anger and fear, and the obvious choices.

So, being able to play a broken character like Stanley that has the responsibility of this off-grid village that he's helped build, and the need to, for me as an artist, care for other people…. One of the scenes that I liked when we finally do kidnap the girl and I'm going through her book, and I'm expressing empathy towards her and trying to talk her into a lifestyle that I think could be better for her, was indicative of, really, my approach to the character all along. I think there are more layers, and it's more complicated and more fun to play than just the one-note bad guy, and I really appreciated that lesson from Rutger and being able to apply it now.

Stanley aims a gun at someone off-camera.

Leaning into the village a little bit, I wanted to highlight the incredible production design. I love how you can fill out your own character based on his environment, so were there any little details in that village set that maybe aren't front-and-center in a frame, but really spoke to you and helped fill out him and his world?

HOWELL: Well, we had a great team. Our set designer was fantastic. I think when Adam laid his eyes on that mill, because that's basically what it was, an old mill, it really helped us all come together and understand what it was that we were doing. Because when I read this, I was like, “What is this? Just a few cabins in the mountains?” But everything that we built, from gardens to this community eating table in the second movie, we get closer to showing more of what this place really had to offer.

PHILLIPPE: Yeah, I would say in the second movie, the village is very much a primary character. You really get to see the inner workings and what it is that you've actually set up for this community.

HOWELL: And what there is to lose for somebody like Stanley, and the importance of holding it together from a survival standpoint, sustaining these people in that place. That's important.

“She's not just the damsel in distress.”

Alex and Danny look down a hill at something, appearing frightened.

This is one of the things that I was most eager to ask you all about. I'm so excited to highlight Amélie [Hoeferle]’s work in this because I thought she was just absolutely breathtaking. Perfect in that role. Adam, I will start with you. Please tell us everything about finding and casting her.

DAVIDSON: Oh, thank you. Well, you hear this story a lot, but you’ve got to get lucky. We had been meeting fantastic actors. All were very good. We were getting closer to the wire of having to pull the trigger, but there just didn't seem to be someone yet who was, like, the person, and I think Ryan and I kind of both felt this without having a lot of conversations about it, because of when we were doing chemistry reads and everything. So, it was kind of a last-minute Hail Mary. I reached out to a friend and was like, “Who is out there that I haven't seen?” And they brought everybody. Casting did an incredible job.

PHILLIPPE: We probably saw, like, 100 girls over the course of casting.

DAVIDSON: Yeah. Casting did a great job. Everybody was fantastic. But I was shooting something else, and over the weekend, we set up a Zoom, and she was in Germany at the time. There was one movie she had done, Night Swim. I saw it. I watched it, and I just thought, “There's something there.” So, we set up a Zoom, and it pains producers, but I like to read with the actor, just to start to feel them out, and also maybe throw them a little curveball here and there and see how they react, and there was just something really real about her. I didn't say anything, I just said, “Let's send it to Ryan.” I didn’t tell you anything, I just said, “We met somebody. I think you should watch her.” And immediately, he was like, “This is her! This is it.”

PHILLIPPE: She was an immediate yes for me. I just thought that she had everything that the Alex character needed to have. And you'll see as she develops as a character in movie two, that comes to the fore in an even more significant manner. And she reminded me of my oldest daughter. I think that might have factored into it a little bit. But yeah, you wanted this angsty, burgeoning artist, who's stuck between what her mother wants her to be and what she wants to be. And then there are these moments, too, where you see she's sort of cut of the same cloth as her father in some ways, where she fights back, where she has agency, where she's not going to take it lying down. She's not just the damsel in distress, and I think that's an important thing for young women, too.

HOWELL: And also had an incredible work ethic. We put her in a very difficult circumstance, physically, multiple times. Whether we were yanking her around by her hair or she's climbing out of freezing cold water, she never complained.

Danny watches as Alex jumps from a cliff.

DAVIDSON: [Laughs] Every once in a while, we'd feed her, too.

PHILLIPPE: We’d even let her go back to the hotel occasionally.

DAVIDSON: She's always grounded and truthful. And I think one thing we were looking for, and I was looking for, and I know the producers were, as well, is we didn't want a petulant, moody teen and someone to play that attitude. We wanted to feel that it was a real person.

HOWELL: We had a director like that already!

DAVIDSON: [Laughs] Yeah, exactly. She has reasons to have her walls up. She's been hurt. It's been built up over time, and so I think seeing that. And then the other fun thing, during the reading, because we weren't sure yet what was going to happen in the second movie, but I knew at some point she needed to take charge, but there weren't scenes to read, so I would switch roles and have her read Danny's part, and I would read Alex’s part, just to see her be strong.

But just one quick side note, which is back to how you get lucky sometimes, we were shooting on Vancouver Island, and she arrived, and everything was very fast once the actors landed, getting them into costumes and all that stuff. We needed to come up with the art that she would have, and so the production designer had come up with different samples. I really love when the actors input what they want to wear or props or anything because it's gotta be personal, it's gotta mean something to them, and so I brought the art in front of her, and I was like, “So, what do you think? What do you respond to?” And she said, “Oh, I have some art.” I said, “What do you mean?” She said, “I went to art school.” I was like, “What?” So she had gotten into an art school, and I didn't even know this when we cast her, and some of those pieces you see are actually her pieces.

The ‘One Mile’ Stars Met Their Challenges Head-On, “No Fear”

“When I was watching the giant beat the shit out of Ryan, it brought joy to my heart.”

The One Mile crew discussing the movie at Collider's Q&A.

I'll pose this question to all three of you because I'd love to hear the different perspectives on this. For each of you, before filming began, which scene did you think was going to be the toughest for you to pull off, and ultimately, was it or did a different one catch you by surprise?

PHILLIPPE: Honestly, I know what you're getting at, but I feel like my approach is usually one of no fear. If a scene does seem challenging, that's more exciting for me, and so I look forward to the ones that are the most complex or maybe the most physical or maybe the most difficult. I like doing the things, sometimes, that the viewer watching it might say, “I wouldn't want to do that,” like jumping into the freezing cold water, and some of the getting slammed to the ground and feeling actual and literal pain. I kind of like it.

I have to follow up. What was the scene that maybe scared you the most, but that also made you most eager to jump into it?

PHILLIPPE: When the giant is, like, kicking the shit out of me at the trailer. [Laughs]

That’s fair!

PHILLIPPE: That guy is so big. So big.

DAVIDSON: Yeah, he’s a real giant.

Ryan Phillippe talks with Perri Nemiroff at Collider's One Mile Q&A.

You got one, Adam?

DAVIDSON: That's a great question. I think each of them should scare you a little bit, right? Because you want to make them good. What was always the terrifying part is, like, can we make this day? Can we pull this off?

PHILLIPPE: Yeah, that's what's scary.

HOWELL: It's ambitious. It's very ambitious. Doing two movies at the same time was difficult. I foolishly thought, “Okay, we'll shoot this sort of chronologically,” but you don't do that. You shoot it according to locations, and that was a real challenge at times for us to kind of wrap our heads around because we're going through arcs. The energy really changes in the second movie. For me, the first movie, my goal is to take something away from Ryan's character, and without giving it all away, in the second movie, he actually takes something away from me. So then it becomes very personal, and the stakes are raised.

When you're dealing with character arcs, it's important to check in with each other, with the director, with your colleague, and really remind each other where you're at. So, that was a real challenge, and I had some concerns about that going into it. I try not to have expectations, because you don't want to be let down, but I will say, I really was proud and pleased at how this movie, both of them, came around. I think the action looks great. My father's a stuntman, everybody in my family are stunt people, so when I was watching the giant beat the shit out of Ryan, it brought joy to my heart. [Laughs]

We've talked a lot about the ambition of shooting two movies at once, but on top of that, I've heard you talk about this a little, you did that with limited resources. Can you give us an example of something you did in your movies with less than what people would expect, something that another production might throw tons of fancy tools and money at, but because you had a bunch of people who were just really good at their jobs and willing to give this story their all, you were able to pull it off with less?

DAVIDSON: It felt like almost every day there was something like that. It was funny because watching the movie, I haven’t seen it for a while, so it’s nice to get a little time from it. So, I'm getting hooked into the story and pulled in, and at the same time, another part of my brain is going, “Oh, yeah, we shot that scene, that scene, that scene, and that scene and that scene all in one day.” There are a couple of times there I was like, “Wow, I don't even know how we pulled it off.”

PHILLIPPE: We had delays for rain nearly every day, and for safety's sake, if there was lightning, we would have to shut down for an extended period of time, and then you're losing production hours. Our base camp was underwater and muddy. We had planks that we'd walk to and from our trailers on, so we didn't get bogged down in the mud. It was cold, windy, rainy, and you don't see a lot of that somehow. We didn't have a big special effects budget, so I don't understand it. But it rained almost every day.

HOWELL: There were scenes that we shot that were supposed to be in the second movie that ended up in the first movie. There were cuts that were completely different. One of my favorite moments that I'm a part of was something that we didn't really know we were going to do until literally the day before we shot it, and that was the last scene at the school, where you see Stanley reveal that he's there. That was something that Adam was insistent upon. We weren't really clear on how it was going to be or if it was going to work, and I thought it worked great. So, you just have to trust the process, and allow things to move and shift and grow, and if you're able to do that, then you will find gifts and treasures that you didn't anticipate or expect, or that weren't in the original script. So, that was something that I was pleasantly surprised by.

DAVIDSON: Also, one thing that we just kind of knew going in and shifted, and what we did well on our feet, and that's a big credit to the team that Aaron and Jaiden [Kaplan] had set up in bringing in Michael Lohmann as a producer, which was that when you get the script, the writing, you know the action and we know what the beats are in the story, but we didn't know yet where we were going to film it. So then we adapted once we went to pick Vancouver Island. So like that waterfall jump, that cliff jump, that wasn't in the original script, but Mike found that. He went driving around the island one day, found that, and we're like, “Let's try it. Instead of building another set, let's use what's here.”

HOWELL: That’s such a Butch Cassidy-Sundance Kid moment.

DAVIDSON: So, that was behind the scenes, and also on the screen, especially, you'll see it in the second film, is this idea that not only is he a skilled fighter, but his character is somebody who gets dropped behind enemy lines with nothing but a backpack, and he has to always figure it out. And I think what you get to see, and what I'm really proud of and like, is that we get to see him using his head. He's not just coming in there, taking on 25 guys, but using his head and making a plan and figuring out how to make the numbers more even. And that came out of also finding that location, and like, “What can we do here? Here’s this mill. How can we make this part of the story?” And there was a lot of openness from everybody to adapting and integrating that.

‘One Mile’ Was Made Possible Through Their Filmmaking Family

Between location changes, time constraints, and a tight budget, everyone had to rally to tackle two films at once.

C. Thomas Howell and Ryan Phillippe on stage at Collider's One Mile Q&A.

Again, none of this happens without an A-plus team around you. I'll preface this question by saying it is a little unfair because every single name you see in film credits is of the utmost importance to seeing a film through to fruition. But, just to highlight some more people on your team, can each of you name an unsung hero of One Mile, someone who maybe we don't see in the spotlight all that often, but we need to know about the contribution they made to these films?

HOWELL: Our cinematography, who was fantastic. Alwyn [Kumst], who I actually worked with 25 years earlier on a show called Peter Benchley's Amazon. It was great to see him again and watch him work with, again, limited resources. We’re hiking back into the woods, you can only pack so much equipment with you, and I thought he did a great job.

PHILLIPPE: And I would say our stunt team. They were incredible. The best that you could get out there. But to Adam's point, they would have to modify and create with very little notice before we were about to shoot those sequences, because the setting or the set itself had changed, and we had to modify. So, there was so much choreography that was done, maybe sometimes hours before we shot a scene, and so for it to come out as well as it did, with that being the case. Usually, for an action piece, you'll train for months on a soundstage on pads, practicing that way. We weren't afforded that luxury from a time standpoint, so what they were able to put together and then drop us into, I thought, was really phenomenal.

DAVIDSON: There are so many people to thank. We were lucky. When Ryan and I were speaking early on before production, we talked about this idea of going somewhere, and that's where we were going to be. A lot of the movies I love from older periods of films, they would do that. Nobody was shooting in Vancouver when Rambo first shot there. You move a whole company, and you're a family anyway, but even more so when you're all living on the island. And one of the things that I really got a kick out of was the familial relationships. So, it all started with Jaiden and Aaron, but then it moved into other areas of production. We had fathers and sons working together, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives.

HOWELL: Chad Oakes, who was fantastic with bringing the best crew that we could put together up there.

DAVIDSON: Absolutely.

HOWELL: And that really matters.

DAVIDSON: But one person, I think, who had an incredible challenge ahead, which you'll see more in the second film, is Carol Case with costumes, because how do you depict the people that have to feel like they're different, but yet you don't want to put them in costumes? They have to feel real. Also, really peopling it up, I think she did a really great job making that come together with very little resources, too.

One Mile and One Mile: Chapter Two are available now to rent or own on digital.