Grace Van Dien Talks Life on the Run in “Silver Star”
Grace Van Dien is a pregnant teenager on the run in the upcoming Silver Star. It’s a good, old-fashioned American road trip movie that centers on two characters who are rarely given the opportunity to sit in the driver’s seat of a film like this. Van Dien plays Franny, a pregnant teenager who’s in the wrong place at the wrong time. She’s at a bank, hoping to get a loan after she just lost her job. It’s this bank that Billie, played by Troy Leigh-Anne Johnson, has decided to rob. After her plan goes south, Billie kidnaps Franny, but the two learn they have more to offer each other than they realized upon first meeting.
Van Dien was drawn to Silver Star in a pure, emotional sense. It was a script that stood out to her as something she would like to be part of. If she couldn’t star in it, she could find inspiration from it as an actor.
“Point blank, all working actors love to be hired. When I read the script, I thought, ‘this is really good. No way in hell they hire me.’ The role had already been announced with Sydney Sweeney as Franny, but there was a scheduling conflict so they had to find someone new.”
“Franny was so intriguing to me. There was something unlikeable about her in the most loving way. When the directors responded kindly to my read for Franny, I cried. It’s a gift to work in this industry on anything. To work on something that, as an audience member, would inspire you to keep creating…how lucky is that. I hope I can do more projects like this.”
courtesy of Silver Star
Van Dien’s character is a ray of positivity that’s at odds with virtually everyone and every situation in the film. She’s pastel, snapping pink bubblegum at any given moment as Billie simmers in anxiety beside her. They’re opposites in the purest sense of the word, described by Van Dien as “‘Black Cat and Golden Retriever’ energy.” As a performer, Van Dien was thrilled at the opportunity to be this never-ending source of energy.
“I fell in love with the character. She has ten trains of thought constantly in motion, and she loves to verbalise all of them all at once. It’s overwhelming to be in her presence and can get quite annoying. How great is that?”
“Franny is so pure. She goes into every interaction with 100% trust, leaving it to the other person to uphold or break that trust. Even with all her experiences of having this go wrong, she doesn’t let it change her nature. There’s something really beautiful about that.”
Silver Star is a road trip movie about a bank robbery that goes wrong, but when you peel back the layers it’s not about money. Not really. Billie and Franny aren’t in it to be swimming in cash and globetrotting for the hell of it. They’re making increasingly risky choices because they have family to think about. Franny has a child on the way whose father wants no part of them. Billie was just released from jail and learned that her family is in dire straits financially. They need money to hold onto the fragments of their family that mean everything to them. Even if Billie’s family barely talks to her and Franny is too scared to learn the gender of her child, all their decisions go back to the family they wish they could create.
“Something Billie and Franny share, with each other and with most humans, is a desire to be loved. There are a million ways to express or exercise that, but in the end, the coveted result is the same. We want someone to see us for everything that we are and still love us. It’s so human. My favorite thing about Franny is that she’s not afraid to ask for love. Demand it, even.”
courtesy of Silver Star
Billie and Franny find that love with each other. While they start off as fairly adversarial, as one might expect with a kidnapper and a kidnapee, the longer they spend on the road together the more they realize the good in each other. There’s a beautiful simplicity to their budding relationship, one that’s tentative, yet exciting and nervous. To develop the connection, Leigh-Anne Johnson and Van Dien lived together during shooting.
“We shared a little apartment in New Jersey. There were many laughs and tears shed before and during filming that helped the relationship feel fluid on-screen. I love that girl so much.”
Silver Star has played at a few film festivals and picked up its fair share of praise from critics and audiences, but one topic that keeps being brought up relates to the relationship of Franny and Billie. While some fans may be disappointed in the way it ends, Van Dien makes a strong argument that the film is right to end where it does and that not every romance needs to be sealed with a kiss. That it’s actually far more romantic to begin to plan a life together than it is to share a kiss.
“I’ve seen a lot of reviews expressing disappointment that there’s no kiss in the movie. (Spoiler). But we actually did film a kiss scene! It was cut! For the right reasons, honestly. The tenderness of their love and the tentative build in the relationship is enough. Sometimes I view love in films and I think, ‘this relationship would not last past this storyline.’ With Billie and Franny, the end of the movie is the beginning of their story together. I don’t think that’s quite common in cinema, and maybe it’s a tease, but I wouldn’t change it.”
It’s clear that Van Dien loves this career and this industry. If Silver Star is your first introduction to Van Dien as an actor, it will become immediately clear how wholly she throws herself into a role. Franny could have easily come across as an airheaded sidekick, but Van Dien imbues her with a sense of life that transcends the screen. She views each role as a new challenge, a new hurdle that she’s excited to clear.
“I think the hardest thing for me to do is play with anger that I can’t justify. When I disagree with my character’s emotions, I have to wrestle with my brain a lot to make sense of it. Every role has its own difficulties.”
Her creativity doesn’t end in front of the camera, though. Van Dien says that “directing and writing are [her] favorite forms of expression.”
“I know that’s a very common response from actors, but I think if you play the puppet long enough, you eventually want to grab the strings.”
This will not be the last you see of Van Dien this year, and what a relief that is. She currently stars in Redux Redux, which premiered at the 2025 SXSW festival and is currently playing in theaters. Later this year, Van Dien will return to the world of horror.
“I have a movie coming out this year called The Swallow. The directors who made Pet Sematary wrote it because they were tired of traditional studio horror films. It’s a chaotic, fun, and wild movie with a fantastic group of young actors. It’s very exciting.”
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