DiCinema

"I'm a superhero!" Those words had loomed over David Dastmalchian for months. The actor was on the Panama set of the film preparing for the biggest scene in his biggest role to date. It's the moment his character, Polka-Dot Man, finds his purpose after a lifetime of abuse, disappointment, and loneliness. "The day arrived, and I felt very scared," Dastmalchian told The Hollywood Reporter. "I was really afraid of what my voice and my body and my face were going to be capable of." The line was deeply personal for Dastmalchian, who had more in common with Abner Krill than director James Gunn realized when he wrote the part for the actor. Like Abner Krill, Dastmalchian was self-conscious about his skin. (He has vitiligo, an autoimmune disorder that causes loss of pigment in polka-dot-shaped areas.) Like Abner Krill, the actor had spent younger years riddled with self-doubt, feeling lost. "I had always told myself that I was going to be a failure in life," says Dastmalchian, who shares two children with his wife, artist Evelyn Leigh. "I was always quite certain I was going to be a failure as a father." The day the scene arrived, a family issue occurred back home in Los Angeles. Dastmalchian desperately wanted to be there for his young son, but couldn't. It tore him up inside. Then, something clicked as he looked around that Panama street, full of hundreds of people, dirt flying everywhere. "I said to myself, 'You're a good dad. You're a good dad.' I just kept telling myself that. And it made sense to me in that moment," says Dastmalchian. "I was there with Idris [Elba], and I was trying to summon the courage to take on the scene. And I still felt like I was struggling to get there." Then, Gunn came to the rescue. The filmmaker was speaking through a loudspeaker to control the chaos but sensed his actor needed him. "He put his mic down, and he came to me and put his arm around me and he just said, 'You've got this,'" recalls Dastmalchian. "He reminded me to just breathe and to just be me. Like, 'You can do this. I have always known you can do this.' And then I did it."

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