Devon Sawa, the star of Eminem’s Stan music video, was the image of a distinguished Hollywood heartthrob when he surfaced this week aged 47.He first rose to prominence during his teenage years in the 1990s, playing juvenile roles in movies like Casper and Little Giants.However, he left perhaps his most indelible mark on pop culture history in 2000, when he led the cast of the original Final Destination movie and then, aged 22, portrayed the title character in the classic video for Stan.Stan is an Eminem super-fan whose obsession with the rap star leads to disaster for both himself and his pregnant girlfriend, played by the English songstress Dido.This week, Sawa appeared at a SAG-AFTRA event to promote his next film The Girl in the River, led by Tiffany Haddish and The Karate Kid star Ralph Macchio.Sawa, who has been married to producer Dawni Sahanovitch since 2013, cut a dashing figure in a powder blue sweater polo with a couple of top buttons left open. Devon Sawa, the star of Eminem’s Stan music video (pictured), was the image of a distinguished Hollywood heartthrob when he surfaced this week aged 47 Stan is an Eminem super-fan whose obsession with the rap star leads to disaster for both himself and his pregnant girlfriend, played by the English songstress Dido He first rose to prominence playing juvenile roles in movies including Final Destination, which he is pictured in (left) with Amanda Detmer (center) and Ken Smith (right)He appeared onstage Thursday at The Meryl Streep Center for Performing Artists, just up the street from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).Sawa joined his The Girl in the River co-star Sara Murphree and the film’s writer and director Brando Benetton for a panel discussion moderated by critic Stacy Yvonne.Last August, Sawa spoke exclusively to the Daily Mail about the experience of working on Stan with Eminem, whose Christian name is Marshall Mathers.’He was there [on set]. He did the scene where he comes out in the cold. He does the [meet and greet at the] table and then his bus stop [writing the letter] was separately, so we didn’t have a lot together,’ said Sawa.’But I remember him being focused and just there to work. He was there to work – that’s what I remember,’ the actor remembered.A couple of years ago, Sawa revealed that he was in fact a fallback option to play Stan after the role was rejected by Home Alone star Macaulay Culkin.’They went out to Macaulay Culkin first. I think that they wanted him, and he wasn’t available, or didn’t want to do it or whatever,’ he told Entertainment Tonight. Dr Dre then ‘suggested’ Sawa for the role because of his admiration for the 2000 movie Final Destination, which had featured Sawa as the lead. This week, Sawa appeared at a SAG-AFTRA event to promote his next film The Girl in the River, led by Tiffany Haddish and The Karate Kid star Ralph Macchio Sawa, who has been married to producer Dawni Sahanovitch since 2013, cut a dashing figure in a powder blue sweater polo with a couple of top buttons left open He appeared onstage Thursday at The Meryl Streep Center for Performing Artists, just up the street from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’There happened to be somebody in the casting office that knew somebody who was friends with me, and they called me that way…and it ended up working out pretty good,’ he recalled. ‘It’s also one of the proudest things I’ve been a part of.’In the Stan music video, the Sawa character adopts an uncannily similar look to Eminem and lip-syncs the lyrics to the song.His descent into madness culminates in his locking his pregnant girlfriend in the trunk of his car and then driving off a bridge to their deaths.Sawa recounted feeling a twinge of initial awkwardness on set, saying: ‘I’ll never forget, they told me on the day that I was going to lip-sync it.’The Vancouver native shared: ‘I remember, after the first take I did, Dre running in and being like: “It was good, but can you try it with some rhythm this time?” And I was like: “Oh my God.” And that was kind of how the day went.’Sawa looked back fondly on the ‘iconic video,’ recalling that during the shoot ‘Dr Dre was there, D12 was there, I think Snoop was wandering around, Cypress Hill. It was just such a wild three days of filmmaking, it was amazing.’As for the lyric, he admitted: ‘I’ll tell you one thing, I know it better now than I did that day. Because I’ve heard it millions of times since.’ A few years previously, Sawa was asked about the Stan music video on what was then known as Twitter and described the on-set atmosphere as ‘a huge party.’ Eminem, who recently shared the contents of a private letter he received from the late Dolly Parton, is pictured at a Kamala Harris campaign rally in 2024On the subject of his own mindset, he confessed he ‘was already a little dark in my early 20s,’ which made the disquieting character easier for him to play.Three years after the Stan video, Sawa took a five-year hiatus from acting, feeling ‘burnt out’ after acting in a string of disappointing indie movies and being typecast as a horror actor as a result of Final Destination, he told Us Weekly. He was coaxed back into showbiz by ‘accident,’ he said, sharing that someone at his agency ‘didn’t get the memo that I quit and sent me an audition,’ prompting his realization that ‘this is what I love’ and ‘what I really want to do.’Sawa featured from 2010 until 2013 on the CW series Nikita, led by Maggie Q and adapted from the 1990 French crime thriller La Femme Nikita by Luc Besson.Since then, his work has included the Syfy/USA comedy series Chucky, which ran from 2021 to 2024 and saw Brad Dourif step back into the voice role of the evil doll.