Will Peltz has his sister to thank for piquing his interest in acting. After attending Yale and watching his dreams of becoming a professional hockey player fade in his early 20s, the son of billionaire Nelson Peltz found himself in a transitional phase of life. Despite being nine years younger than him, his sister Nicola (the future Mrs Brooklyn Beckham) already knew she wanted to become an actress.

“She had just started getting into acting,” Peltz tells Luxury London. “I would read scripts with her.” His entire youth having been centred around hockey, he had never acted before, but this peek behind the filmmaking curtain exposed a creative fascination he wanted to explore further. “I would help break the scripts down. Give her notes. I just really enjoyed the process, even though it was something I had never explored or done before. I soon realised I really wanted to give this thing a shot.”

Peltz moved to Los Angeles in 2009 and, before long, the competitive drive that had pushed him to the brink of a hockey career helped secure acting roles. “There are similarities between acting and hockey,” he admits. “The biggest thing is competitiveness. Which I really love. I’m a competitor and I love that element to it.” Soon he was starring opposite Justin Timberlake in sci-fi action film In Time, then with Kat Dennings in To Write Love on Her Arms, followed by Paranoia, alongside Gary Oldman and Harrison Ford, and the hit screen-life horror Unfriended. He also popped up on television shows Medium, Entourage, Euphoria, and Manifest.

In his latest movie, Somnium, Peltz plays Noah, an employee at the titular experimental sleep clinic where dreams are made real. The main thrust of the story follows wannabe actor Gemma (Chloë Levine), who works the night shift at Somnium watching over patients as they sleep in pods, before auditioning for roles during the day. The longer Gemma works at Somnium, the more her own insecurities and issues are exposed, especially after she discovers a dark secret about the clinic’s experimental technology.

Behind-the-scenes on the set of Somnium

“It was really last-minute,” Peltz says about being asked to join the film. “But I saw that the filmmaker was really cool and artsy, plus I Ioved the opportunity to be in something so dark.” Reading the script, Peltz was specifically attracted to how Rachael Cain, the writer and director behind Somnium, skewered Hollywood, the pursuit of fame, and what people will sacrifice in order to try and attain it. “The film is a commentary on Hollywood and chasing your dreams. A lot of people can relate to it. Rachael had such a good take on that; moving out to Los Angeles can feel very isolating, the script and story explore that in a really interesting way.”

Somnium, the culmination of a decade’s worth of work for Cain, follows in the footsteps of recent psychological horror smash-hit The Substance, unfolding in a mysterious fashion that’s as unsettling as it is intriguing. Even if you don’t always know exactly what’s going on, you’ll want to stick around to find out. Despite having a clear vision for the tone and style of Somnium, Cain gave Peltz plenty of room to build Noah and make the character his own. Peltz, in response, turned to his favourite movie Prisoners — starring Jake Gyllenhaal as a detective in Pennsylvania investigating the disappearance of two girls — for inspiration. “Jake Gyllenhaal does this really cool blinking thing in the movie as a character tic. That really inspired me. Getting into the shoes of someone else and into their headspace is really fun. I love exploring darker stuff and portraying characters that are far from my life.”

Peltz was given a helping hand in getting into a darker and more unsettled headspace for the film thanks to the hours of production. “Everything was a night shoot. We’d start shooting at like 10 or 11 at night and wouldn’t finish until 12 hours later.” Thankfully, the cast and crew banded together, with Peltz describing a more collaborative atmosphere on set compared to bigger productions he’s been on. “When you’re working on indie movies, you have to be more responsible for little details, whereas on studio films, there are like three or four wardrobe people behind the camera ready to fix your collar. There was more freedom on this. That was really nice as an actor.”

Working in such conditions actually took Peltz back to his days as a hockey player. “What I miss about hockey is that it’s team-based. Everyone has to be on the same page to achieve your common goal. That’s similar to a set.” When he saw what Cain had achieved with him and the rest of her team on Somnium, Peltz was blown away, with the visuals exploring Gemma’s psychological spiral and her battle to know what’s a dream and what’s reality being hugely impressive on a minimal budget. “She’s such a strong visual storyteller. She’s able to create such amazing and cool visuals, especially considering how low the budget was.”

But Peltz insists that there’s a deeper message behind Somnium’s twists and turns, one which he believes all viewers can relate to. “It’s about standing up to and facing your fears.” As someone who has gone from Ivy League student to athlete to actor, and is hoping to go from playing a dim-witted soft-core porn star in the upcoming comedy Skinemax to co-writing and possibly co-directing his debut feature, Peltz knows a lot about confronting and defeating his own fears.

“Don’t shy away and hide from them,” he says. “You’ve got to look them dead in the eye and conquer them.”

Somnium is available to stream now.

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