Image credit: Van Redin

Jason Schwartzman

All About

Rushmore

Get the latest photos, news, and more

When Jason Schwartzman landed the lead of the quirky Wes Anderson comedy "Rushmore" (opening Friday), playing a wise-beyond-his-years private-school student who competes with a millionaire (Bill Murray) for the affection of a grade-school teacher, it was his first acting job. But it wasn't the first for his family: The 18-year-old recent high school grad is the nephew of Francis Ford Coppola, the cousin of Nicolas Cage, and the son of Talia Shire ("Rocky") (not to mention the cousin of Sofia). All that lineage plus the lead in a movie proved quite stressful. "I put a lot of pressure on myself," Schwartzman tells EW Online. "I didn't want something to go wrong, and have it be, 'Oh, it's the next Coppola to blow it.'" Considering the nearly unanimous rave reviews for the film (EW gave it an A), the family dynasty seems safe -- at least for now.

But Schwartzman admits that his Coppola blood didn't make him an instant actor. He was constantly learning on the set, including one important lesson: Don't mess with the director. "When I first got there, during rehearsals I was changing some of the lines a bit," Schwartzman says. "And Wes Anderson pulled me aside and said, 'Jason, uh, it took me four years to write this script, so could you please just try to do the words I wrote?' After that I always just did the words."

There were lessons to be learned off the set, too. Since Schwartzman was still a high school senior while filming, he had to be tutored whenever he wasn't on-camera. "It's hard to be in the back of a car crying with Bill Murray," says Schwartzman, "and then the scene's finished and they say, 'Okay, let's get Jason off to school!' and you have to go write a paper on 'Hamlet.'" Hey, wasn't that the film starring Mel Gibson?