<p>PAUL DANO IS HIDING HIS HAIR UNDER a trucker hat and carrying a few days stubble.</p>

- Lucy Feldman

Six weeks ago exactly, his partner, actor Zoe Kazan, gave birth to their first child. “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t super tired,” he says, walking into Central Park on a recent sunny morning in New York City. “But it’s heart expanding.”

After taking a monthlong break to focus on the baby, Dano is promoting another manner of child: his directorial debut, the moody, beautifully shot period drama Wildlife (out Oct. 19), which he wrote and produced with Kazan. It’s a film about family dysfunction, based on Richard Ford’s novel of the same name, which unfolds against rural sunsets and forest fires in 1960s Montana. The Brinsons are new to their small town, and struggling. Jerry (Jake Gyllenhaal), a husband and father, reels after losing his job. When he runs away from his problems to fight fires outside town, his wife Jeanette (Carey Mulligan) implodes and sparks a new romance. They unravel through the eyes of their son Joe (Ed Oxenbould), who is horrified to discover his parents’ fallibility. Oxenbould, 15 during filming, captures Joe’s anguish with the skill of an adult—a great surprise for Dano. “Directing is kind of like parenting—you just try to get the best out of everybody,” he says “Push them a little left or and catch them wh they fall.”

Dano himself started acting so early he remembers agonizing over finding time to travel with his basketball team while also performing in A Christmas Carol at Madison Square Garden. Now 34, he has pro

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