Actors Guri Weinberg and Erik Odom stopped at the Townsend Hotel in Birmingham last Thursday to discuss their roles in “Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2.”

Weinberg played Stefan, a Romanian vampire who was one of the two survivors from the Romanian coven’s destruction. Odom played Peter, a nomadic vampire who left the Mexican coven to roam North America with his mate.

“I went in and felt good about the audition, and I let it go,” Odom said. “About a month and a half went by and I got the call, and it shocked me. It would have shocked me no matter what, but the fact that so much time had gone by shocked me twice as much.”

A typical day on set

Each day, the van picked the cast up at 5:30 or 6 a.m. and took them to the tents and trailers for hair and makeup. Film sets included areas in Louisiana and Vancouver, BC. Odom said getting ready was relatively easy for the male actors, with the majority sporting pale makeup and colored contacts. Following preparations, filming began. Odom said the typical day was lethargic, with long periods of shooting and breaks in between.

“With anything this size, the pace of it is glacial and moves so slowly, and that’s just part of it,” Odom said. “They need to shoot from every different angle.”

Guri Weinberg

Weinberg was born in August 1972, about one month before the murder of his father, wrestling coach Moshe Weinberg, at the Olympic Games in Munich.

“When I was a kid, I was watching movies, and I wanted to do what they did,” Weinberg said. “They made me feel what I felt when I was watching the movie … whether it was happy, sad, or excited, and I wanted to do the same thing.”

After moving to Los Angeles in the late 1980s, Weinberg was challenged to learn  English and lose his Israeli accent. To accomplish this goal, he portrayed Americans in roles including works of screenwriter and “Pulp Fiction” writer Roger Avery, George Lucas in “The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles.”

In 2005, Guri Weinberg was offered the role of his late father in Steven Spielberg’s drama “Munich.” “When you’re playing your own dad, you don’t think about helping your career at all,” Weinberg said. “For me, it was a personal experience; it helped understand what he went through and why he did what he did.” Although Weinberg had no intention of strengthening his career, his performance in Munich led to a variety of guest roles on television shows such as “The Closer,” “Cane,” “The Good Guys” and “Burn Notice.”

He also covered supporting roles in the LL Cool J pilot “The Man” and the Adam Sandler feature film “You Don’t Mess with the Zohan.” Currently, he works in the television industry.

Erik Odom

Odom has lived in various regions including Kansas, California, New York, Kentucky, Virginia and South Korea, and currently resides in Los Angeles.

“If you really want to (tell stories) in a professional capacity, you have to move to Los Angeles,” Odom said. “It was kind of a logical progression from there. When you find what you think it is you’re supposed to do, your mind is made up for you. You just know.”

He got his acting start in Virginia through work in independent and short films, including “Transposition,” which was nominated for a Student Academy Award in 2009. He recently starred in the West Coast premiere of the 2011 Obie award-winning play “A Bright New Boise” with the Rouge Machine Theatre Company, earning a 2013 LA Weekly Theatre Award Nomination for Best Male Supporting Actor.

“Life has a funny way of putting you in with people that are like-minded, who you should hopefully be collaborating with. I don’t see it as coincidence. I see it as, if that’s where your interests really lie, if that’s where your skills lie … you’ll end up aligning with people that you should be with. Acting is just one of those things where you find a way to make it work, or you don’t. And either way, the people who make it work, make it work, regardless.”