The Actor Who Turned Down Dirk Diggler and More Bright, Shining Secrets About Boogie Nights

“[Producer] John Lyons called me and just said, ‘Look, we’ve got this small, little part, it’s four or five days’ work, it might be a lot of fun,'” Alfred Molina told Grantland in 2014. “He got me on the phone with Paul. And I said, ‘What’s the role?’ And he said, ‘Well, it’s a coked-up drug fiend on a shotgun rampage.’ And I thought, Well, I’ve never done that before.”

So was born his unforgettable turn as drug dealer Rahad, who Dirk and Reed’s even dumber friend Todd (Thomas Jane) tries extremely unsuccessfully to rip off. The surreal sequence is made even more so by the sound of firecrackers going off inside the dealer’s house—which after a few days was driving everyone, except Molina, insane.

The English actor explained that he kept one ear plugged and there was an earwig in the other so he could hear the dialogue. “The guys were constantly jumping out of their skins,” he recalled, “but Rahad, my character, was completely still.”

Wahlberg told Grantland that the dealer part was originally supposed to be played by Sean Penn. Then, casting director Christine Sheaks said, they offered it to John Turturro, so Molina actually ended up being the last actor to join the massive ensemble. 

But “Alfred Molina can do anything,” Sheaks said. “If I could cast Alfred Molina in every project I do for the rest of my life, I would be happy about it.”