When Roman Engel was 3 years old, he told his mother that one day he was going to be on television. His mom, Marie, had a simple response: “Your lips to God’s ears.”
“I took that and ran with it,” Roman says.
And run with it he did. Fourteen years later, the Hamilton native and Steinert High School senior is making his Hollywood breakthrough with a major role in Paper Tiger, a crime drama directed by James Gray and starring Scarlett Johansson, Miles Teller and Adam Driver.
The film premiered Friday, Sept. 25, at the New York Film Festival, with Engel joining his Hollywood co-stars on the red carpet at Alice Tully Hall. It is scheduled for a nationwide theatrical release by NEON on Friday, Nov. 20.
For Engel, now 17, the experience represents the biggest opportunity of an acting career that began in childhood and has already taken him from local theater to television, Radio City Music Hall and now the big screen.
In Paper Tiger, Engel plays Benjamin “Ben” Pearl, the teenage son of characters portrayed by Johansson and Teller. The film follows a middle-class family whose pursuit of a better life and a greater share of the American dream takes a dangerous turn.
Although the circumstances of his character’s life are considerably different from his own, Engel found something familiar in Ben’s place within the family.
“I feel like I can really relate to Ben,” he says. “I have two older sisters, so I know what it feels like to be the little brother and what Ben was feeling.”
Engel was born and raised in Hamilton, where his interest in performing became apparent at an early age. He began doing theater when he was 6, and his parents remember a child who was rarely short on energy or imagination.
His father, Bruce, describes Roman growing up as “fun,” while his mother remembers him as “magnetic,” with a “bright personality that lights up the room.”
“Growing up, Roman had lot of energy, [was] fun and creative,” Marie says. “He loved to entertain and he still continues to do so.”
His path toward professional acting began to take shape after he was scouted at a cousin’s graduation. By the time he was 9, he had connected with Kathleen Castro, owner and operator of Universal Talent Management, who became his longtime manager.
Castro remembers the enthusiasm Roman brought to the work, even though he had little professional experience when they first met. “He never did TV, movies, commercials or VO [short films], but, in a short time he mastered them all.”
What stood out most, Castro recalls, was his passion and willingness to learn. Her most consistent advice was to avoid forcing a performance and instead make it feel natural.
“My biggest note to him always was to be ‘ORGANIC,’” Castro says. “When he booked ‘Paper Tiger,’ he actually bought me a T-shirt that said ‘ORGANIC’ on it.”
“I treasure it,” she says.
Over the years, Engel accumulated a variety of acting credits that helped prepare him for the demands of a major film production. He appeared in Radio City’s Christmas Spectacular, performing 63 shows before thousands of theatergoers, and his credits include Saturday Night Live, Sesame Street, NBC’s New Amsterdam, the Netflix animated series Centaurworld and the film Legacy Peak.
The work exposed him to different styles of performance, from live theater and comedy to television and dramatic acting. Just as importantly, it taught him how to adapt to different environments and become comfortable in front of an audience or camera.
“Those experiences game me live performance skills,” Engel says. “They helped me become comfortable, improvise and switch between comedy and dramatic roles. I feel like they gave me confidence.”
Even with that experience, landing Paper Tiger was unlike anything Engel had done before. When the audition came his way, he recognized the screenplay. He had read it several years earlier, although at the time it had been presented as a test script rather than an opportunity to audition for the film.
This time, the process moved from a casting callback to a director’s callback before he learned that he had won the role of Ben. “It was super surreal,” he says. “It was just amazing. It’s the biggest thing that I have ever done in my career so far.”
Filming took place primarily in North Jersey and Queens, New York, in 2025. Engel’s parents drove him to the set each morning, where he spent six to eight hours working on the production.
He remembers being more excited than nervous in the days leading up to filming. That changed when he arrived on set and began to appreciate the challenge of bringing Gray’s screenplay to life.
“The nerves hit me when I stepped onto set because a lot of the movie is based off of James Gray’s real-life experience,” Engel says. “Everything that went on in the movie was based off of what he [experienced] as a kid.
“Trying to portray him was a big challenge,” he adds. “[James] was very big on making the script sound more personalized, making it feel like it was real life, not something that he had just written. You really had to think of it as, ‘What would go through your mindset if you went through [those experiences].’”
Engel approached the assignment with the same enthusiasm that had carried him through his earlier work. After spending the day on set, he would watch one of Gray’s previous films, taking notes on the director’s style and the way he approached storytelling.
Working alongside Johansson, Teller and Driver also presented a new challenge. Although Engel had been acting professionally for years, he initially wondered how his abilities would compare with performers who had spent much of their careers making major motion pictures.
“I didn’t know if my acting ability would measure up to their expertise of being on screen,” Engel admits, adding that everyone was “very supportive and were very encouraging.”
As filming progressed, those concerns began to fade. Engel discovered that despite their celebrity, his co-stars were approachable people who shared his enthusiasm for the work.
He came to see Johansson, Teller and Driver as ordinary people who happened to have extraordinary careers. Whatever their level of experience, he says, everyone on set was working toward the same goal: “To make art.”
Between takes, Engel had opportunities to get to know his fellow actors and Gray away from the cameras. Some of his favorite memories involve conversations that began with the film and gradually turned toward everyday life.
“We would just circle around the dinner table and discuss the scenes,” he says.
Those discussions sometimes shifted from the characters and their motivations to what was happening in the actors’ personal lives. For Engel, the chance to learn from people he had previously known only through their work on screen was an education in itself.
He was equally interested in what happened behind the camera. Engel spent time with cinematographer Joaquín Baca-Asay, learning how camera placement, lighting and other visual decisions shaped the finished film.
“He would be like, ‘This is what I’m trying to capture, can you do this for me?’” Engel recalls. “When we would film it, it would turn out better than imagined.”
The experience helped reinforce an interest in filmmaking that extends beyond acting, something Engel hopes to pursue when he attends college.
But before he begins that next chapter, he has been able to enjoy seeing his work in “Paper Tiger” reach an audience.
At the New York Film Festival premiere in September, Engel walked the red carpet with his co-stars and watched the completed film for the first time. He even designed his own premiere outfit, drawing inspiration from his love of 1980s fashion and the time he had spent with the film’s costume department.
For a teenager who had spent years auditioning and working toward a major role, the evening was a chance to see the results of that effort on one of the industry’s biggest stages.
Engel admits that watching himself on screen can be difficult, because he tends to focus on things he wishes he had done differently. This time, however, he was able to appreciate what he had accomplished.
“I was absolutely in shock because I’m my biggest critic,” he says. “Watching myself on screen, I’m always going to pick out little things that I wish I didn’t do. It was incredible to watch.”
His parents were in the audience, experiencing the moment from an entirely different perspective.
Marie remembers looking away from the screen occasionally to watch her son react to the film. The expression on his face, she says, told her almost as much as the performance itself.
“I would glance over at him from the corner of my eye and watch him watch the movie,” she says. “It was like a child seeing colors as bright as they can be. He was very proud of himself.”
For Marie, the premiere was the culmination of years spent supporting Roman’s ambitions. She helps him make his self-taped auditions and has been at his side through hundreds, perhaps close to a thousand, auditions over the course of his career.
Not every audition resulted in a role, but she never stopped encouraging him to pursue the dream he first described when he was 3 years old.
“His hard work paid off,” she says. “I would always say, ‘You’ll be on the big screen one day.’ Seeing that prediction become reality was difficult to describe.
“It’s hard to put that emotion I felt in words,” she says. “I am extremely proud of Roman and his accomplishments.”
Bruce was equally impressed, particularly by one scene in which he believes his son demonstrated how much he has developed as an actor.
“The world will see the true depth he can reach by tugging at your emotions,” Bruce says. “He freezes you in that very moment, and you can feel the tension and fear Benjamin Pearl is experiencing, and that is what great actors do.”
Despite the excitement surrounding his Hollywood debut, Engel’s life away from the cameras remains much like that of other high school seniors.
At Steinert, he participates in school plays and is a member of the Student Government Association. He also works part time at DeLorenzo’s Tomato Pies in Robbinsville, balancing those responsibilities with auditions and professional acting opportunities.
His work in theater has continued to earn recognition close to home. In May, he received a 2026 Marquee Award at the Carteret Performing Arts and Events Center in his mother’s hometown of Carteret. Presented by television and Broadway actor Constantine Maroulis, the award recognized Engel as best lead actor for his portrayal of Prince Eric in Steinert High School’s production of Disney’s The Little Mermaid.
Although Paper Tiger has given him his highest-profile role to date, Engel has no intention of limiting his future to acting alone.
After graduating from Steinert, he plans to attend college, where he is interested in studying film and learning more about the creative and technical work that goes on behind the camera.
His time working with Gray, Baca-Asay and the rest of the Paper Tiger production team has given him a greater appreciation of how many people and how much work go into telling a story on screen. But acting remains his first love, and he hopes his experience on the film is only the beginning of a long career.
“That’s pretty much my dream,” Engel says, “to keep going and keep acting.”
