NEW YORK-- Worm, a sniveling loser in the big-bucks poker world, is hardly the kind of role a fledgling "movie star" would seek. But Worm is a throwback to the era when Ratso Rizzo, as played by Dustin Hoffman, turned character actng int a new kind of stardom in Midnight Cowboy.
It's the part, though, not the fame, that Edward Norton wanted. In the new film Rounders, opening today, he plays the feisty, flamboyant, street-dumb character who is the pal of Matt Damon, the film's square-jawed leading man. Set in the sleazy underbelly of New York's card-shuffling world of gambling, the film co-stars such veterans as Martin Landau, John Malkovich and John Turturro.
Worm is just getting out of jail, but he still doesn't know how to hold his cards in poker games. He tend to take wild risks -- for either a big win or a big loss. The character is a natural follow-up for Norton's star-making, Oscar-nominated role as Aaron Stampler, a seemingly guiltless Appalachian choirboy accused of murdering a Chicago archbishop in Primal Fear. The most astounding debut role in years, Norton used it not only to almost win an Oscar, but to steal the film from star Richard Gere.
"People keep telling me not to be character actor," the skinny, pale Norton said as he sat for an interview. "But that's exactly what I wanted to be. Dustin Hoffman once siad it best -- that he made a mistake by having to get angry to fight for those offbeat roles. He said the only way he'd have courage enough to stick with the wacko parts was to get mad. I'm trying to have that kind of career, but without getting mad."
In creating Worm, he claims he thought more about Bugs Bunny than Ratso Rizzo. "He's like Bugs dressed as Keith Richards," he mused. "Bugs was always scheming -- always just two steps ahead of a beating. Worm, I think, is saying, 'You really have to stop squeezing the life for other people.' He lives for himself."
Both Norton, a Yale graduate, and Damon went on the loose in New York to get into underground poker games. "You pay for lessons," Norton said. "I was down $750 in a matter of no time. Luckily, I was bankrolled by the studio research department. The one thing I learned, quickly, is that poker is not luck. It's a rare kind of risk-taking. Working with Matt was something different. It's the first time I've worked with a contemporary guy -- someone my own age."
He got the breakthrough part in Primal Fear only after Leonardo DiCaprio turned it down and more than 2,000 "unknowns" were tested. Winning the Golden Globe and the Los Angeles Film Critics nd, he was an early favorite to also win the Oscar, but lost out to Cuba Gooding Jr. in Jerry Maguire. Norton's big year, 1996, also featured roles in Woody Allen's musical Everyone Says I Love You as Drew Barrymore's boyfriend and as Larry Flynt's young lawyer in Milos Forman's biopic The People vs. Larry Flynt.
His big year, though, was marred by the fact that his grandfather, famed architect James Rouse, died. The following year, his mother died -- not long after she underwent surgery to remove a brain tumor.
He's been seen dating Courtney Love, his "Larry Flynt" co-star, but flatly says he'll never talk about his personal life in interviews.
"I'm an actor and, each time out, I'm trying to convince the audience that I'm this character. Any little thing they know about me, personally, gets in the way of the way they see the character. I don't want anything to get into the way."
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