Ever since Edward Norton fooled Richard Gere (and the rest of us) in Primal Fear, he's become the symbol for sleazy characters everywhere. In his latest film, Rounders, Norton studied with the world's greatest poker players in order to create Worm, a lifelong gambler who hurts everyone in his way, yet somehow reminds Norton of Bugs Bunny. But what really has Norton excited is this fall's American History X, which is brewing up its own controversy. Though he graces us too rarely, Norton brings so much life and substance to his characters, he promises to be a mainstay in Hollywood and wow audiences with his undeniable talent, and we'll take all that we can get.

Edward Norton

roughcut.com's Andy Jones

Have you ever met anybody like your character, Worm?

I think Worm is the kind of person a lot of us have run into at one point or another who can, with their enthusiasm and their spirit and their sense, make everything seem like it's going to be fun. And then you get 10 minutes down the road and you're going, "How did I get involved in this?" And I certainly have had friends like that. But, you know, one of my operating images of Worm was Bugs Bunny, 'cause that's exactly what Bugs Bunny is. I actually mean that kind of seriously. When you look at the script and that story, you have to ask yourself, "Why does Mike stick with this guy ?" And that is one way into the character because you have to adjust the tone of whatever Worm does to make it believable that Mike (Matt Damon) sticks with him. And so, I literally did get thinking like, you know, in the tradition of sort of lovable rogues. Bugs Bunny is exactly like that. He's like always scheming and always sort of two steps ahead of a beating, but kind of laughing as he goes and never taking anything too seriously.

Were you a poker player before this?

No, I never really played a serious game of poker, ever.

The screenwriters said you were never without a pack of cards during the shooting.

Yeah, I think for a couple of months there before. Those guys really spent a lot of time in [the underground gambling world] and wrote the script. They were, for Matt and me, they were our initial guides into that world. They took us to these places and introduced us to a lot of people. Brian Koppelman and David Levien actually really gave me my first sessions, teaching me the game. They're both very good poker players, and then I took it from there. And we worked with really good, top players and hung out in those clubs a lot and I worked a lot specifically with a guy, or a couple guys who worked with me on sort of what they call the mechanic techniques, the cheating stuff. Manipulating cards and working with a partner and all kinds of stuff. So, it was a ball.... We didn't use hand doubles. I wanted John [Dahl] to be on hand and then move up to a face on that. And you know, cut, so that you could feel the veracity of playing the game. So, you've got to just, like anything else, just put in the time.

When they filmed you cheating, did you really deal off the bottom of the deck?

Yeah, yeah. We actually had a shot, you do things and lots of things get cut out, but we had one where I was dealing to Matt off the bottom of the deck and then we actually did a [camera] shot from straight down, you could see the pull is off the bottom. One of the cards juts out, I sort of mess up, and that's what the trooper spots. That's what a hanger is.

Does the dialogue look as good on paper as it sounds?

Yeah, it did. It really did. I rarely read a script where I kind of finish the last page and just go, "Man, let's do it. That's just perfect." And I really did feel that with this. All of us commented on this when we first got involved. You know, the first time I met John and everybody, the language was so rich and ripe. It was almost impenetrable. It was so true, and when things are that true, they just hit you. They just ring. Like you can read many things where people are trying to evoke sort of a pattern or a vernacular, and you can just tell it's forced, and the same way you just read this and you just went, "Man, I have no doubt that this is out there somewhere and exists exactly as it's presented here." And then, when we were introduced into this world, you realized how well, how good a job they had done. The guy who this character is based on was so much like that. I mean, he was maybe even a little bit more of a poet philosopher, but he was really hilarious. And we didn't even get into all the funny stories and stuff that you hear.... You know, people always talk about their bad beats, everyone tells their bad beat stories, which are their stories of loot, of a big hand that they lost, and it kind of gets boring. And this one guy came over and we were talking about his and this guy based on John Turturro's character says, "You know what? I'm tired of your bad beat stories. Go away. Everybody's got bad beat stories. That's not even a bad beat." And someone asks, "Well Jesus, what's a bad beat then?" And the guy goes, "Hiroshima. That's a bad beat."

This is only your fourth movie. Why do we see you so infrequently?

Well, I kind of do things spread out, but then they come out in waves. I did another movie that's coming out right after Rounders called American History X, which is going to be out in October.

What's going on with the director?

Oh, I think it's all a little bit overhyped because I think you have to understand Tony Kaye is as much a hype artist as he is anything else. He has a sincere commitment to hype art. And so, like in a way, he's done some amazing stuff and it's kind of unfortunate that he's chosen to create a performance art piece around his own movie, but it almost makes me laugh.

It's hurting the film.

I think that ultimately this movie will speak for itself. It's a very, very powerful movie. I just hope that, because I don't think the public knows or really cares about any of this stuff and I don't think people within the industry know Tony, they don't know the specifics of what's really gone down, in terms of the gulf between what Tony claims is his cut -- that he keeps talking about -- vs what New Line has is kind of something that he's created in his own mind. Because the cut that the movie is, is his cut, and it's just that he asked for more. He asked for yet another year or something and they said, "We have a release date." So, they moved forward, and he's actually taken this whole thing now, incredibly seriously. But so, within the business, people know it's not some sort of oppression thing or anything like that.

Primal Fear was your big break. Could you tell us a little bit about your training, what kind of jobs you did before that?

My entire professional background and training was all in the theater. I started acting when I was very young and then I did a lot of theater in college and in the university. And then I was in New York for many years doing theater.

Where are you from originally, and did you have problems doing the New York dialogue -- it could get snappy and long at times.

I'm from near Baltimore. But, yeah, that's the energy and the patterns of my character. I've lived in New York a long, long time so, that's my home.

Where did you study?

I went to Yale.

You went to Yale Drama School?

No, I studied history.

So, it's been a couple of years since you made your big splash on the scene. You didn't take some extra time off before you started working again?

No, no. I have a couple of things happening. Part of it is that I just don't have something I feel strongly about. Not anything in the sense of it being important, but that I really feel like I can hook into make it worthwhile. I don't really want to work for the sake of working. I can't do to myself what other people seem to be able to or want to do, although I think a lot of times people do this because other people are telling them they ought to or to get moving or move too fast. I can't do one and then do another one with no time in between to either recharge my batteries but, more importantly, just to do the work I think you need to do to make these things what they ought to be. And not just because I think in some sort of principle sense, but in the sense that I enjoy it. I need to enjoy the months of time before one to really learn it and get it right. And that's part of the experience that I enjoy the most. And second of all, I just don't think you can create really distinct characters if you're just sort of banging from one to another. I think if you're kind of rolling through films, doing a very similar sort of persona, then that'd be fine, but I need more time.

So you felt pressured?

There are always voices out there. There's a sort of careerist sort of value system in this town that makes you feel a certain pressure to look for something very commercial. Or look to take a stab at a certain kind of a film because it will solidify your box office status. Or that kind of stuff. And that's all. That's a totally valid option for someone who wants to choose it. I just don't personally. I've been both fortunate in having opportunities to work with really great people and the things they cared about, but I also have just made those choices for myself. I don't care about that stuff as much as I do feeling kind of interested and good about the role. I don't mean to sound snobby in the sense of going, "I like to make good films." You never know if anything you make is going to be good. You never know. It's a total roll of the dice. I mean, you can only follow your best instincts and know your own reasons for doing it. And all I'm saying is I just want to know why I'm doing something for myself. So, I want to know that I'm doing it for my own reasons and not for other people's reasons. And then, because if it sinks or swims, that's fine with me, because not all movies are going to fly. I mean, the more and more I make them, the more I think a good movie is really a miracle because of the number of elements and collaborative chemistry that they must have to succeed.

So what were your reasons for doing Rounders and American History X?

Well, the script was exceptionally great and then the fact that John Dahl, Rounders was going to direct it made me want to do it even more because I've loved his films. I thought he was perfect for it because he has such a confident sense of sort of noir style and not that this film is, at the end of the day, as stylistically noirish as some of his other ones, it's not as self-conscious so, it still has just a great texture to it. When I watched it, I was like, "God, that's the look to New York that you haven't even seen in a while." It's just a whole palette that looked different to me and that excited me and working with Matt excited me and then this terrific cast came in around it and the role. The role was perfect. It was, you know, it was just what I was looking for. It really seemed like a challenge to me, just talking about the tensions between the sort of anarchy he provides -- the counter poise juxtaposed with the fact that you've got to kind of like him on a certain level. It's an interesting challenge.

And American History X was really difficult movie too.

Yeah. I'm really excited about the movie, I have to say. There is not going to be a movie like it this year in the sense that, stylistically, the way Tony shot this movie, it's breathtaking. I mean, he did his own photography and operated it. It's breathtaking. And it is a really wrenching story. I'm really excited about it. I mean, I'm trying really hard to just kind of stay calm about all this stuff. Because I think I'm just as proud of that movie as anything I've worked on.

Have you started playing poker since the World Championship of Poker?

I haven't played a lot, but I definitely learned the game and have a great appreciation for it. I would have lumped it with gambling before. I would never call it gambling anymore. I would equate it much more with chess and other games of skill. Because the people who are good at it, it has nothing to do with luck at all. It's a game of mathematical and odd-making skills, strategy skills in terms of understanding position and how that effects the way you play different hands and psychological perceptiveness. And these guys and women are -- that's actually one thing, it's about 50-50 men and women and the women are some of the fiercest players. Matt and I were coached by these two women who were fantastic, and sometimes I thought they were better [than men] because they were less emotional. Guys tend to get sort of back and forth between them and the women tend to be more appropriately dispassionate about it.

Can you talk a little bit about working with Matt Damon?

Oh, yeah, that's very easy. It was a ball. A very serious and hard-working, talented guy and it was really, really fun. I hadn't worked with kind of a contemporary, and he was a terrific guy. Really grounded and I just can't say anything but good things. He was really fun to work with and we had a nice dialogue and we talked a lot.