Edward Norton
Sometimes there's a big fuss over a young actor because he happens to be the convenient cute new kid on the block. But the hullabaloo that's about to erupt around Edward Norton is justified by his performance in this month's Primal Fear--the first fearless flourish in what could prove an amazing movie career. Here, he's interviewed by someone who knows all about hullabaloos and fearlessness, Drew Barrymore
In the courtroom thriller Primal Fear, which opens this month, some actors we already know remind us why we know about them. Richard Gere is at his best as a publicity-hound lawyer: Has he ever been more slippery? Laura Linney, as the prosecutor he has romantically spurned, is wonderfully edgy and sardonic. Frances McDormand, Alfre Woodard, and John Mahoney are each superb in key supporting roles, as they usually are. But who's this kid playing the stuttering hick?
His name is Edward Norton, and it only takes a few seconds of screen time to realize that he might be capable of anything--any neurosis, any tenderness, any monstrosity. The twenty-six-year-old Norton considers New York's Signature Theatre Company, which he joined after Edward Albee recommended him, as his home base. For the moment, though, he is in demand for movies. After completing Primal Fear, he went straight into Woody Allen's fall '96 project, a musical in which he was cast as a young lawyer, Holden, engaged to Drew Barrymore's Skylar. He plays another lawyer, the one defending notorious Hustler publisher Larry Flynt (Woody Harrelson) against obscenity charges, in Milos Forman's late-fall release, The People vs. Larry Flynt. Says Courtney Love, who plays Flynt's late wife, Althea Leasure Flynt, in the film: "Edward is so brilliant, so chivalrous. In terms of ethics and integrity, he transcends virtually everybody I've met in the entertainment world. Both as an actor and a person, he's pure class."
Norton is sparing in his dealings with the press, but we knew that if anyone could get him to talk, it would be his recent co-star, Ms. Barrymore. We put them together on the phone shortly after he had arrived in Memphis to begin work on Larry Flynt. --G.F.
DREW BARRYMORE: I'm going to start at the very beginning, if that's O.K.
EDWARD NORTON: All I should say is, this is my first time.
DB: I know. I'm very excited I get to break your interview cherry.
EN: So go easy on me.
DB: I will, I will. Now, tell me where you're from.
EN: I'm from Columbia, Maryland. But, I would rather not go too much into that side of things for personal and professional reasons.
DB: You're a tough nut to crack, Norton. When did you start acting?
EN: I started studying acting when I was about six. I had a babysitter who subsequently went on to play Cosette in "Les Miserables" on Broadway. At the time, she was in a musical version of Cinderella, called "If I Were a Princess", at the local drama school. There were a lot of little kids my age playing Cinderella's mice, and I really wanted to be a mouse [DB laughs] I had a notion that if my babysitter got me down to the school quick enough, I could actually get to be a mouse before the production closed. She did take me down the day after I saw the play and I signed up for classes. I didn't play a mouse, but I acted all through my childhood and continued to do theater in college and in New York when I moved there.
DB: Now, Edward, you're getting amazing critical acclaim for your performance in your first feature film, Primal Fear. I've read--I swear--ten different things about how good you are in it. They're like, "The reason to see this movie, other than Richard Gere and his phenomenal always-ness, is Edward Norton."
EN: [laughs] That's another one for the Barrymore dictionary: "Always-ness."
DB: Just for the record, Edward thinks I should have my own dictionary because I make up so many words. "Cansistency"--how 'bout that? It's sort of along the same lines.
EN: When a nuclear holocaust destroys the world and a new language rises from the rubble, I'm going to start plugging in words from the Drew Barrymore lexicon.
DB: I'm so honored. Anyway, because I know you so well, I know you're downplaying the praise you're getting and going publicity crazy. You're growing into it, whereas a lot of actors get very hungry for it. You concentrate on your work and seeking out diverse characters, but only those that mean something to you. It's partly why I have so much respect for you as an actor. You're not a shmuck, but if you ever become one then I'm gonna kick your ass. In fact, we've already discussed this.
EN: I don't think I could have articulated it as well as you just did, so I'll take it as a compliment.
DB: [laughs] Was Primal Fear your first experience acting for film?
EN: I'd had some limited experience acting in student films and I'd done an indepenedent short. I wasn't that unfamiliar with film, but it was a whole different ball game working on these big, intimidating Paramount soundstages when we made Primal Fear. I had a great role, though, that was oddly in line with the plays I'd been doing, in terms of the types of challenges it entailed. It was also a high-profile job, and there was a certain spotlight on me to see what I was going to do with the part. A role as good as that of Aaron Stampler is rarely made available to an unknown actor. Normally, you can't even read for a part like that unless you've been on the inside loop since you were very young.
DB: There is only a very elite group of actors--and I'm not one of them--who hasn't had every hair on their body singed off from jumping through eight thousand fiery hoops to get a decent part. It's amazing what you have to go through to prove yourself.
EN: Even when you're well-known, I suspect it's tough to reconvince people in an industry where it behooves them to pigeonhole you. Fortunately, the [Primal Fear] director, Gregory Hoblit, was focused on my role functioning effectively, because so much of the movie rides on it. In the five years I'd been hustling as an actor in New York, nothing had come along that was so substantive and meaty. I think Greg took the attitude that anyone who wanted it would have to audition for it. So Deb Aquila, the casting czarina at Paramount, said, "Fine. Then I'll take the opportunity to really look around and find someone." I had a hellishly long process of auditioning and screen-testing.
DB: It's always torturous in the beginning, and hopefully cathartic in the end. Did you like working with Richard Gere?
EN: He's an old theater hand himself, and he was very empathetic with my situation and enormously helpful in all kinds of ways, from minor technical tricks to putting me at ease. I was very lucky.
DB: But honey, you're incredible talented, and you worked your butt off to get the part, so you're very deserving.
EN: Opportunity favors the prepared mind, as they say.
DB: I know because I worked with you on Woody Allen's fall '96 project. I saw you on the set every day. You just kept going and going and you never compromised for a second. It was amazing to work side by side with someone who has that amount of energy and never lets anything get in the way. You gave me some really wonderful ideas that will make me look great. Remember when we did that scene walking on the sidewalk beside Central Park, where we're like two peas in a pod?
EN: After the first take we did of that, Woody Allen came up and said [impersonates Woody Allen], "Well, y-you know, we had some, uh, traffic noise on that one, so it was no good, but it doesn't matter anyway because [does little Woody Allen cough] in every other way, it was disastrous."
DB: [laughs] Then the next take, he came up to me and said, "O.K., um, you know, that was actually wrong in every way."
EN: I kept waiting for him to say, "The thing is, could you just be a little... better?"
DB: But of all the directors I've worked for, Woody was the one I was most willing to please with every single bone of my body.
EN: I tend not to be a control freak when I'm acting, but I do like to have a sense of the overall arc, so that I can plug into it in an effective way. There are very few people to whom I would surrender total trust, but Woody's definitely one of them--apart from the fact that he only lets you see your own parts of the script. But let me plug you now, Drew. I think people are going to go crazy when they see you in this film, because nobody's seen you play a character like Skylar before.
DB: I think that if there were ever any question that I couldn't be a character like the one I played for Woody, this'll prove that I can. And when people see the difference between your character in Primal Fear and your character in Woody Allen's movie, they're just gonna have a heart attack.
EN: This is turning into a little love fest, so we better start saying something critical.
DB: Woody's movie is a musical and I was about to say you're a great singer and dancer--
EN: It's actually a marvel of computer animatronics.
DB: --but then you'd accuse me of blowing too much sunshine up your ass, so I'm not going to say it. Instead, tell me about the Larry Flynt movie, which you're shooting now in Memphis.
EN: As you know, I had reservations about doing it at first. I don't like doing a project if I don't have a very clear understanding of why I want to do it, and I don't like doing something because people tell me I ought to do it. When I was offered Larry Flynt, people said, "Oh, you have to do a Milos Forman film." I don't agree with that necessarily, although, in fact, Milos was a big part of why I did want to do it. But that was my own reason. You're safer if you know why you're doing things for yourself.
DB: You play Larry Flynt's lawyer, right?
EN: Yeah, his name's Alan Isaacman. He and Larry were young when they met and they're good friends to this day. In some ways, I'm playing a fictionalized amalgamation of a number of lawyers who did different things for Larry over time. Our relationship in this film is not strictly what happened between Alan and Larry, but Alan was the most significant figure in arguing the Supreme Court case for Larry, which they won.
DB: Something else you have reservations about doing is too much publicity. Why is that?
EN: One reason is that what I have to offer as an actor, I think, is that I can do diverse character stuff. Putting aside the need to keep some privacy, I think that the more people know about you, the more they have to work to believe you when you're in a role. Part of why I think Primal Fear functions so well is that hardly anyone has ever seen me or heard my voice before, and therefore you accept totally without reservation what you first see. You and I talked about how great Ralph Fiennes is [as SS officer Aon Goeth] in Schindler's List [1993], but there was added potency in his performance because, to American audiences at least, he was an unknown quantity. Anthony Hopkins might have been brilliant in that role, but on a certain level, there would have been an awareness of the artifice. If not that much is known about you, you can protect your ability to be an empty vessel that people are willing to see filled up with lots of different stuff.
DB: Eddie Vedder said something like, "The more you're known as a personality, the less you're accepted as an entertainer."
EN: I would agree with that. On the other hand, I hate the "dark prince" act that some actors put on when they're doing publicity. If it's for real, if you're really a dark prince, then don't sit down with an interviewer and act like a dark prince. I don't necessarily love doing these things, but once you've agreed to do them, I think you ought to get on board.
DB: Just look in Star magazine. I'm always there.
EN: In Star magazine?
DB: Yeah. Every week, literally, even if it's "Drew's been nowhere this week." They never leave me alone. Those bloodsucking pieces of... never mind. Edward do you want to direct?
EN: Right now, directing is just a word, really. I'd be lying if I said it didn't interest me.
DB: Do you think that you'd be drawn to directing plays or films?
EN: I can only talk about them as an actor. I would say that the experience of performing in theater is unequaled by the experience of performing in films. The in-the-moment experience of theater makes you an adrenaline junkie, like I imagine performing rock 'n' roll to be: It's live and it's electrifying. I also think the actor has a more primary role in theater than in film, because when the curtain goes up, nobody else is out there. It's demanded of you as a stage actor that you understand how the whole thing works, because if you don't have a grasp of it from beginning to end, you're not gonna be able to pick that ball of energy up and hold it throughout the course of the play. But I also love what you can do with film. As an actor, there are things about performing on film that you can never get near in theater, in terms of the intimacy and the level of specificity that enables you to sink into a part and be it for awhile. Even in a smaller theater, you have to project outward in an unnaturally large way. But as I'm saying this, the theater in me is disagreeing with it, because anyone who's doing great work onstage is achieving great intimacy.
DB: So I have to ask, to get some closure here, what are your aspirations?
EN: My aspirations? That's a difficult question.
DB: It is, isn't it?
EN: If doing the kinds of jobs I've already gotten makes people inclined to consider me for lots of different roles so I can be selective, then that is all I could really ask for at the moment. I really can't imagine what more I'd want as an actor.
DB: So how was your first interview, Edward? How do you feel?
EN: Um, giddy. Happy-sad. It was better than "Cats". I thought it would be entirely more pleasant to talk to you than to have something written about me, the very idea of which gives me the heaves. And I think we successfully avoided any kind of personal info.
DB: Yes. Your secrets are safe.
EN: It's not that I have secrets, but I don't think that everything is better when shared with everyone. You know, Hemingway wrote these great descriptions of people who had been through different experiences--soldiers, for example, who come home from war and know people don't understand what it was they went through. And whenever the soldiers talk about what they've been through with other people, they feel cheap afterward. I understand that feeling of betraying something that was mine by sharing it--it makes me feel cheap too.
DB: You're not cheap.
EN: Well, thanks--and thanks for doing this. I owe you one. Did I use too many million-dollar words? I should've been more circumspect.
DB: No. Your intellect is such a big part of who you are, why deflate that?
EN: Now no one will hire me to play Stanley Kowalski.
DB: Well, as long as I get to play Blanche.
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