Straight Talk: Edward Norton:
The actor, Matt Damon's co-star in a new movie about high-stakes poker, says bluffing can pay off.
By Jeffrey Zaslow
USA Weekend, September 4-6, 1998
In back-room Manhattan poker clubs, Edward Norton, 29, learned what it's like to be inferior. He and Matt Damon hit the clubs to prepare for their roles as card sharks in the new movie Rounders. They even entered the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas -- and were quickly squashed by real rounders ("the absolute opposite of suckers").
"Poker is not a game of chance," says Norton. "It's a game of psychology, strategy, math. When you sit with people who are better than you, you know you're outmatched. It's like playing tennis with Ivan Lendl."
Even before he immersed himself in the poker world, Norton had the instincts of a fearless player. He knew how to bluff. When casting directors were looking for someone to play the Appalachian murderer in Primal Fear, the Maryland-born Norton fibbed that he grew up in Kentucky. Using a hillbilly accent he'd picked up watching Coal Miner's Daughter, he won the part.
He went on to a celebrated role as the weary lawyer in The People vs. Larry Flynt. In the upcoming American History X, he plays a neo-Nazi, and he's now doing a boxing film, Fight Club.
Often described as press-shy, Norton says keeping his personal life to himself is like having a poker face. "If you load people up with prior knowledge about you, it's much more difficult for them to see you as the characters you play. It erodes your effectiveness," says the Yale graduate.
Norton is a grandson of the late James Rouse, the famed real estate developer (Baltimore's Harborplace, Boston's Faneuil Hall) and humanitarian. His grandfather taught him social responsibility, he says, and encouraged him to be an actor, even though it was a long-odds gamble. There's a poker rule: Trust everyone, but always cut the cards. To that, Norton counters, "Hopefully, everybody has someone in their lives with whom they don't have to cut the cards."
ADVICE
Money isn't everything:
"When I was in Vegas, they talked about how Bill Gates comes to
town and plays $3 and $6 [poker]. I completely understand that. Poker
isn't just about money. It's about gamesmanship, the ego of it."
Life, like poker, has "an element of risk. It shouldn't be avoided. It should be faced."
Get your houses in order:
Norton worked three years for The Enterprise Foundation, his
grandfather James Rouse's program to create decent low-income housing.
"The unavailability of affordable housing has a lot to do with so many social problems."
ASK NORTON FOR ADVICE
Edward Norton will write or call a reader who seeks advice. By Sept 13, write to [this was a feature of the original article. They never posted anything on the lucky winner or the advice given out].
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