Edward Norton Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters | GQ

I challenge anyone to find a great performance by any actor ever that doesn't start really with text and understanding the text of the thing they're doing what are its intentions what are its goals what are the layers that are gonna make this person up primal fear I'm gonna put a caveat on everything from here forward that my memory of some of these things is elusive your own relationship to the experience is different from people who enjoy the film because they may have a more present tense sensitive I remember weird things I remember having not had that much experience working in film realizing that you could play a very intense scene when they're doing the coverage in the other direction and realized that you're out of gas I remember like in kind of one of the final courtroom scenes where feeling like I'd I'd overdone it when it was like shooting Laura Linney or something and running to the craft service guy and going like just get me some caffeine and I like you know figured out there jack myself back up on something those like the rookie mistakes you make everybody thinks you did this everybody I'm the only one who believes you and I am that close so I wanted all out oh right now right here working with Richard Gere was like the it was the it was the luckiest first dance partner I could have had he he was like veteran part it's like Trent like the movie training day like he was such a real comrade in saying this is great but then like you know in the subtlest of ways just you know little pointers little guide in this little support he was I can't say enough great about him he was he was so kind to me on that there was a lot of consternation in that film about whether he needed to end up winning whether this was okay that the end of the film was this body blow you know of getting getting sideswiped by this kid he was the one who like forcefully argue he was like what is better than me getting hammered he goes that's what makes this work he was he didn't want to he didn't want to win he didn't wanna you know he knew in a weird way that part of the pleasure of the end was the smug polished guy getting sideswiped founders you know it's one of those things you look left you look great like what was the last really good poker movie and yeah and and there wasn't one then and then and also some sometimes you just get this thing of like Matt's doing it well I'll uh that'd be fun he's great what Turturro is gonna do it what Malkovich is gonna do it like come Martin Landau is gonna do oh my god you know it's like we're hanging out on the corner on eighth Avenue and listening to Martin Landau tell stories like that's like as good as kids were they allow people like you places like this you know what there's a ghost when you get yourself a job then you can be my vo how about that work I think has lots of literary ancestors worms like Johnny boy and mean streets worm is like the friend you that if you didn't have roots you wouldn't be friends with him now you know what I mean it's like he's in Shakespeare he'd be puck you know he's he's he's mischief he's trouble i'm airinas fix the film was like even the poster was iconic it was a Shakespearean type of a story by design it was it was tragedy that's how we talked about it that's how when David and I worked on the script for months months months we were taking this incredible scenario and this idea to imagine him as a latter-day Venice Beach Macbeth you know and a fellow here's this person who like a lot of those great classical tragic heroes has enormous gifts he's not some cracker he's he's he's smart he's forceful he loves his family he has qualities of leadership he he doesn't suffer fools he's got like you know we used to say like he is like the qualities of a general you can see within him the things he could could have been but he's overtaken by rage are kind of you know ambitious idea at the time was if what those plays and Greeks and sheiks we're trying to do is say hey people can learn a lesson literally a cathartic lesson from the fall of macbeth because of ambition the you know a fellow jealousy like let's look at someone who ruins all of the potential in his life because of rage you know like who let's rage destroy everything that he that could have been good in his life I don't think the tape showed that at all you didn't think so and what you're an authority ma Murray what do you think well I did think that the police use their clubs rather excessively who are you to say what's excessive I think it was totally appropriate I loved working with beverly d'angelo and Elliott Gould those fans that dinner those things that the dinner table were incredibly like visceral and Verity and improvisational and you have to have a canoe have to create a special kind of a sense of Alliance and Trust like everybody knows we're telling this story for our reason we have an objective with this we have a message with this that's we hope a humanist one like a thing because you're gonna go to some places and you don't want to be self-conscious about it so for me being the one who was having to like obviously like almost improvisationally rip at with these horrible you know rage filled tire aides at people you when you have actors and when you feel a sense of like a safety zone a support in a safe zone in which to explore all that it's important this isn't our neighborhood it's a battlefield we're on a battlefield tonight make a decision are we gonna stand on the sidelines quietly standing there while our country gets raped the guts of the whole thing we're David McKenna is like great great writing nobody like Swans in and starts making up a character from some intuitive level you you have to there's a text there's a script there's a director with there's an idea there's a whole set of ideas and you have to engage from the point of view of what is this piece like what is it saying what is it doing what's the tonality of it is it highly stylized as it's supernatural istic what are the layers that are gonna make this person up and sometimes honestly wardrobe can become the right set of boots we'll find you the characters physicality faster than than any like sense memory exercise you know what I mean it's it's very there's many many many many triggers to the process of finding what becomes you know quote unquote character I think high club Fincher one time said that it was a film about a serious subject made by deeply unserious people which is sort of true I mean honestly the it was a marathon but it really was characterized by by a lot of laughter I think my abiding memory of the whole thing whatever was quote-unquote hard about is that we were just having a ball Fincher is funny Brad is funny helena is really funny Andy Walker who came in and did a lot of great rewrites on it was every there was a lot of funny people on that movie and there was a fun dark sensibility of sticking a fork in things you know and it was it was fun how are you doing I don't know that I've ever been involved in a situation where a text was better suited to a director's very unique talents I mean he what he did on that movie technically was just a jaw-dropper to watch on a day-in day-out basis he was doing things that were just like so off the wall and an impressive and innovative and the way that ventures technical capabilities enhanced the discombobulation of the experience which is what the film is about what it just all it was all snowballing in a way that was really impressive to watch and we saw it together finished for the first time and I think we were just it's one of those things you just go wow we're gonna will always have this one you know what I mean like it was great you hope you get a couple of those in a whole career you know what I mean 20 foot power spike we was one of the reasons I got serious about making films because do the right thing was to me one of the definitive films of my coming-of-age I had an enormous enormous impact on literally like what I thought was the reason to make movies like it changed my aspirational target and I'd literally written spike fan letters I mean I thought he got game was like an absolute freaking undeclared masterpiece I thought it was just great and I I think I wrote him a letter about that and then when I saw in some way or some time he came running over and we got into it and then you know we started looking for something to do Oh Falls to jail for 15 life you think Bush and Cheney didn't know about that give me up break I think spike was not gonna make that movie in the aftermath of 9/11 and not deal with the melancholy that was sitting on his town spike makes films about that moments he's living in he makes films about the tensions in his neighborhood he makes films about what's the moral challenge of the moment we're living in and there and you know and I think spike just was drawn to the 25th hour because we all were just because it's a great morality tale it's like does responsibility for someone's decisions ripple out our others responsible for someone falling you know well I think we shot the 25th hour and 26 days I think it was the shortest schedule I've ever shot a film on it was the shortest schedule I've ever shot a film on and and it's a function of Spike's preparation he's one of the most prepared directors and part of that it's rehearsal he roasted like a play you know five or six weeks 9:00 to 5:00 every day like a play and fill an hour in heaven we were like this is this is everything we love you know motherless Brooklyn it's based on a novel called motherless Brooklyn by a great Brooklyn writer named Jonathan leave him it's a story about a very unusual underdog he's a guy who is afflicted with Tourette's syndrome and obsessive-compulsive disorder and he works he has a place in the world within a detective agency in Brooklyn and a mentor Bruce Willis who who sort of understands him and understands that he has many strange gifts within this condition of his affliction and when something bad happens to that one friend and mentor who gives him his place in the world it sets him off on this journey of revenge and also puzzle solving to figure out what happened and it sort of leads him into this vast world of powerbrokers in the social history of what was happening to New York in the 50s it's in the traditions of noir I hope like Chinatown or Big Sleep for many of the things that look at the underbelly of how things really happened in American life but at the same time it really is a character portrait it's a character study about an underdog finding his way into his own kind of empowerment I think I get something wrong with me that's the first thing to know Red's my head I got to head to my heads man i twitch and shout a lot the thing about directing and acting is that you get to be the sculptor of your own performance which is great with something as tricky as a character with Tourette syndrome where you're gonna want as an actor to feel liberated to try a lot you're the ultimate arbiter of the of the calibration of your performance that's very nice there's a certain bubble of of illusion that actors like to maintain together even even though there's all this technical distraction going on around them and when you're a director you're part of that technical distraction so you're kind of you're bursting the bubble that as actors you like to create together and probably my biggest anxiety about directing and acting was the way I would compromise the experience for the other actors of acting with me but the answer to that is to get like stone-cold pros people who are like tradecraft professionals and really bring intrinsically to it more than you could ever hope for you know more than you even imagined Bruce Willis Alec Baldwin Willem Dafoe Gugu and Gotha raw bobby cannavale a Jerry Jones Michael K Williams I mean and it keeps going there's a there's a lot I went to with the exception of Gugu who's my my British import because she's such a liminal new talent her she's just I think emergent into like people's consciousness which is I what I wanted in my lady of mystery my figure of mystery but but the large bulk of everyone I went to on this was kind of my cadre of New York theater actors that I know I've worked with have relationships with it's um and who I think have a certain kind of a New York shorthand if you will do you remember what I said she doesn't know she doesn't know what don't I know it's a total consumption it's a total creative engagement it's um he's very very challenging and I love so many of the store the dimensions of storytelling from photography to music to sound it it's such a rich opportunity to play with all these little creative compartments of your brain

Channel: GQ

Views: 2,048,017

Keywords: celebrity, iconic characters, iconic, edward norton, edward norton 2019, edward norton interview, edward norton gq, edward norton iconic, edward norton iconic characters, edward norton movie, edward norton movies, edward norton character, edward norton fight club, edward norton american history x, edward norton primal fear, edward norton 25th hour, edward norton rounders, edward norton motherless brooklyn, motherless brooklyn, edward norton characters, gq, gq magazine

Id: ZFIQp9GiGsU

Length: 15min 9sec (909 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 07 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/NoKidsItsCruel]

I could happily sit and listen to Norton talk about films, acting and literature for any amount of time.

[u/Sir_roger_rabbit]

intresting to note of the roles he didn't talk about... bit of a jump from 2002 to 2019.

[u/SamwisethePoopyButt]

I liked Motherless Brooklyn and sad it's bombing, but I'm a bit Norton-ed out after his recent press tour. He appeared on seemingly every podcast I listen to and told many of the exact same stories. This video is cool, thought it's a bit weird how he mentions nothing that he did between 2003 and 2019.

[u/Sab3rHunt3r]

You're not supposed to talk about fight club..

[u/hendrew1221]

Rounders , American History x and Fight club in a row is an all time 3 peat for my tastes.

[u/Charlie_Wax]

In my head canon, his characters from Rounders, The Score, and The Italian Job are actually the same person.

I call it his Scumbag Trilogy.

[u/dirtyqtip]

I remember watching AHX in the theater, and 1/2 way through the movie I was like "Holy shit, thats ED NORTON??" The kid from Primal Fear?!??

[u/TomBonner1]

I was disappointed he didn't talk about Incredible Hulk.

[u/tidder-hcs]

Wow!