Edward Norton
Edward Norton
Edward Harrison Nortonis an American actor, filmmaker and activist. He has been nominated for three Academy Awards for his work in the films Primal Fear, American History Xand Birdman. He also starred in other roles, such as Everyone Says I Love You, The People vs. Larry Flynt, Fight Club, Red Dragon, 25th Hour, Kingdom of Heaven, The Illusionist, Moonrise Kingdomand The Grand Budapest Hotel. He has also directed and co-written films, including his directorial debut, Keeping the Faith. He has...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMovie Actor
Date of Birth18 August 1969
CountryUnited States of America
There's a lot of romanticisation of the intuitive actor and method acting and all kinds of notions about getting inside a character and coming out from there.
I'm not a very methodologically pure actor. Almost every time that I start, I feel completely at sea. Always at the beginning I feel like a fraud, really, because I'm never sure how to get started.
For me there's always a line or two in a script, when you hit it you almost decide to do the whole movie off a line or two. You almost do it for the fun of getting to say a line or two like that. I don't have any specific plans, you know. I mean, if Seth Rogen calls with a great buddy pic, I'll be there.
There are things you do for the fun of doing them or to work or to hang with certain people. But the projects that I've invested myself in and cared about most deeply have absolutely been activated by a desire to chase something that I relate to, or that I see as having the potential to speak to someone else directly.
It's ginned up by the corporate plutocracy as a way of distracting the working-class people that it's screwing. We hamstring our own natural progressivism in this country, and that's really stupid.
My greatest hope is that we transcend the most fearful thing, which is that we are rapidly degrading the ecological systems on this planet that support everything we are doing and all life on it.
I grow tired of intelligence having such a limited manifestation in movies - "intelligence" usually meaning coastal, with a certain level of formal education.
Suspension of disbelief and that whole question is part of the heart of the 'Leaves of Grass'movie.
The Zionist Tulsa Jew who's pugnacious is a reality. I grew up around it. And I think it's really, really funny and surprising and unlikely.
Any questions I had about whether a redneck from Oklahoma could become a Brown Classical Philosophy professor ended when I met Tim [Blake Nelson].
What we set out to do with this movie [Leaves of Grass] was to create something that was funny and serious and had large tonal ambitions. A movie that could be poignant and funny, and suddenly quite violent. To have a character utterly sideswiped, and to learn that life is about balance.
I never even considered comedy genre as something to embrace or move away from.
I've never acted before in a movie I've directed. This felt like the time to do it just because the " Leaves of Grass" movie itself is so much of a platform for the lead actor. It's really written for an exciting performance and it really depends on the audience watching an extraordinary actor having a great time pulling off this feat. It makes sense to me as a director to act in support of that.
You dream as an actor's director of letting moments breathe through two-shots.