Already at the age of eight, Eddie asked the teacher who staged a play at their school, what was the “grain” of his role, what was the motivation of his character.
His grandfather was an idealist architect — he believed that urban development should be based not on engineering expediency, but on humanitarian values. He built Columbia in Maryland, an ideal town structured like a human being. And he moved his family there. His father was Attorney General in the Carter administration and also tried to improve the world: the fight against crime and work in the fund for the preservation of historical monuments of America. His mother, an English teacher, taught the language to poor refugees. This is how the artist Norton grew up — in a family of idealists from Boston. Already at the age of eight, Eddie asked the teacher who staged a play at their school, what was the “grain” of his role, what was the motivation of his character. Like other Nortons, Eddie was convinced that everything has a meaning and a reason, the world can be improved, and you need to do it yourself. He managed to graduate from Yale University and work as a translator in Japan, but then he decided: his job is to show people what prevents the world from getting closer to the ideal. Never aspiring to Hollywood glamor, Norton began his career in Edward Albee’s off-Broadway Autograph Theatre. When he auditioned for the film Primal Fear, he confused the casting assistants with his Kentucky twang and stutter. And he was approved for the role of a young schizophrenic killer, deciding that the guy was really from the outback and would bring the spirit of genuine provincial hopelessness into the film. Then there was American History X, a manifesto against violence. And “Fight Club”, the manifesto of a generation that has left the human world for the jungle of its own psyche… He manages to turn each of his roles into a manifesto, he never agrees to work without a “grain” and wants to deal with the essential and real. He still rides the subway and says that the day when, due to his popularity, he cannot enter the New York subway, it will be black for him. This month, Norton is an illusionist, concert magician in early XNUMXth century Vienna. It sure means something.
Directed by: Neil Burger
Cast: Edward Norton, Paul Giamatti, Rufus Sewell, Jessica Biel.
In theaters from October 19.