|
|
Features
|
|
A Trust in One’s Self
Actor Billy Crudup is the first to admit his career isn’t perfect. But the trick when something doesn’t click, like today’s new DVD Trust the Man, is to keep moving forward.
Tuesday, February 6, 2007
By Daniel Robert Epstein
|
|
|
Larry Busacca/WireImage.com
Photo
|
|
In Park City with Dedication
|
|
So how does an actor follow up a year in which he starred alongside Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible III and was directed by Robert De Niro in The Good Sheperd. In the case of talented actor Billy Crudup, the answer is a film called Dedication. Screened at the recent Sundance Film Festival, it marks the directorial debut of Justin Theroux, a versatile fellow actor as comfortable on TV (Six Feet Under, The District) as he is on film (Miami Vice, American Psycho).
“Dedication is a template for a romantic comedy, but the character I play is somebody who is utterly tortured by the world,” Crudup explains during a recent interview with FilmStew. “Everything is terrifying. It was a fascinating character, but awful to play. I was so glad when it was over.”
“It was a great opportunity and a really rich character, but being scared of the world all day long is taxing.”
Crudup, so good in everything from Without Limits to Almost Famous to Stage Beauty, is currently part of the Lincoln Center play Coast of Utopia, a massively dense Tom Stoppard trilogy featuring a litany of roles that also encompass Ethan Hawke, Martha Plimpton and Josh Hamilton. The play has been extended to May 13th.
“It was produced once in London a couple of years ago,” Crudup explains. “It’s three plays, one each night. It covers 20 years during the social and intellectual revolt in Russia during the 19th century.”
|
|
Gary Gershoff/WireImage.com
Photo
|
|
Stoppard, at Utopia's November opening party
|
|
|
Less successful of a 2006 effort for Crudup was the comedy-drama Trust the Man, new today on DVD. Reuniting him with writer-director Bart Freundlich, his muse on the 2001 film World Traveler, the Fox Searchlight entry made a miniscule $1.5 million at the box office. But with the likes of Julianne Moore, David Duchovny and Maggie Gyllenhaal as Crudup’s co-stars in this Woody Allen-ish tale of neurotic adults in search of intimacy, it is bound to do well with the weekend DVD crowd.
“Bart is a very funny person and we make each other laugh a lot,” Crudup reveals. “I was glad that he was pursuing a comedy. In World Traveler, the character was really frustrated. He didn’t know how to articulate things, and the things that were affecting him were penetrating him really deep. Playing that kind of thing can be really demanding.”
“On the other hand, life just kind of glances off Tobey [Crudup’s character in Trust the Man],” he continues. “He’s not really deeply affected by anything so that made it a lot easier and fun for me. I’m as much a fan of fart jokes as I am of psychological and emotional dramas, so it was really rewarding to have the opportunity to just be silly for a month and a half or so.”
A key part of Crudup’s character in Trust the Man is his obsession with a routine any New York resident with a car is very familiar with. That is, the task of moving a vehicle from one side of the street to another to satisfy draconian parking rules. Which begs the question – has Crudup himself ever owned a car in Manhattan?
|
|
Jamie McCarthy/WireImage.com
Photo
|
|
Freundlich, with wife and Trust the Man co-star Julianne Moore
|
|
|
“Yeah, and I could never find a parking spot,” he answers. “When Bart first started writing this movie, before he even offered it to me, he would say, ‘He [the character] can’t find a parking space.’ I said, ‘Well, that’s just like me when I first moved to the city!’”
“I would sit in my car, just like everyone else, waiting for alternate side of the street to take effect so I could move to the other side of the street,” adds Crudup. “I spent a good deal of my afternoons my first year and a half here in that car. I don’t think I went on a single trip outside of the city. The only time I drove it was to the other side of the street.”
“It took about ten years, but I finally sold the car.”
Crudup has had his fair share of attention from the tabloids, especially when he became involved with his Stage Beauty co-star Clare Danes. But the 38-year-old native of Manhasset, New York never has – and never will – subscribe to Star Magazine.
“I never read the tabloids before I was in movies, so I’m not missing anything,” he offers. “It’s not fun to have people make up sh*t about you and then judge you, based upon that. There are more fun things like root canals. I would prefer that we didn’t live in a culture that supports that, but we do.”
Crudup is not the kind of guy who would ever exclaim in real life the infamous refrain of his Almost Famous alter ego Russell Hammond (‘I am a golden God!) He’s got a SAG Award nomination, a Spirit Award nomination and a prize from the 2000 Paris Film Festival for his work in Jesus’ Son.
Like every actor, Crudup has had opportunities in the past that a part of him wishes he had said yes to instead of no. But overall, the still-young thespian is philosophical about his somewhat under-the-radar career.
“I try to focus on what’s happening now, on what I’m in involved with, rather than thinking about mistakes that I made or things that I should have done,” he reveals. “I’m typically more consumed with, ‘How do I make what I have now work?’”
“I can be really thorough with characters,” adds Crudup. “I can manifest some interesting behavior that somebody else might not think about because I’ve been thinking about it so much. As you grow older, you try to learn which characteristics are working for you and which aren’t.”
“Sometimes the thinking works really well for me and sometimes it doesn’t.”
|
|
|
|
|
 Email
|
 Print
|
|
|
|
|
|