Desempeño docente

the IntervIew

hen Billy Crudup arrived on the scene with true-crime story Sleepers and Woody Allen’s musical Everyone Says I Love You in 1996, he was immediately hailed as The Next Big Thing. Then, reportedly, he turned down the role of Jack in Titanic (more of which in the following Q&A), and Tyler Durden in Fight Club. Instead he played 1970s Olympic runner Steve Prefontaine in Robert Towne’s Without

Limits, a cowboy in Stephen Frears’s The Hi-Lo Country and a junkie called Fuck

Head in Alison Maclean’s Jesus’ Son. All good movies, all little-seen.

In 2000, Crudup was again hailed The Next Big Thing when he hogged magazine covers playing cool, charismatic guitarist Russell Hammond in Cameron Crowe’s semi-autobiographical rock ’n’ Rolling

Stone biopic Almost Famous. “Billy Crudup

is a serious actor trapped in a heartthrob’s body,” trumpeted The New York Times. But he again shied away from the spotlight, choosing to tread the boards on Broadway

(he was nominated for a Tony Award playing John Merrick in The Elephant Man) and to block offers of ’busters (he turned down Bruce Banner in Ang Lee’s Hulk) in favour of resonant dramas such as Big

Fish and Charlotte Gray. “Billy’s deeply

private,” said his Gray co-star Cate Blanchett, who revealed that the rare times he spoke on set were to discuss “the inner dialogue of scenes”.

All of which makes the prospect of a career-chat with Crudup rather daunting. Go back and read the handful of interviews that he’s consented to over the years, and a theme emerges: he hates doing press as much as he recoils from the idea of being a movie star. Fame, he feels, is an obstacle to acting. And he’s sure not about to peddle his private life – good luck to any journalist who dares ask about his 1996- 2003 relationship with Mary-Louise Parker, with whom he has a son, or his subsequent four years with Claire Danes. It’s hard enough just getting him to say a few words on his work in The Good

Shepherd, Public Enemies or Spotlight, or the

couple of big-movie anomalies he’s chosen to grace, Mission: Impossible III and

Watchmen. Hell, he’s been acting 30 years

and people still can’t pronounce his name (it rhymes with ‘screwed-up’).

But given he’s just captained the crew of Alien: Covenant, offered stellar support in

Jackie and 20th Century Women, and is now

making a rare foray into TV with Netflix’s

Gypsy, playing a lawyer married to Naomi

Watts’ therapist who gets too involved with her clients, isn’t it time to at least have a go at cracking Crudup?

“Thank you very much for taking the time,” he smiles, relaxed in his home city of New York, with the only hint of awkwardness coming in his frequent umming and ahing. “As I’ve gotten older, I’ve certainly gotten more appreciative of the work opportunities that I have, so… whatever I can do to help.”

Well, this is new. Might Crudup, at 48, finally be ready to be The Next Big Thing? Let’s find out…

You’ve consistently moved between film and theatre, but done little TV. Why do Gypsy now?

The sort of material I was interested in before wouldn’t likely be made as a feature-length film now. Certainly not one with any kind of budget giving you the opportunity to be ambitious, or to get a decent salary, above scale. Most of the films that come to me – even the ones that have done well over the past couple of years – you get paid a relatively low wage. So actors and writers and directors have tried to find out where the market is right now. The invention of different content suppliers has provided a creative and financial windfall for a lot of people.

But why Gypsy?

I’ve typically been drawn to screenplays or plays that have some kind of ambition, whether it’s in the characterisations or the plot or the format or the subject matter or the creative artistry behind it. Whatever it is, there has to be some kind of spirit of, “We could be making something singular, or this could go horribly wrong.” [laughs] The safe story is the one I’m waiting to make when I run out of money. In the meantime, I’m saving my money so I can keep trying to do stuff that I think is cool.

You and Naomi Watts certainly share some cool scenes…

Naomi is a very reliable actor when it comes to pursuing ambitious stuff, so the fact she was leading this story was a draw for me. It’s a 10-hour narrative and you only read a tenth of that [before signing on]. It’s hard to make a decision based upon 10 per cent of information. People have pitched ideas to me before, and my response is always the same: “I can’t wait to read it.”

Was it satisfying to explore a fracturing marriage in such detail?

The potential for me was the exploration of this relationship in the middle of its life, with two people who are in the middle of their lives. It’s found a stasis for one of the partners, while the other partner has

W

tAKInG ChArGe Crudup’s Oram moves up the ranks swiftly in Alien: Covenant…

SubScribe at www.totalfilm.com/SubS ToTal Film | august 2017

the IntervIew

92 92

I’d be OK wIth