TOTAL FILM INTERVIEW
Hailed the Greatest Actor Of His Generation, he has no interest in fame and has turned down some of the biggest blockbusters ever made. But off the back of Spotlight, he’s now in the limelight: Alien: Covenant, Jackie, 20th Century Women and Netflix’s Gyp
Billy on his career Crudups and Crudowns.
I’m trying to do something badass. I don’t need much money, man – I’ve made more than I thought I would
When 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 19962003 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 now?
Gypsy
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
taken that as being very secure. So what do you do when your ambitions become different and they’re not articulated? It’s ironic that one of them is a therapist because clearly everyone needs lots of therapy. They’re not giving themselves the best opportunity, behaving the way they do. You play a lawyer in Gypsy. Do you think you could ever find satisfaction in an office job, or is acting your be all and end all? I’d be OK with a pretty small salary and apartment, just so long as I can play the guitar at night, or whatever; I do have some need for a creative outlet. I could be an office manager, but I wouldn’t be ambitious. I would come to work at nine, stop at five, and I wouldn’t work weekends. I spent a lot of time when I was younger moving around, so you become adaptive. I’ve done lots of different kinds of jobs, in the service industry primarily. I don’t feel I’d be dead in the water if I couldn’t act, but I feel enormously grateful that I’m able to. I’ve found profound joy being an actor.
You’re certainly on a roll this year:
Jackie, 20th Century Women, Alien: Covenant, Gypsy…
It just happened that I got in the company of some great filmmakers all around the same time. And the last plays I did were Waiting For Godot and Harold’s Pinter’s No Man’s Land, and by the end of it… man, I was worn out. It was the first time I felt like I needed a break from plays.
You tend to refuse roles in the big movies. So why
did you say yes to Alien: Covenant?
I was out in LA for Spotlight, and trying to drum up some work. They said, “You could put yourself on tape for Alien.” I was like, “C’mon man, I’m in a movie that’s up for an Oscar, can’t I just go for a meeting with Ridley?” And they were like, “Nope, you can put yourself on tape, and we’re not even gonna give you the whole script.” I was petulant about it and like [puts on childish voice], “I’ll make the damn tape.” I didn’t have any expectations that I was going to land a part, much less one that would be so interesting to work on. The experience of working with someone with the level of artistry that Ridley has… It’s a blessing.
Alien: Covenant ponders existence: faith versus science. Do you often think about such stuff?
Hell fucking yeah! When I finally did get the script and they were making a big deal about Oram’s fundamentalist upbringing and ideology… It was the most interesting aspect of it, for me, thematically. I asked Ridley if the origin of man was something he started with in the original [1979] movie. He’s mercurial when it comes to giving a definite answer. With this one he was like, “Probably not, but maybe.” It seems to me, with Prometheus, he was like, “If there was to be an origin story for Alien, what is it, precisely, we’re talking about?” And it was an origin story for mankind. And if you’re talking about an origin story for mankind, you’re talking about creation, about faith, and the belief that this is not an accident. To that extent, I thought Oram would be a very interesting character to keep that ball in the air for the audience.
I’d be OK with a pretty small salary and an apartment
Do you have religious beliefs yourself or are you more scientifically minded?
I have a pretty strong appreciation for the achievements that mankind has made by utilising the scientific process. Science seems to have the best opportunity to provide at least some hint of what the experience of living is all about. I’m more attracted to that belief system than the belief system that seems, to me, to be completely the invention of man.
On to more physical matters – how was it recreating John Hurt’s infamous chestburster scene?
It was spectacular. But there was also part of it that I found particularly enjoyable because of the history we’d created for Oram. There was this idea that he’d been raised by a punitive Pentecostal sect. In some versions of the Pentecostal belief system, you can be possessed by the holy spirit and you are forced to speak in tongues and writhe. I told Ridley how often it was during the course of the movie that this guy had to essentially dispatch with his faith because it led him in directions that created havoc for the people that he cared about. His new spiritual belief system had to be his love of humanity and the people around him. Then he actually does get possessed by the devil and it bursts out of him. I was like, “That’s fucking awesome!” I hope there’s some stoner somewhere who takes a big hit and then goes, “Oh shit man, the devil’s coming out of him!”
And Ridley bought into that reading?
I asked Ridley if I could try, in my last moments of consciousness, to grab this thing, because I thought it would be great to actually wrestle with the devil born from within you. But that didn’t make the cut.
When you were younger, you seemed to avoid big movies. Why was that?
I wasn’t consciously avoiding blockbusters. Sleepers was not meant to be a low-budget movie, nor was Almost Famous or Without Limits or Big Fish or Watchmen or Public Enemies. They were movies with a certain kind of ambition. Even the smaller movies that I did, I thought they had potential to break out. There are smaller movies that have enormous cultural impact. Like Trainspotting. It was never my intention to fly under the radar; it was my intention that if something was going to be successful, I at least wanted to be badass. I was getting a lot of those opportunities in the theatre, too. I got to do The Elephant Man, The Coast Of Utopia, Arcadia, The Pillowman – really cool, ambitious stuff.
But you never wanted to head up a franchise?
I felt like my strong suit was playing a variety of characters. I didn’t feel my strength was playing a version of myself that I’m just counting on people being affectionate enough towards that they come and see the movie.
You mean you wanted to be a character actor as opposed to a movie star?
Typically the movies that aim for broad audiences are written broadly, so you need actors who have a reliable kind of charisma in those parts. But Eat Pray Love wasn’t aiming for something small, to be sure. Or Mission: Impossible III. It’s just that the parts that I got in those movies were kind of sniper parts. I remember Jimmy Kimmel. I did his show one time and he’d come to see a production of No Man’s Land that we were workshopping. He was like, “Hey man, that was great, but what the fuck was it about?” I said, “Jimmy, it’s about your feelings. I know they’re in there somewhere.” He said, “You have the chance to make movies and money. What the hell are you doing?” I was like, “Because I’m trying to do something badass. I don’t need that much money, man – I’ve made more than I thought I would.”
That must have been a pretty typical response to much of your decision-making…
It is anathema in a capitalist society – if someone has the opportunity to make a lot of money, their refusal of it is seen as a kind of petulance. But that’s not what I’ve tried to do. I want to be wildly successful, but doing stuff that I think is cool.
Is part of the reason you didn’t want your face on billboards so that you could better inhabit new characters?
Hell, yeah! One hundred per cent, man. A big part of my design early on was to not have any kind of public persona. Acting was hard enough – I didn’t need to put another obstacle in the way. I didn’t relate to actors who would let people into their
I want to be wildly successful but doing stuff I think Is cool
homes and show them how they lived, and be on talk shows all the time and do big covers of magazines… I wanted, every time I was in a part, for people to think, “Wow, that’s the only part he could ever play.” Like, “Who’s that guy again? Oh yeah, it’s Billy Cud… drop.”
Do you still feel that way? You’re surprisingly talkative today…
Having seen my career through some ups and downs, I’m much more comfortable now talking about myself or the work that I’ve done, because I’ve been able to lay a foundation for myself. I’m sure there are producers of movies that I did when I was younger who want to stab me in the eye for saying that. [laughs] But for me, to build up a long career, it was crucial to play as many different parts as I could. I thought, “It won’t be long before my looks aren’t of any interest to people, so at that point, I better be good at what I do.”
You reportedly turned down Di Caprio’s part in Titanic. Would you be more open to such a role today?
I read scripts that are huge-budget movies. They don’t come my way so often anymore because ‘Crudup’ and ‘box office’ don’t go necessarily hand-in-hand. [laughs] That being said, at that time… It was kind of misreported. Because I didn’t want to be a part of any conversation, I just let it go, you know? I was never offered that part. I just committed to doing Without Limits. I met James Cameron and we talked and stuff, but I was previously committed to Without Limits. To my agent’s mind it was, “If the meeting goes well, obviously he’ll choose Titanic.” But to my mind… I headed that off before it got much further. I don’t know, man… I’d never been a professional actor before. I didn’t know how to make all the right choices. I did the best that I could to navigate it.
One role that did put you on magazine covers whether you liked it or not was Russell in
Almost Famous.
When it came out, I definitely rejected being associated with Russell because I’d played Russell; I didn’t want to keep playing Russell. The magazines want you to keep the moustache and keep the hair and show up in groovy ’70s clothes so we can wield this ‘artist with mystique’ thing. So the first thing I did was cut my hair and put on corduroys and a white shirt, much to my agent and publicist’s chagrin. I liked acting; I didn’t want to sell clothes or sell personalities or sell my personal life for someone else’s gain. I thought that was just a crappy way for studios to save
money on advertising. I’d have lots of arguments with people. I’d say, “How much will you pay me just for my acting? I’ll show up on time, be mostly sober, do a pretty good job. So how much just for those services?” And the pretty reliable answer was, “Nothing.” [laughs]
Was Russell fun to play, though? Most of your characters are conflicted, he’s just charismatic and having a blast!
Oh man, I loved it. I just did this movie 1 Mile To You. I play a coach with a runner who’s troubled. To get to play the guy that’s not troubled, who’s in a great place in life… It’s so much fucking fun. But when you create a niche for yourself playing conflicted, contorted men who get themselves into bad situations, you don’t get the scripts for the happygo-lucky guy so much.
Russell is very cool. He’s also something of a closed book…
That’s what was intriguing. That character, that guy, every band seems to have one: the guy who’s decided they’re not going to let you in on whatever their story is. Probably – and I think this is an explanation for a lot of creative people, myself included, when they’re starting out – they don’t know where it’s fucking coming from either, and the last thing they want to do is reveal to someone that they don’t know what they’re doing, that this may all be a huge mistake, and you’re going to find out what a fraud I am if you dig deeper. I think Russell probably was a talent and considered music and his own production of music within the context of popular music and rock and roll. He was a more cerebral character than he let on.
You still play guitar now, yes?
Yeah. But I’d never played guitar before, man, and I had to look like someone who was great at it. I don’t know if you’ve taken up a second language or an instrument as an adult, but it’s hard on the brain. Like, “What am I doing, man? I’m not going to put myself through that.” When you’re a kid you go to piano practice because your mum says you have to go. As an adult, it’s rigorous work on a daily basis.
At least you’ve been put through your paces by the likes of Scott, Mann, Abrams, Burton, Crowe, Frears and Allen. Have you never wanted to try directing yourself?
I’ve never had that instinct. You know, just because you’re in the proximity of this creative collaboration doesn’t really mean you know anything about what the other
people do. I, for sure, don’t know what the fuck a director does. I barely know what an actor does. If I was to undertake directing, it would be a long-term choice – I would go to get some education in it, or follow someone for a year.
Does acting still impassion you as it did when you were starting out?
I’m still very interested in the potential I have as an actor. And that’s where I want to spend my time. I don’t want to do something new. It reminds me… I’ve been skiing my whole life, and my friend goes “We should try snowboarding.” I’m like, “Alright, man.” And after spending two hours on the bunny hill screaming “Motherfucker” as four-year-olds flew by me, I was like, “This is not what I enjoy about being on a mountain, man. Give me my skis back so I can do what I like to do.”
You used to go to punishing lengths to find a character. Do you still put in the same level of preparation?
Yeah. The reason I do it is because I get interested in it. I suppose I could do a fine enough job without preparing so much, but I don’t like wasting opportunities. Sometimes life gets in the way or you don’t have the energies for the ambitions you have. But in ideal circumstances, if I take a part it’s because it ignited something in me and I won’t be able to extinguish that until I realise it to my best potential.
And do you use your own life experiences, much as Mike Mills plundered his own past to write and direct
20th Century Women?
Yeah, there’s often proximity. I am often attracted to material or characters with themes that I have some investment in. I use analogies a lot. But the thing I’m most interested in is this idea of what if I was someone else? What could I learn about people in general by pursuing a completely different mindset, a totally different history?
Watchmen’s
Dr. Manhattan is probably the most iconic role you’ve played, yet many people don’t know it’s you…
Exactly – how awesome is that? To get to be in something so vivid for people, and to be front and centre in a really ambitious creative pursuit, and people have no idea it’s you. That was a big part of the conversation I had with Zack [Snyder, director]: “How are you going to render this?” They actually set a world record for Dr. Manhattan, on the most number of motion-capture dots on a face. They built that virtual replica of me in the computer, and every muscle that moved on my face, moved on the puppet in the computer. What you see is my exact performance. It’s astonishing to me.
So the story has it that you signed up to play Dr. Henry Allen in Justice League with Zack, and then to reprise the character in
The Flash…
All I can really tell you is that I’m in the trailer [of Justice League]. Beyond that I would say that I would work with Zack in a heartbeat. I am super stoked about the opportunity. He is one of the most enjoyable, creative people to be around. He gave me such a kickass opportunity doing Watchmen. All he has to do is call me up and I’ll be there. I’ll always be grateful that he put my performance as Dr. Manhattan onto the body of a 6ft 4in monster of a man with a giant schlong.
Indeed. You were on the cover of with your penis out…
Total Film
[laughs] There’s no part of acting that’s dignified. You have to suck it up and admit you put on other people’s clothes for money.
Gypsy is launching Globally on 30 June exclusively on netflix.
I’m still very Interested In the potential I have