‘Everyone’s a perfectionist’
poet Rainer Maria Rilke that gestation is like the time it takes to get a thing right. Let’s say I wrote this script for Motherless Brooklyn a year after I read the book in 1999 and people were like, “We loved Fight Club so whatever you want to do – go!” I couldn’t have made this film 18 years ago. I didn’t have the experience.’
Called one of the greatest actors of his generation since his Oscar-nominated 1996 debut in Primal Fear, Norton has never been one to revel in his celebrity. Most people know the name but struggle to place him, which is exactly how he likes it. He wants to able to disappear into any role and today his look is neutral – black jacket, white T-shirt, grey chinos.
However, he’s created a very ‘look at me’ lead for himself in Motherless Brooklyn as a drug-dependent, OCD detective with Tourette’s syndrome. Norton, you’ll be unsurprised to know, did a lot of research for the role.
‘It’s sort of the cliché of Tourette’s that someone yells something X-rated. Actually, that extreme manifestation is extremely rare,’ he says.
‘And not everyone who has Tourette’s has obsessive compulsive tendencies. What’s interesting is it’s a neurological disorder, not a mental illness and it’s unique in so far as it doesn’t express itself in the same way in anybody.’
With a reputation of being difficult to work with, Norton has been labelled a perfectionist. Is he?
‘I don’t think I’ve ever worked with anyone in film who’s good who’s not a perfectionist,’ he says. ‘I guarantee you
I’m not more of a perfectionist than Robert De Niro, Daniel Day-Lewis or Meryl Streep.’
Like them, Norton tries to stay in character on set. Does he struggle to let it go afterwards? ‘That’s another misconception,’ he says. ‘It’s not hard to put it down, it’s hard to pick it up. The effort is in sustaining the focus. You talk about actors like Day-Lewis and Streep…’ (actually I didn’t, he did) ‘who are very demanding and people say, “Oh, they’re being so precious.” But they’re not. It’s hard to sustain concentration because there’s lights, there’s cameras and these things...’ he waves his smartphone... ‘that have made it worse than ever. ‘Most actors will tell you that when the movie’s over it’s like a water balloon bursting. It’s gone.’
The 50-year-old has many interests outside acting. He was one of the earliest investors in Uber, for example, and has a fascination with data analysis, which he views as a puzzle to be solved. His is not your typical ‘arty mind’ but that’s just another cliché, he tells me.
‘Wasn’t TS Eliot an insurance salesman?’ he asks. ‘A bank clerk,’ I say. ‘Picasso is the rarity,’ he says, ‘the person who relentlessly produces art.’
Most artists, he says, need time away from ‘playing pretend’, to replenish the well with real-life experiences to create refined work. ‘I didn’t go to acting class just to become a nine-to-five Japanese salaryman.’
Call him Edward, call him an Uber but you could never call him a slacker.
‘When the movie’s over it’s like a water balloon bursting. It’s gone’
Motherless Brooklyn is out Friday