Category: Interview

Winona Forever

Winona Forever

Posted January 1, 2011

Winona Ryder has this problem, and as problems go it’s pretty solidly in the first-world category, she knows, but it’s a problem, still: She’ll be having a conversation with somebody. And then suddenly the person she’s having the conversation with will say something to her that reminds her that she is Winona Ryder, the famous actress, and nearly everyone she meets already has “this whole idea” of who she is. And inevitably when this happens, she starts thinking about what it is people think they know about her, which is never a good idea, and the conversation never really recovers. […]

The Crowded Mind of Johnny Depp

The Crowded Mind of Johnny Depp

Posted January 1, 2011

Friend and rock legend Patti Smith finds him on set, guitar in hand, for a free-floating tour of the inner Depp. Johnny Depp is on set at Pinewood Studios, outside London, for the last days of shooting the next Pirates of the Caribbean movie—On Stranger Tides. We sit on the floor of his trailer. There is an old Stella acoustic guitar that he cannot resist picking up and strumming quietly. Johnny is working 12-hour shifts. The day begins in the makeup trailer, long before morning rush hour. Downtime is divided between press calls, stacks of pictures to sign, scripts to […]

The Redemption of Jared Leto

Posted December 1, 2010

DETAILS: You’ve said that when you were young you’d break into people’s houses and just sit in their living rooms. Why did you do that?Jared Leto: My brother and I didn’t have many rules for ourselves and really didn’t acknowledge that there were any rules in the world. We would often break into schools. I assumed everyone did. I mean, we broke out of schools a lot as well. We were the kids that other kids weren’t allowed to play with. There wasn’t any deep ill intent, but we were compelled to do certain things. I think it was about […]

The Garrett Hedlund Workout

The Garrett Hedlund Workout

Posted December 1, 2010

Skinny farm kid Garrett Hedlund transformed himself into Tron‘s hero. All it took was hard work and the threat of a skintight suit. Other kids practiced to make the track team. Garrett Hedlund didn’t have time for that, so he chased cows instead. His family’s 400-acre cattle farm in northern Minnesota was at the end of the bus route, 2 hours from school. When he arrived home, he spent his time plowing fields and mending fences. But Hedlund wanted to be the fastest kid in his grade school, so chasing wayward bovines during weekend cattle runs became his practice. “Everybody […]

Christian Bale May Kill Someone Yet

Christian Bale May Kill Someone Yet

Posted November 15, 2010

When a rage for authenticity meets a workingman’s attitude, you get this guy. An actor of great dimension — just don’t call him that. And he’ll probably win some big award for his role in The Fighter, but don’t dare tell him that. A funny and sometimes testy encounter with Mr. Bale. Christian Bale comes to the bar looking much more scruffy and handsome — charming, rakish, ne’er-do-well, with a piratical mustache and goatee — than he ever lets himself look in movies. His English accent hits a sweet spot on the higher edge of working class, with a hint […]

Chris Pine| A List Redefined

Posted November 10, 2010

Very few actors find themselves standing on the edge of major stardom. Chris Pine is now in that enviable, if precarious, position, and he’s trying to take the native uncertainty in stride. With a huge hit last year in Star Trek, in which he made the iconic role of Capt. James T. Kirk his own, and the imminent release of the action flick Unstoppable, in which he stars opposite veteran A-lister Denzel Washington, Pine is determinedly realistic about it all. “It’s definitely a balance between having a concrete plan about where you want to go and a certain amount of […]

Chris Pine Hits Hollywood at Warp Speed

Chris Pine Hits Hollywood at Warp Speed

Posted November 1, 2010

Big action stars and leading men aren’t born they’re made. For Chris Pine, who broke out in last summer’s Star Trek and returns in November’s Unstoppable, that meant careful preparation, physical toil, and constant psychoanalysis. Now comes the payoff. Chris Pine is covered in blood, waving a pistol, locking lips with a teenage girl in Ani DiFranco groupie gear: cargo pants, tank top, boyish haircut. He and his young accomplice have just killed some bumbling Irish terrorists together, and now they’re celebrating, kissing madly as Pine rubs a cat’s oozing corpse all over her writhing back. This is how Pine […]

EW Reunion: The Lord of the Rings

Posted October 19, 2010

What do you think about when you think about The Lord of the Rings?Moments of self-sacrifice and unexpected heroism, which are the twin strands of the trilogy’s DNA. When the people who actually made The Lord of the Rings think about The Lord of the Rings — and we asked a dozen of them, as they hugged and caught up for the first time in years at photo shoots in Los Angeles, London, and Sydney — they remember New Zealand, and the most exhausting, exhilarating years of their lives. To be specific: They remember shooting the very first scene in […]

Angelina the Conqueror

Angelina the Conqueror

Posted August 17, 2010

Here’s how Angelina Jolie enters the story: by water taxi speeding across the black water of a Venetian lagoon. She is seen from above, from the window of a very old palace—it had once been the home of a nobleman, then a monastery, then an embassy, and is now a hotel, which is the entire story of Venice. She sits in an antique chair and sighs. Her tattoos have been covered with makeup. Somewhere in town is Brad Pitt, with the six kids, the nannies, and the teachers and help. Johnny Depp, Jolie’s co-star in The Tourist, is somewhere here, […]

Dakota Fanning| All Grown Up

Dakota Fanning| All Grown Up

Posted August 1, 2010

She talks to Tom Cruise regularly. And her first grown-up on-screen kiss is now behind her. Dakota Fanning is definitely not a little kid anymore. The dress code at Campbell Hall, the private Episcopal school in North Hollywood, California, once attended by Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen and now by Dakota Fanning and her little sister, Elle, is strict: khaki skirt, shorts, or trousers, white collared shirt, navy sweater, closed-toed shoes. “You could actually wear this,” says the elder Fanning flouncing her skirt, a cream-colored silk pouf, and in the process gaily jangles a wristful of bangles. We are sitting opposite […]