Category: Interview

Leonardo DiCaprio| Leading Man

Posted December 24, 2004

With two confident, unsettling performances, the former boy wonder grows up (finally) and becomes the actor of his generation.  He was already a successful, cheeky, sweet-faced TV actor when Leonardo DiCaprio saw the first two film performances that really turned his head. One was James Dean’s in East of Eden. The other, in Taxi Driver, was by Robert De Niro (whom the teenage DiCaprio had just been cast opposite in This Boy’s Life). “I never said, ‘This is what I’m going to aspire to be,’” he remembers, “because at that age, it’s something that’s so beyond anything that’s a possibility. […]

Christian Bale Dossier

Christian Bale Dossier

Posted November 24, 2004

Before he becomes Batman, the Welsh actor literally starves for his art in this month’s The Machinist. By now you may have heard that Christian Bale lost 63 pounds for his role as tormented insomniac Trevor Reznik in the new thriller The Machinist. Best to get that out of the way early, because when watching the film – in which Bale resembles a stick figure with skin – it takes a long time, and a strong stomach to get past it. Bale lost more weight than Tom Hanks (Castaway) and Adrien Brody (The Pianist) did combined. As shocking as it […]

Angelina Jolie Is a Woman We Love

Posted November 17, 2004

She materializes in the dark lobby bar at the Hotel Bel-Air, a wisp of smoke, late but somehow unexpected. It is our second meeting. In the three nights since last we met, she has stayed in three different hotels — two in Beverly Hills and one in New York City, where she went, she says, partly because she had a business meeting, but also because her son loves to play in Central Park. Her son’s name is Maddox Jolie, and she adopted him in Cambodia in 2002. Like his mother, the boy is airplane mad. She promised him on his […]

Life as we knew it

Posted September 24, 2004

Ten Years ago ABC’s angsty gem My So-Called Life began its short — but groundbreaking — run, and teen dramas would never be the same. There are some TV shows that last for years and years, and when they finally go away, they’re barely missed. And then there is the phenomenon of the TV show that dies quickly but leaves an indelible mark. Ten years ago, ABC fielded such a show: My So-Called Life, produced by the thirtysomething team of Edward Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz, premiered on Thursday, August 25, 1994 and was quickly reduced to ratings rubble by another […]

Mad about Brad

Posted September 1, 2004

When Brad Pitt told Oprah Winfrey he wasn’t sure every marriage could last forever, it sparked a storm about the strength of his relationship with Jennifer Aniston. But with fatherhood beckoning, he is now happier than ever, both professionally and personally. Brad Pitt is officially the world’s bestlooking man – it is a point all women have agreed on since he first hit our screens in Thelma & Louise in 1991. When he married Jennifer Aniston four years ago, Hollywood’s Hottest Couple was born. Pitt, who turned 40 last year, loves pottering around, designing extensions to his and Aniston’s home […]

Aspects of Brad

Posted June 1, 2004

The fame of Achilles has lasted for more than three millennia, his name enduring through the inexorable march of centuries and civilizations as the prototype for the ultimate warrior, a godlike paragon of valor and manly beauty. The incomparable fighter whose rage nearly doomed his fellow Greeks during the Trojan War, Achilles was immortalized in the Iliad as the pivotal character who finally accepted his fatal destiny and helped to defeat Troy. Heroism? Beauty? The guy who saves the day, seduces the girl, turns the tide of history, and has audiences swooning all over the world? In the kind of […]

Brad Pitt| Oprah Winfrey and Troy

Posted May 3, 2004

OPRAH WINFREY: Whoa! OK. All right. I know you’re ready. He’s here, and I’m not going to make you wait one more second. Please welcome Brad Pitt! Sit down. Just let it be. Let it be. PITT: They’ve got a couple of guys out there. That’s good. WINFREY: Oh, yeah.PITT: Is that how loud they get on Oprah’s Favorite Things? WINFREY: Like that. Yes ’cause you are a favorite person. Yes, you are. I have to say that I’ve never seen a reaction like that in all of these years you know, where you can feel it coming up out […]

The Unprocessed Johnny Depp

Posted May 1, 2004

Captain Jack was so piratically liberated, he made [people] question their entire lives. How had they become so cautious, so boring, so utterly middle-of-the-road? What the hell had happened to them? Oddly Enough, Johnny Depp had the exact same experience himself, which he described five years ago in a lovely little article he wrote called “Kerouac, Ginsberg, the Beats and Other Bastards Who Ruined My Life.” The story begins with the day his older brother ripped Frampton Comes Alive! off the turntable, put on Astral Weeks, and handed him a copy of On the Road: “And so began my ascension […]

Orlando’s Magic

Posted January 1, 2004

Orlando Bloom still blends, especially in the lobby of New York’s mercilessly hip Mercer Hotel, where one would be tempted to hand the young actor some luggage or enlist him to hail a cab. Wearing jeans and a black T-shirt, hair scrunched off his broad forehead, he does not look like the next big thing, and yet that is precisely what he is, a willowy 26-year-old who has risen to international stardom. “It is incredible,” Bloom admits. “I mean, I’m stumped by it. I moved to London, went to drama school, got Lord of the Rings. I never expected this. […]

4 Hobbits Walk Into a Bar…

4 Hobbits Walk Into a Bar…

Posted December 1, 2003

Hobbits are cute. And short. And filled with joy. And they’re currently charging into Los Angeles’s Woo Lae Oak, a Korean restaurant that they frequent when they’re in town, looking wide-eyed and excited. Playfully jostling one another, Elijah Wood, Dominic Monaghan, and Billy Boyd enthusiastically descend upon a large booth that nearly envelops them. Sean Astin, soon joins us to chow down on strips of meat, shrimp, scallops, and mushrooms. “Hmmm, hobbits like mushrooms,” Astin says sweetly, with an English-inflected accent, channeling his character, Samwise Gamgee. When Wood excuses himself from the table, Monaghan cocks his head and seizes the […]