Ethan Hawke: Renaissance Boy

Posted March 1, 1995

Two and a half years ago, this reporter met up with young Hawke, not far removed from a supporting role opposite a dog in White Fang and fresh off his turn as every vegan’s nightmare in Alive. Reaction from bystanders was universal: “Ethan Hawke … isn’t he the ‘Oh, captain, my captain’ guy from Dead Poets Society? He’s such a cute kid.” Fast forward to the present. Toss in one role as a cynical hipster asshole in the twenty-something comedy Reality Bites, a tabloid dance with Julia Roberts and reports that he has completed a short novel. Once again the […]

Boy Meets World

Posted March 1, 1995

He’s played misfits and half-wits, and scored an Oscar nomination at nineteen. This month, Leonardo DiCaprio is a junkie-poet in The Basketball Diaries and a gunslinger in The Quick and the Dead. But the most fearless actor in Hollywood still lives with his mom. Leonardo DiCaprio is throwing roundhouse karate kicks a few inches from my face. Whoosh. He hikes up his baggy jeans which instantly slide back down his nonexistent butt and kicks again. Whoosh. This one is a bit closer than the one before it. This f**ing great actor, this rising phenom, this valuable celluloid property, still lives […]

Brad Attitude

Posted February 1, 1995

The first time you meet Brad Pitt, you think, Brad Pitt is a knucklehead. “The thing about these articles, I sit down and give my life views, and it sounds like I’m walking around like a prophet,” Pitt says. “And that’s not true, ‘cause most of the time I’m out cutting up and laughing and speeding in my car and whatever, whatever, whatever. Yelling at the TV and cranking the tunes…It’s like ‘What’s your favorite color? I don’t know, I like a bunch of ‘em.” Under the druggie diction, beneath the bale of bleached-blond hair, Pitt is murderously handsome. As […]

The Tristan Night Away

Posted February 1, 1995

Free to emote as his vampire Louis could not, Brad Pitt ignites tears, strife and passion on the rain-plagued set of Legends of the Fall. Well, what else would you expect from an epic tragedy about three brothers who fall for the same woman? Tucked away behind a set of plywood walls, on a bed in the middle of a curling rink west of Calgary, Brad Pitt is making love. He’s got Toad The Wet Spocket’s Fear playing on the ghetto blaster, and Elizabethan beauty Julia Ormond in his arms. A hushed and diffident skeleton crew is looking on. Blue-gelled […]

The Woman in Winona

Posted December 24, 1994

Every few weeks she would shut herself up in her room, put on her scribbling suit and “fall into a vortex.” as she expressed it, writing away at her novel with all her heart and soul, for till that was finished she could find no peace. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott Winona Ryder has grown up since the age of 14 in front of cameras. Now 23, she returns to adolescence to portray Jo March, the girl who wants to become a writer-the character who has been a role model for generations of women-in Gillian Armstrong’s film of Louisa May […]

Little Woman, Big Star

Posted December 1, 1994

Winona Ryder is the name above the title in Little Women. But she had to overcome a bizarre adolescence and the throes of depression to get there. In the scene being shot today [for Boys], Winona Ryder’s character has been knocked unconscious in a fall from a horse; she wakes up in a boarding-school boy’s dorm room. Winona’s worried, [writer-director] Stacy [Cochran] wants her to play the scene alert and focused, and Winona feels her character would be cloudier, disoriented. “Where’s my horse?” she says over and over, her voice just above whisper, as the cameras roll. She’s playing a […]

Patrick Stewart: The Next Generation

Posted November 19, 1994

The proper British actor who invented Captain Picard and is bringing him to the big screen talks about the agony of Star Trek costumes, the ecstasy of a certain country music songstress and the oddity of being mistaken for Ben Kingsley. When Stewart opens the door, I’m struck dumb by how handsome he is. He’s wearing faded jeans and a gray T-shirt. His feet are bare. He’s got a gray goatee. His posture is impeccable. “You’re so much taller than I pictured you to be,” I blurt out, standing in the doorway and not moving. “And I’m not even tall,” […]

Brad Pitt Is Afraid Of Sharks

Posted October 1, 1994

He’d love a Tiffany stained-glass window, and he’s been known to steal a sandwich right off a man’s plate. Confessions from the actor’s roof. It’s a shame that Brad Pitt is about to move into a new house, because, on the roof of his current place in the hills above Los Angeles, he had created a very cool bachelor pad. He’s got a sofa up here, a coffee table, a CD player, a lamp, and some candles. “What if it rains?” is the obvious question when you this sort of setup. “It gets rained on,” he says. He’s brought up […]

Jared Leto: 50 Most Beautiful People

Posted May 1, 1994

Jared Leto. The 23-year-old Louisiana-born actor struck an adolescent nerve as the confused-but-intense Jordan Catalano on ABC’s highly praised My So-Called Life. Claire Danes, 16, the show’s star, speaks for thousands of Leto-heads when she says, “Those eyes have a magnetic effect on women. He really looks at people. I don’t want to say he stares, but he really cuts to the chase. He’s a mystery man in every sense of the word.” The extremely shy Leto, who spent most of his set time in his trailer, sometimes comes across like his character, whom he has described as “a man […]

River, with love and anger

Posted March 24, 1994

His friends and family have tried to turn River Phoenix into a martyr for a fallen earth. But as they struggle to craft meaning out of a squalid drug death, they’ve begun to wonder how well they ever really knew him. Heart Phoenix sat on the edge of the stage and beckoned everyone near. The 50 people in Paramount Studios’ screening room gathered around her. Heart has a way of soothing fears. The mourners needed her now; her son River’s memorial service had been wrenching.  They had recalled Phoenix’s mercurial abandon, his peculiar combination of heart-stopping innocence and ageless wisdom, […]