American Beauty

American Beauty

Posted September 17, 1999

Angelina Jolie used to play the hard girl. This fall, she goes vulnerable and ladylike – and twice as tough. Angelina Jolie does not like to be touched. “I like to be felt or invaded or confronted,” she says, “but I don’t like to be touched.” Jolie is adamant on this point, and as she speaks her blue-green eyes blaze with intensity. It’s very simple, she says: “I don’t like to talk about nothing, and I don’t like to just kind of be touched.” She smiles, though, widely, and has a firm handshake. Occasionally she hugs – with intent and […]

The Devil in Miss Jolie

The Devil in Miss Jolie

Posted August 17, 1999

Angelina Jolie is in the front room of her apartment in New York, giving what has become the obligatory tour of her tattoos. “OK,” she says, standing up and showing her left arm. “That’s my dragon, upper left.” She presents the inside of her wrist: “That’s an H — there are two people in my life who have this letter who I’m very close to and who I sort of love and cherish. And this is the newest one. I got this with my mom, actually — she came with me. It’s a Tennessee Williams quote: ‘A prayer for the […]

The muscle behind Fight Club

Posted August 1, 1999

“It’s a metaphor,” says Norton, who plays the film’s nameless narrator. “It’s off the charts. It’s not a photograph; it’s lurid and crazy. For me it’s always about, ‘Have I seen this before?’ And I’d definitely never seen this before. Nobody’s ever seen this before.” The first rule of Fight Club is, you don’t talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club is, you don’t talk about Fight Club. The problem is, Pitt and Norton wanted to apply those rules to this interview. It’s 10 p.m on a Sunday in April. I’m in Pitt’s impeccably vacuumed trailer, parked […]

Liam Neeson| Star Wars Samurai

Posted May 1, 1999

Liam Neeson became famous as Oskar Schindler in Schindler’s List. He’s about to become a megastar as Jedi knight Qui-Gon Jinn in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. Coming from a Catholic minority in Protestant Ballymena in Northern Ireland, Liam Neeson never dreamed of becoming an actor. As a teenager he was interested in boxing, and won his weight class for three years running until he got punched silly in a fight when he was 15. School was always a serious matter for him, but after spending one year at a university and two at a teacher’s college, he […]

Tres Jolie

Tres Jolie

Posted February 17, 1999

Angelina Jolie gazes out into the Royalton lounge. The six-day shoots for The Bone Collector have her shuttling from New York to Montreal on the Canuck red-eye. She looks sad. Someone with as fully realized a presence as Angelina should not be unhappy. “Listen,” I offer, “you wanna do something really cool?” “Sure,” she smiles. “Hey, you ask me some good questions, I’ll answer them.” “What’re good questions? There are no good questions.” “New questions.” “Nah, there are no new questions. What? Did you love your director? What was your motivation? What brought you to this role? That’s dreck – […]

Angelina Jolie| Wild Angel

Posted January 17, 1999

Her portrayal of drug-ravaged a supermodel Gia put her on the map, but with a scene-stealing turn in Playing By Heart and rolls in two more upcoming films, Angelina Jolie is getting a chance to spread her wings. Angelina Jolie is publicly desecrating herself. Her eyes fluttering under tightly closed to lids. She lies face down on the table in front of a window, her jeans rolled low enough to reveal her black underwear. Her white T-shirt is raised, exposing the shallow curve of her back. Her feet, clad in black cowboy boots, are demurely crossed. A group of schoolboys […]

The Rolling Stone Book of the Beats

Posted January 1, 1999

I had the honor of meeting and getting to know Allen Ginsberg for a short time. The initial meeting was at a soundstage in New York City, where we were both doing a bit in the film The United States of Poetry. I was reading a piece from Kerouac’s Mexico City Blues, the “211th Chorus,” and as I was rehearsing it for camera, I could see a familiar face out of the corner of my eye: “F** me,” I thought, “that’s Ginsberg!” We were introduced, and he then immediately launched into a blistering rendition of said chorus, so as to […]

Claire Forlani| Death Becomes Her

Claire Forlani| Death Becomes Her

Posted November 1, 1998

Meet Claire Forlani, a thoroughly enchanting young actress who, in a career-making role, shows Death — Brad Pitt, that is — what life is all about. While Claire Forlani and Brad Pitt were looping Meet Joe Black, tagged as perhaps the most expensive (at a reported $90 million) Hollywood romance ever made, “she was obsessing about something,” director Martin Brest says. “I was teasing her about it, and I said, ‘C’mon, Claire, don’t turn into Frances Farmer on me!’” Surprisingly, Brest’s euphemism for nutcase did not go whizzing past the young actress’s radar. Quite the opposite: Forlani let everyone know […]

Brad Pitt| A Commanding Lead

Posted November 1, 1998

Between this month’s Meet Joe Black and the upcoming Fight Club, Brad Pitt covers both poles of his career, swinging from romance to visceral drama. At the 34-year-old actor’s Los Angeles home, Pitt firmly charts his own course, combining the courtly derring-do required of a $17 million sex symbol with the tasteful domesticity necessary to design an engagement ring or plan a Monet garden. So what is he like? Surprisingly, irresistibly… true – a man whose openess and unspoiled sense of decency are precisely the reasons why he is able to come across to millions of moviegoers as “the real […]

Brad Pitt| Walking The Walk

Posted November 1, 1998

All of this hot California day, I have been on the phone with Brad Pitt’s publicists, trying to determine when and where my meeting with their client will take place. First, it was going to be a four o’clock, in a coffee shop. Then 4:30 at a restaurant. Then we rescheduled for five o’clock, at his place. Then word came that Brad wanted me to swear not to write about how he lived or what his house looked like. In fact, could I not tell anyone I had been to his house at all? At this, I balked.  And so […]