Given his penchant for playing dark roles, actor Edward Norton is playing an American Nazi – for the only director in the world who didn’t want him in the cast.
The movie, to be called American History X, already has people talking; the audition tape Norton made, with his hair shorn off, his goatee at full brush, his body dappled with jailhouse tattoos, his muscles bulked up from a month in the gym, has circulated in film culture like contraband.
Norton is currently showcased as a preppie swain in Woody Allen’s bouncy musical Everyone Says I Love You and as Larry Flynt’s beleaguered lawyer in The People vs. Larry Flynt. He made his mark earlier this year as the accused killer in the jailhouse thriller Primal Fear, for which he won a best supporting actor award in the recent Golden Globe Awards.
“I’ve been holding out to find something that would be really the strong thing to do,” Norton says. “You have a certain window of opportunity to assert yourself. I had to look for something to grab. You have to be smart about what you do.” That’s also why he’s working for a director who said to the “hottest young actor” in America, “I don’t see you in this part,” says Norton in a cockney accent quoting director Tony Kaye.
” ‘Let me do a screen test,’ I told him. You have to be ready to give your chops on it! That’s especially what you should be doing. It’s also the ultimate victory.”
