Edward Norton names his favourite actor of all time
With an illustrious oeuvre spanning more than three decades, Edward Norton has become a widely adored figure in Hollywood. From his breakout role in Primal Fear opposite Richard Gere to his transformative performances in Fight Club and American History X, Norton has showcased unwavering dedication and versatility.
Having established himself as one of his generation’s most captivating and accomplished performers by the late 2010s, Norton took his foot off the pedal of prolificity to focus on raising a family. However, keeping up appearances with performances like that in 2014’s Birdman, for which he earned an Academy Award nomination, his powers show no sign of waning.
After earning a BA in History at Yale College in 1991, Norton took odd jobs for several months and soon decided to follow his childhood passion for cinema. His early education included research into different approaches to acting. Norton became particularly enamoured with method acting, a controversial practice to which he still adheres to this day.
“The phrase ‘the Method’ got badly misused and misunderstood,” Norton said in defence of the method during a talk at the 2014 Hamptons International Film Festival. “It came to get ascribed to just Lee Strasberg and specifically Strasberg’s notion of sense memory. He had this idea that your own emotional and sense memories were valuable because if you could get down into those pools of emotion that you could open up a conduit to accessing a whole spectrum of emotions. To me, that’s useful and compelling in the context of a classroom and in the context of developing yourself as an actor.”
Norton suggested that Strasberg’s original method acting concept had become oversimplified and misinterpreted. “My personal opinion, both intellectually and through experience of working with people who got way too hung up on the cult of Lee Strasberg, is that when you are working with somebody who isn’t using the circumstances of the text it’s like acting with someone who’s looking in a mirror,” he added. “I think that became crippling to a lot of actors.”
As a lifelong admirer of Robert De Niro, perhaps the most acclaimed and celebrated method actor of all time, Norton applied Strasberg’s approach in lessons with acting coach Terry Schreiber through the early 1990s with determination.
Discussing his favourite actor, Norton once said via IMDb: “I look at De Niro, and the thing I admire about him is just the length and diversity of his career. He has just done so much wonderful work and so many different kinds of work. That, to me, is worth something.”
In 2001, Norton hit a career peak with the rare opportunity to star opposite De Niro and Marlon Brando in Frank Oz’s The Score. The movie marked Brando’s final movie appearance before his death in 2004. Watch the trailer below.