Edward norton as a child

I keep an eye toward doing the themes that interest me. Do they move me? Interest me? Make me think? When I run across something that is provocative in an unsettling way, it appeals to me.

People wrestle sometimes making movies, and I think that conflict is a very essential thing. I think a lot of very happy productions have produced a lot of very banal movies.

I'm not interested in making movies for everybody. I like making movies for myself and my friends and people with my sensibility. I always felt that acting was an escape, like having the secret key to every door and permission to go into any realm and soak it up. I enjoy that free pass. Nobody makes me uncomfortable here. It's a place where you can be eternally anonymous. In fact, the United States today keeps on making the same sort of mistakes.

We force those methods we think are useful on a few countries, hoping to make a few changes. I get heartbroken flying into L. It's just this feeling of unspecific loss. Can you imagine what the San Fernando Valley was when it was all wheat fields? Can you imagine what John Steinbeck saw? Just because you've made a couple movies, you've done some good movies, you've been nominated for some Academy Awards, whatever, nobody's entitled.

It's a business. He has such a rich mellifluous voice. Anytime I would hear him speak, it would remind me of how flat my voice is. He loved it. Marlon loves stuff like that. He has just done so much wonderful work and so many different kinds of work. That to me is worth something. But those films were inspiring to me in terms of deciding to take The Incredible Hulk All people are paradoxical.

No one is easily reducible, so I like characters who have contradictory impulses or shades of ambiguity. It's fun, and it's fun because it's hard. I haven't personally really engaged in a lot of this new kind of social networking stuff like Twitter or Facebook or MySpace. I mean, the notion of people following what I am doing every day is like torture for me.

It's absolutely the last thing that I'm looking for. It seems to me to be really just about social chatter. When you're working on a creative thing, everyone has an idea, and they're pushing it.

The first time you work with anybody, you have to get comfortable with the way another person pushes hard for what they want. Familiarity breeds contempt, people say. But I've found, for creative things, familiarity breeds peace of mind, because you realize you know someone better. You trust each other.

You know not to take things a certain way, or a wrong way. You get to where you don't have to waste quite so much time with diplomacy. Things are a little more efficient. We've had a seminal legal decision whereby the Supreme Court defined corporations as having the same rights as individuals. It's having a massive impact on our politics. It's unleashed unlimited corporate spending on our elections, which is terrifying.

The facade is now fully peeled off. There's no pretense about having limitations over how wealthy individuals and corporations can exert an unhealthy influence on politics with their money. It used to be a game - now no one's pretending any more. It's a radical transformation. You wonder what will occur before people feel it's creating an imbalance which diminishes them.

I studied music, theater and fine arts. My mother taught English literature and courses on Shakespeare William Shakespeare. She was a regular theatergoer and I used to go with her. It had an impact on my sense that acting was something you could do as an adult that affected people, that it wasn't just for entertainment, that you could change someone's mind with it. I started performing in the theater a lot more after that. There's been a shift from people buying DVDs to streaming them online.

The studios have been asleep at the switch and suffered a huge loss of revenue from falling DVD sales. Unfortunately, that revenue was often what helped convince them to make films which aren't blockbusters.

Studios aren't as willing to make mid-budget, more thoughtful films aimed at adults. It's more challenging to get those films made than it was. I spent a lot of my early career in the theatre - and by that I mean as an usher. Bush] I almost forgot what it's like to be proud of my government. Easy does it: Edward Norton and wife Shauna Robertson took a stroll with their six-month-old son and pug in the West Village on Saturday after grabbing lunch at the Italian restaurant Da Silvano.

A rare public moment: The private couple only recently came out about their marriage, wedding over a year ago in a secret ceremony. Both dressed down in denim jeans and sandals, Edward pushed their baby along in a navy-top carriage.

While the couple only recently came out about their marriage, they are believed to have gotten engaged in after six years of dating, and wed over a year ago in a secret ceremony. Sources told Us Weekly that the actor was elated with the baby news. Father of the Year: Edward's son was born six months ago, and the actor was reportedly excited about his new gig as dad.

An insider reportedly commented: 'Ed is really excited for fatherhood. He helped pick out a stroller for the baby! Edward and Shauna were also seen together looking a little more dapper at the U. The actor most recently starred in 's The Bourne Legacy and Moonrise Kingdom, and has wrapped production on two upcoming motion picture projects Birdman and The Grand Budapest Hotel.

Crazy in love: The happy couple were seen together at the U. Together, the couple co-founded CrowdRise, a fundraising website which helps raise money for various charitable causes. The views expressed in the contents above are those of our users and do not necessarily reflect the views of MailOnline.

Argos AO. Headlines U. Privacy Policy Feedback. Friday, Jan 14th 5-Day Forecast. He's got a sensitive side! Share or comment on this article: Edward Norton coos over his six-month-old baby daughter as he takes control of the stroller e-mail. Most watched News videos Brawl breaks out in Tesco as fearless pensioner continues shopping Dr Anthony Fauci caught on hot mic calling Senator a moron Anti-epidemic workers go viral for using human chain to deliver food Distressing videos reveal conditions inside 'China's isolation camps' Two airliners appear to fly just feet from each other near Luton Racy videos of prostitute who was arrested with England rugby star Xi'an resident 'beaten' by anti-epidemic workers for flouting rules Don't tear the pants off!

Comments 29 Share what you think. Shortly after, he commanded the stage in Annie Get Your Gun at Orenstein's Columbia School for Theatrical Arts, and is rumored to have asked questions like, "What is my objective in this scene? Norton continued acting and playing basketball throughout high school and, after graduating, went on to Yale to pursue studies in astronomy, history and Japanese. He acted in several undergraduate productions, often to campus-wide acclaim. Upon graduating in with a history degree, Norton moved to Japan where he worked for his grandfather's company, Enterprise Foundation, a business devoted to establishing international low-income housing.

It was not until his return to New York in that Norton decided to put all other interests aside and devote his energy and intelligence to acting.

After impressing celebrated playwright Edward Albee in an audition, Norton was cast in his next production, Fragments , and subsequently earned a place in the New York Signature Theater Company. In the meantime, the producers of a Hollywood courtroom thriller were struggling to find a co-star for actor Richard Gere, who was threatening to walk away from the film. After Leonardo DiCaprio turned down the role, casting proceeded to audition 2, actors—none of whom were able to capture the subtleties of a seemingly innocent Southern boy on the brink of insanity.

Norton showed up to audition, sporting a flawless Southern drawl and telling casting directors that he hailed from eastern Kentucky. During the audition, he crouched in a corner and decided to give the young man a stutter, blowing away casting directors in the screen test with the convincing intensity of his performance.

Norton was immediately cast, and was later credited for rescuing Primal Fear from the annals of Hollywood obscurity. Regarding his success in the film, Norton commented that "the potency of the revelation about who my character really was in that film was, in part, reliant on the fact that people had absolutely no prior knowledge of me. They had no reason to expect a different voice or anything different from what they were initially presented with.

On the power of Hollywood word-of-mouth alone, Norton had several serious film roles lined up before Primal Fear hit theaters. He then played a painfully loyal attorney defending America's most notoriously crude pornographer in Milos Forman's controversial film, The People Vs.

Larry Flynt Norton later began dating his other Larry Flynt co-star, rocker Courtney Love. After Love was publicly trashed in a New Yorker article, Norton exhibited his real-life loyalty by jumping to her defense.

He wrote in to the magazine in his typical eloquent manner, "[Writer Daphne Merkin's] only original contribution is her conclusion that Courtney was of more value as an icon of pain and self-destruction than she is as a complex, evolving, and healthy human being—a conclusion that is sexist, intellectually shallow, and spiritually bankrupt.

In the end, Courtney's achievements will speak louder than any of her critics. In , tragedy overshadowed Norton's newfound success. His grandfather passed away, and less than a year later, his mother died following surgery to remove a brain tumor. Norton subsequently organized a screening of Everyone Says I Love You in Baltimore to benefit the research of the Johns Hopkins Hospital oncology team, who operated on his mother. Norton's supporting turn in Rounders , playing alongside fellow rising star Matt Damon, inspired yet more praise, but it was his emotionally fierce performance as a reformed neo-Nazi in American History X that earned him the second Oscar nomination—this time as Best Actor—of his relatively brief film career.

Norton had again proven his ability to almost effortlessly switch psychological gears within a character.