Norton Exposure

By RICHARD CORLISS

If you're a successful young actor wondering whether to go ahead and direct a movie, you'll first want to take that call from Warren Beatty. That's what Edward Norton did a while back: had an out-of-the-blue phone session with the future winner of the Irving G. Thalberg Award. Recalling the chat, Norton deftly mimics the seductive Beatty stammer: "He said, 'I've been watching the stuff you're doing, and I think you're a lot like me. You're gonna be frustrated like I was, 'cause you're gonna want to do it yourself. I wanted to tell you, don't wait. 'Cause I waited too long. If you're gonna write and direct, just do it.'"

That's more than sage advice; it's an order from a superior officer. So at 30--the age Beatty was when he produced and starred in Bonnie and Clyde--Norton has directed and starred in Keeping the Faith, a genially wistful romantic comedy about two guys and the girl they've always loved. If this old-fangled triangle about a priest (Norton), a rabbi (Ben Stiller) and a dynamic executive (Jenna Elfman) proves as popular as early previews suggest, it will give further credence to the belief that Norton is blessed. After just seven films, this Yale grad has earned two Oscar nominations, some of the most demanding roles in recent movies and--though he will never ever discuss it--the amorous attentions of Courtney Love and now Salma Hayek. No wonder Beatty admires his moves.

So does Milos Forman, who directed Norton in The People vs. Larry Flynt and plays an older priest in Keeping the Faith. He is impressed by Norton's "balance between intelligence and instincts. He's very bright and analytical, but that doesn't close the door to his instincts. I'm sure he analyzed the directors he worked with as thoroughly as he analyzes his parts as an actor. So now, when he says 'Action,' everything is there as planned--plus a few privileged moments, which come from his talent."

His background is privileged as well. His father was an attorney, his mother an English teacher. Edward (don't call him Ed; there's nothing of the Honeymooners sewer rat about him) grew up in Columbia, Md., a town created by his grandfather, the social planner James Rouse. "My grandfather was a big fan of remaining fluid in your young life," Norton says, "of exploration and searching and seeking. He once offered to give me some money to keep me out of going into an investment-banking job." So the history major plunged into the New York City acting community. Before long he was in plays and movies.

Norton likes the variety that acting offers--the new skills to be mastered for each role. He has learned how to act like a priest, a poker player and, for his next film (The Score, with Robert De Niro), a safecracker. "I need diversity of experience," he says. "I'm not interested in playing the same types of things again and again." Yet one theme has emerged, again and again, in his films: the attraction of two men, one reserved, the other volatile. Man against man. My brother's keeper. Sibling rivalry that, in the melodramas, explodes into sibling riflery.

Sometimes Norton is the soft guy: a lawyer helping a porn king (Larry Flynt), a fellow whose girlfriend falls for a convict (Everyone Says I Love You), a despondent drone surrendering to the spell of a pummeling anarchist (Fight Club). Sometimes he's the bad boy: an ex-con luring a respectable pal into the gambling underworld (Rounders) or a neo-Nazi with an impressionable kid brother (American History X). And once or twice--in his heralded movie debut Primal Fear, for example--he is both mild and wild, with schizophrenic tendencies bubbling up at whim or will.

These are creatures of the extremes; Norton the actor likes to walk on that serrated edge. So the shock of Keeping the Faith is that it isn't at all shocking. Its three attractive characters are, basically, celibate. Like the way-better Broadcast News, this is a film about friends obsessed with their work. Father Brian and Rabbi Jake amuse their congregations with hip jokes (it's how Sam Kinison and Jackie Mason got started), while Anna toils as a corporate fixer: "I talked McDonald's out of the McOyster."

Of course they all fall in love, in different ways. Of course the guys behave stupidly at the end of Act 2, so there can be an Act 3. Like most recent films, it's long on running time and short on visual elegance. But it has a warming reticence, a fond awareness of its characters' frailties. Elfman is a natural; she radiates. And Norton is excellent at playing that rarity, a man with a heart both cunning and innocent. He even dyed his hair blond because "I wanted Brian to have a halo--a sun-kissed, God-touched kind of thing." As we said: blessed.

If there's a curse on Norton, it is his unease at fame. "He's not comfortable with being famous," says Stuart Blumberg, his Yale buddy who wrote Keeping the Faith. "He hasn't mastered the art of being a fake celebrity. But to his friends, Edward's the quintessentially normal guy. He's funniest when he's just being a nerdy goofball."

Norton manages to deflect conversation about his public private life by analyzing the public's urge to celebritize actors. "In the absence of collective gods," he says, "we've created a poor man's Olympus in our entertainers. We've taken the clowns and elevated them to minor deities. We revere our clowns a little too much. But strip away all the nonsense that surrounds the movie business and, at its core, our kind of storytelling fills a real social, almost metaphysical need. People need and want the experience of getting together to watch stories. Films are our most potent cultural mythology. It's how you feel connected, not alone."

Nice words. They could go into a speech on Oscar night 30 years from now, when actor-director-writer-producer Edward Norton accepts the Irving G. Thalberg Award.

--Reported by Georgia Harbison/New York