Edward Norton: interview

In person, the actor Edward Norton embodies that liberal pocket of America that switches off the lights when it leaves the room and recycles its broadsheets. And yet this private, polite actor has made a career playing misfits and outsiders (’Primal Fear‘, ’American History X‘, ’Fight Club‘). His new film, which he also produced, is an adaptation of W Somerset Maugham‘s cynical novel ’The Painted Veil‘. Norton is an uptight scientist in 1920s China, who takes his blowsy young wife (Naomi Watts) into the eye of a cholera epidemic and civil unrest to punish her for being unfaithful

Chinese whispers: Norton in 'The Painted Veil'

This is a terrifically English book, steeped in the colonial mindset, about a buttoned-up, repressed character. What was the attraction for an American actor?
Well, when I read it there was nothing about what this couple was going through that wasn’t absolutely modern. I think with period, or any genre, really, it’s often not worth doing if you can’t find a way to make it resonate with an audience now. Otherwise, it becomes what you guys call twee, or a drama of manners. The thing about ‘The Painted Veil’ is that I didn’t feel that. And the dialogue – the scene where he confronts her the first time is like ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’ There are no punches pulled.

The film adds a lot of context, setting the action against the seeds of Chinese nationalism. What was the thinking?
We agreed fairly early on that we were probably going to have to make a film inspired by the book rather than a film of the book. If you wanted a rendition of the book you could do it at Shepperton: there’s really no China in it. John [Curran, the director] found this event, the shooting of Chinese workers in 1925 by British troops, and then when we got to China, he was asking people about their sense of history. They’re still really proud of this moment, the very beginnings of an early Chinese independence movement. He was also the first one to say, ‘Doesn’t it strike you that this relates to a lot of what is going on in the world today? The arrogance of Western nations going into other countries?’

Is it too crude to draw a comparison to America and its allies in Iraq?
The way I’d put it is that I hope for the people watching it, the same thing happens as happened to us making the film – that creeping sense of the familiar. Not a thudding analogy for the US and Iraq, but a reminder that these patterns are well visited. The funny thing is that Maugham knew it then. He knew it was tired, this idea of going in and fixing up someone else’s country with your rationality.

None of the characters you’ve played, except perhaps in Woody Allen’s ‘Everyone Says I Love You’, has been an average guy. What draws you to a particular role?
People with hidden depths are interesting to me. With ‘The Illusionist’, it was that in some sense he is a superhero, he’s incredibly powerful. I don’t wake up in the morning and see that guy in the mirror. He has an incredible magnetism. You say to yourself: I wonder if I can do that? ‘Down in the Valley’ was a really great experience for me. There was something about it that reminded me of ‘Fight Club’, being out on a limb.

You produced both ‘Down in the Valley’ and ‘The Painted Veil’. Is it important for you to have a stake in the films you’re making now?
Not a stake per se, but it doesn’t happen very often that I encounter a script that I feel a sharp sense of connection to. I felt it with ‘Fight Club’, but that was handed to me on a platter. It wasn’t that we didn’t all work hard, but it was done. You had David Fincher, Brad Pitt, they gave us $68 million to make the film. It doesn’t need me. But with something like ‘Down in the Valley’, there’s no money, and if we are going to make that happen, someone’s going to have to step up and shepherd it. I don’t mind doing that, I’m happy to do it, but I don’t always want to. I’m an actor, you know what I mean?

The Painted Veil opens on April 27.

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