Joseph Gordon-Levitt directs himself as a womaniser

Joseph Gordon-Levitt directs himself as a womaniser

LONDON - Joseph Gordon-Levitt might have quit show business once upon a time, but he now looks set to stay.

The hotshot actor, who has now turned director with the new movie Don Jon, is on top of his game.

Last year, he took the leading role in David Koepp's cycle-courier adrenaline-pumper Premium Rush and also appeared in The Dark Knight Rises, Steven Spielberg's Lincoln and the science-fiction thriller Looper, all of which were well received.

The year before that, he starred in the acclaimed cancer drama 50/50, which earned him a Golden Globe nomination for Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Comedy or Musical.

As the director, writer and star of the well-reviewed comedy-drama Don Jon, about a porn addict, the 32-year-old appears to have reached a new professional apex.

When charting the turning points in his Hollywood career, it is tempting to cite the 2006 neo-noir Brick, or perhaps (500) Days Of Summer, the critically acclaimed 2009 comedy-drama directed by Marc Webb.

The actor, however, highlights a different moment - when he quit the business after the popular and acclaimed TV sitcom 3rd Rock From The Sun, which ran from 1996 to 2001.

"I stayed away for a few years and if I had to pick one real left-turn in my career, it was then. At that time, I was a little childish and selfish, and I was concerned only with myself and the people I cared about and didn't feel a great connection to the rest of the world at large," he says.

After 3rd Rock, the young actor moved out of his parents' house in Los Angeles' Sherman Oaks district, enrolled in college and relocated to New York, where he "got that sense of connection to community and people in the world".

"I realised that I wanted to connect and contribute somehow, and telling stories is the way I could do that best. Since then, the development in my career feels natural, like I am always doing a bit more."

In 2004, he dropped out of Columbia University, where he was studying history, literature and French poetry, to return to show business.

Though his movie career began when he was a child (he played the young version of the character played by Craig Sheffer in 1992's A River Runs Through It), it was writer-director Rian Johnson's feature debut, Brick, which brought him to the wider attention of moviegoers. He played a high school student who tries to solve the murder of his girlfriend.

He and Johnson reunited for the 2008 release The Brothers Bloom (though Gordon-Levitt only cameos) and, more importantly, for Looper, the science-fiction action-thriller released late last year featuring Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis playing different versions of the same man.

Johnson has gone on to prove a perennial and consistent voice in GordonLevitt's creative life, encouraging him to write and direct his own debut feature, Don Jon.

The actor says: "Rian gave me a lot of notes on the script, and continued that throughout the making of the movie. He was a confidante while I was shooting and came and watched two different cuts of the movie."

His film tells the story of Jon (GordonLevitt), a modern-day libertine who falls in love with a bubbly New Yorker, Barbara, played by Scarlett Johansson.

"This movie is really a character study with no car chases or explosions, no scenes in outer space. It felt like something I could do and I was very much intent on having total creative control."

He spent two years researching his story, eventually landing on the legendary character of the notorious womaniser Don Juan, whose legend in the West stretches back to the 15th century at least.

In the film, the great lover overcomes his tragic inability to commit and finds his ideal woman, Barbara. Their relationship is tested, however, by Jon's addiction to pornography.

Meanwhile, his new girlfriend is distracted by fantasies of the ideal husband, as imagined in so many magazines, books and films.

Says Gordon-Levitt: "I thought it would be really funny to try and do romantic comedy between a guy who watches too much porn and a girl who watches too many romantic movies."

According to Johansson, "women grow up with this idea of what a man should be, whether that comes from films or from our parents or fairy tales".

She adds: "So just as Jon has his fantasy world as a means of escaping what's in front of him, Barbara creates this idea of the perfect future, the perfect life, the perfect man, the perfect family. Her ideals don't leave room for the humanity of a relationship."

Gordon-Levitt concurs: "We learn these expectations everywhere - from our families, from our friends, from the church we go to, from different kinds of media. That in particular fascinates me - why and how we objectify each other."

Being a major Hollywood player has provided Gordon-Levitt with first-hand knowledge of media objectification and he concedes that this may be the reason he wanted to tell this particular tale.

Don Jon took about four years to come to fruition, though Gordon-Levitt says that his desire to step behind the camera and direct is a long-held ambition.

"I'd always played around with video cameras, even when I was a little kid. Then, for my 21st birthday, I got myself my first copy of Final Cut, the video editing software. Since then, I've made tons of little short films and videos, probably hundreds of them.

"I definitely don't think I would have been able to direct a feature if it hadn't been for all that experience making short films."

Central to the release of Don Jon is Gordon-Levitt's hitRECord, "an open, collaborative production company" which invites contributions, whether music, text or film, which is published online. It is listed as one of the production companies behind Don Jon.

Gordon-Levitt explains what he hopes to achieve with hitRECord: "I like to encourage people to express themselves and be creative. I guess it is why I like to do more than just acting. With acting, you have to rely on other people, especially in movies. If you are going to act, you have to wait for someone else to make the movie. That is why hitRECord started.

"I like being in other people's movies, but I want to express myself. It can be difficult sometimes. You see so many movies, so much music, and people say who am I to do this? I was confronted with that myself."

His own contributions to the site include the Americana-styled music tracks Soul And Serotonin and American ScrimpNSave 26, which he recorded as RegularJOE. "I do like to show I can do other things, even if I am not the best musician in the world," he says with a smile.

On screen, he will be seen next in the long-awaited sequel to Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez's pulp action-thriller Sin City (2005), in which he will appear in a segment entitled The Long Bad Night.

"I am really grateful for the chance to get to do that," he says. "Things are going pretty well at the moment."


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