Interview: Joseph Gordon-Levitt , actor, Days of Summer

Published on Friday 21 August 2009 17:40

AFEELGOOD film about love gone bad has propelled a former child sitcom actor into the big league at last. All Hollywood has to do is tear its eyes away from Shia LaBeouf and Zac Efron and make Joseph Gordon-Levitt a star.

Despite having grown up into a lanky, rather intense 28-year-old, a lot of people still think of Gordon-Levitt as Tommy Solomon, the alien captain stuck in the body of a human teen he played on 3rd Rock From The Sun. Since finishing that show, Gordon-Levitt has been busy transporting that adolescent actor image into the outer reaches of the galaxy, never to be seen again, through a series of mature, head-turning performances.

As a lovestruck, sunny obsessive in (500) Days of Summer, Gordon-Levitt finally gets a part that showcases his range and versatility, whether breaking into an exultant post-coital dance routine, or castigating the greeting card verses he writes for offering false notions of love.

As it happens, that particular sentiment is close to Gordon-Levitt's heart: "Most love stories that are told in Hollywood are just bullshit, and everyone knows it," he declares. "This film is an explicit response to a culture we've grown up in where a bunch of movies sell us a false bill of goods about love, and my character Tom suffers the consequences of buying into it."

(500) Days of Summer is not like most love stories, even if it was penned by the same team behind The Pink Panther 2. Tom's girlfriend Summer (Zooey Deschanel) doesn't believe in long-term relationships, and we're told at the start that there will be no happy ending, no matter how much they both love The Smiths.

This don't-bother-rooting-for-them gauntlet may sound tricksy, but it takes the character's emotions to heart. "I've been heartbroken before, and I didn't want to make light of it," says Gordon-Levitt. "As much as the movie does find humour in it, I don't think the laughs have to be shallow."

So how does he square this appreciation of adolescent profundity with his other role of the summer – the evil Cobra Commander in the leave-your-brain-at-home, boys' toys blockbuster, G.I. Joe: The Rise of the Cobra? "Really fun and totally different," he laughs. "(500) Days of Summer is about being really earnest and human; G.I. Joe is about being archetypal and going away from realism, which I also really enjoy. Who wants to be real all the time?"

Besides, he adds craftily: "I had so much make-up you can hardly tell it's me."

Gordon-Levitt's friendship with co-star Deschanel is certainly real and pre-dates (500) Days of Summer; the two worked together on an indie drama called Manic in 2001. Gordon-Levitt had just decided he wanted out of acting – but he also knew he wanted to work with Deschanel.

"She is one of my favourite people, and I admire the hell out of her as a person and as an artist – as an actor and as a musician. I'm just comfortable around her. All those things matter," he says simply.

"I always listen to music on movies a lot, and normally I'd go off by myself and put headphones on. On this movie, Zooey and I would go off together and listen to music; it kept us connected. You can't really fake that. If two people don't really like each other, it sounds like people are reading lines."

In most walks of life, 28 is young to be forging a second career, but this is Hollywood, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt has been acting professionally since he was six. He was 13 when he landed a major role in 3rd Rock From The Sun.

"I just loved doing it. That was the only reason I did it back then, just because it was fun. I didn't really care what anybody thought of my work. In fact, I really would have preferred them to just burn the film after we shot it."

Before that, his first film was in 1992, playing author Norman McLean as a child in A River Run's Through It, under Robert Redford's gentle direction, and starring alongside Brad Pitt, Brenda Blethyn and Tom Skerritt.

"Those people were there not just for the paycheck, and that made a big impression on me," he recalls. "And this was the first director I worked with who really understood actors, because he was an actor."

Six years of 3rd Rock From the Sun threatened to turn him into a teen idol, but he says that fame made him "selfish" and the thought of losing more privacy made him anxious. Aged 20 he walked away from acting and California altogether, moved to New York and signed up to study French literature at Columbia University.

"I wanted to stop and I didn't even know if I wanted to start up again," he says. "All of my friends were going to college and could do anything with their lives, and I wanted that sort of unknown, open future."

In the end, he never completed his degree, and returned to acting, putting together a gallery of characters unlikely to trouble mainstream cinema, including a sexually abused teenager turned rentboy in Mysterious Skin, a young man suffering from a serious brain injury in The Lookout, a former soldier haunted by the Iraq war in Stop-Loss, and a motormouthed accidental detective in Brick. Now, he hopes to meet bigger Hollywood film demands, but on his own terms.

"I still have a problem with the intersection of this word called 'celebrity' and acting," he agrees.

"But what makes it worth it for me is that people that saw (500) Days of Summer at Sundance have been coming up and saying, 'Wow, that really meant something to me.' You have to ask – 'Are you prepared for so many more people to connect with you in that way?' I want that connection because it makes me feel like I'm doing something worthwhile." v

(500) Days of Summer is on general release from 2 September www.500days.com