It was cinema’s Gerard Butler who once observed: “There’s no one in this world I think works harder than me.” It’s true. Although a UN report found their daily toil sufficiently backbreaking and hazardous to rank them as among the very poorest of the poor, there are Filipino fishermen who come home and almost collapse after 18 hours on the waters, only to rally themselves when their wife sniffs: “Tough day? Do me a favour – you’re not Gerard Butler. Gerard’s been in his trailer since 7am and he’s still waiting for the light.”
The fact is, movie acting is the toughest profession, and anyone who feels moved to query that has simply never shot a really intense scene about being on welfare with Kristen Stewart, much less had to bang her afterwards. People who endure that go fishing to relax, you know what I mean? That’s how tough the gig is.
And so to another week in which the role, and the toll of the role, has been diversely discussed by those forced to weather it. We begin with returning character Shia LaBeouf, whose tireless attempts to get everyone to forget he was once a Disney star mark him out as a Proper Celebrity. Shia understands his responsibility to add to the gaiety of the nations, and consequently has torn through various breakdown-effect public poses in the past few years. Ways in which he has “given back” include – but are by no means limited to – doing acid in front of Ron Weasley; a plagiarism scandal he sought to defuse by hiring a skywriting plane; wearing a paper bag reading “I Am Not Famous Anymore” to a premiere; staging an art installation in which he sat for five days in an LA gallery and allowed the public to join him in short shifts; revealing he was raped by a woman during the latter performance; a majestically irksome motivational speech on YouTube; filming himself binge-watching his own movies in a cinema for three days. (He walked out for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, fact fans, but managed to stay for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.)
Anyway, Shia’s latest outing is a lengthy interview in Variety, in which he announces: “I’m learning how to distil my ‘crazy’ into something manageable, that I can shape and deliver on the day.” I must say I like the sound of his new film, director Andrea Arnold’s American Honey, a lot. “For American Honey, Arnold never gave LaBeouf a script,” we learn, “just a black-and-white picture of a forest for inspiration.” Very much hoping that one doesn’t come out the same week as Rogue One.
The movie concerns “a gang of nomad thieves and misfit kids selling magazine subscriptions on a cross-country road trip”. And in keeping with today’s theme, it appears to be a shoot of a rare order, where the cast slept in motels and were encouraged to replicate their fictional relationships. “You do whatever is required for it to be true, for it to be honest,” explains Shia. “I had to run this group, sort of like a pimp.” He acquired 12 new tattoos during the shoot, including a matched pair of Missy Elliotts on his knees. He doesn’t like Missy Elliott that much, apparently – it was just “peer pressure”.
Other interview highlights? Mugging off Mister Spielberg – “He’s a less a director than he is a fucking company” – and Variety’s deadpan parenthesis “Spielberg declined to comment”. And there’s a reminder that actors can always find new variations on the old fib “I don’t act for trophies. But you know, it would be nice to be nominated.” Or as Shia puts it: “The Oscars are about politics. I got to earn my way back. It’s not about who is the best. I’m not that guy for a long time – for a long, long time. I’m good with that, though. Sometimes that shit is a curse.”
Elsewhere in acting, though, there is a horrendous – if tenuously credible – dilemma for Daniel Craig. Does he or does he not take the rumoured $150m he is being offered to commit to two further James Bond movies? At first look, this would seem to be a gimme, but remember: even among movie acting gigs, Bond is one of the absolute toughest. As Craig put it after the last one: he’d rather “slash my wrists” than go through it again. In fact, reading his frequent discourses on Bond’s demands, it seems desperately wet of Björk to have vowed never to act again after making Dancer in the Dark with Lars Von Trier in 2000. Man up, love! I honestly think it would have finished Björk off if some gender alchemy had required her to shag around in an edition-of-10 Aston Martin between various luxury spa locations, all the while trying to retrieve important nanotechnology from some intriguingly scarred foreigner.
Then again, while we’re on the subject of Bond, does his reported split with Taylor Swift put Tom Hiddleston back in the frame for the role? As previously discussed, Lost in Showbiz has grave reservations about the suitability of Hiddleston for Bond, particularly on the basis of an interview he once gave in which he explained that as an actor, “I can’t turn off my intelligence”. But following his high-profile three-month relationship with Taylor … well, things have merely crystallised. No offence, but I don’t go to the movies to watch my country being covertly defended by someone who’d wear an I Love TS singlet. You might as well give Isis our nuclear codes or make Boris Johnson foreign secretary.
I speak, of course, of the photos of Tom cavorting in the sea with Taylor, wearing a customised vest. Clearly his outfit was a joke, some impenetrable Fourth of July japery between new lovers. But it’s out there now, and for all the briefing and counter-briefing over who dumped whom, I can’t help feeling one of the sundered parties is going to swim forward faster and more lethally. Oh Tom, Tom, Tom! Why did you think it was safe to go into the water?
