Reel lives

With a movie actor, there's such an interesting interaction between the performances on-screen and our idea of who this person is in real life. Dean is a classic example. In some ways, his screen performances and his actual self seem close because of the kind of actor he was, but above and beyond certain performances there's an idea of who a star is that seems very particular to the movies.

Absolutely, and yet it is more than the movies, too. It's clear that this legendary image that many people on-screen have in their own lifetime -- they didn't have to be dead to have this mythic quality -- which was not the same as their real nature, it's quite clear that this has carried on now into things like politics and celebrity as a whole. Celebrity is a child of the movies, certainly a child of photography. We're tickled and intrigued by the way even nonentities -- I would say seriously uninteresting people -- like Reagan or Madonna, can exert an extraordinary appeal on the imagination. And in many cases, certainly Reagan's, I don't think it was a thing he understood or could control. It happens. The first time that split response to an image, a face, the sound of a voice, occurred was in the movies. I think it's one of the ways the movies have shaped modern life in quite remarkable ways. It's a very complicated issued, and it isn't a thing I understand.

There's that very strange experience of knowing someone who then attains a certain level of celebrity, and suddenly there are all these people who have never met your friend but feel they know a lot about them. And often what they think they know about that person is completely different from what your experience of your friend is. And you cannot convince them that it might be otherwise.

Isn't it just? For instance, I don't regard myself as a celebrity but I have a public life, and my wife tells wonderful stories about the stupid things people will say when they come up to me. That's one thing spouses pick up on. They'll say, "You don't know what he's like in real life!" That stuff is fascinating and it's creeping into daily life more and more.

Is that one of the things that makes a movie star, an above-average ability to construct an aura like that?

Yes, absolutely. It's two main things, and you can make them sound technical, but they're magical as much. One, and it sounds simple but it's complicated, is allowing yourself to be photographed. Most people, and I'm one, don't like to have their photograph taken. You flinch, you tense up. You think, Oh, god, go ahead, all right take my picture. You don't want to have it done. You know you're not good at it, not natural at it.

Some people love it. They're natural at it. It's as if they love it because they know the camera is going to see them in ways that real people don't. They're good at letting it come into them, and then they're good at projecting, at reaching out and looking into the darkness and saying, "I'm going to think something when I look out there and millions of people are going to think that I understand them." Now, it may not be as cold-blooded as that, but that's what it comes to. A star is someone whose look in a close-up, looking off at nothing, persuades you, me and millions of other people, "He understands me."

Who do you think is an exemplar of that? Marilyn Monroe?

I don't think she had it. She was not that good at being photographed on moving film. She was good at being photographed in stills. She's something else. Oh, a lot of people have had it. James Stewart had it. Cary Grant had it. Robert Mitchum. Carole Lombard, Katharine Hepburn. Lauren Bacall had it in two films, but then it went. In "To Have and Have Not" and "The Big Sleep," she looks like the greatest thing ever put in front of a camera. She gets dull after that.

People around today ... I think Tom Cruise has it. I would never accuse Tom Cruise of being a good actor, but I think he likes being photographed. They don't have to be beautiful.

Tom Hanks?

He doesn't quite have it in the same way.

It's so subjective. We're talking about our own personal reactions.

It is. And sometimes it comes and goes. Look at Brando's career. When he was very young, Brando had it. It went, maybe because Brando hated it himself and it just frittered away. And now he won't really make films. Some people have it all their lives. I think you could argue that Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy always had it. Cagney had it.

In your entry on Fred Astaire you talk about how difficult it is for someone to move well on film. That's not the sort of thing the average filmgoer notices, or at least not in a conscious way.

Walking -- I wasn't talking about dancing with Astaire. I wrote about this in Salon, that while watching "Ocean's 11" I finally noticed that Julia Roberts is an awkward walker. She had to walk across some casino floors several times, and I noticed that she's shy about walking. And a lot of women are -- a lot of men are -- particularly if they think they're being looked at. But walking across space is a big thing in movies. It's a big part of what they are. Some people can do it effortlessly and gracefully and you love what you see. A film like "The Big Sleep" is full of shots of Bogart just walking across rooms in a full-figure shot. It's as if Howard Hawks, the director, had just seen that the more Bogart did this the more people appreciate him and like him because he does it so damn well.

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