12/31/06
Text: Scott Indrisek
Photographers: Cass Bird
“There’s nothing more soul-crushing than watching hardcore 70s porn,” says Justin Theroux. “It’s so much realer than the sort of shaved beaver glam porn we get now—it’s a fucking sweaty, hairy mess, and we had about five days in the editing room where our souls were eaten alive watching porn after porn after porn, trying to find the right scene.” Don’t get the wrong idea here—Theroux’s not opening up as a closeted pervert, he’s simply describing the vetting process involved in picking the opening sequence to Dedication, his feature-length directorial debut. It stars Billy Crudup as a misanthropic, vaguely obsessive-compulsive antihero who’s an illustrator for a children’s book series about a talking beaver named Marty, with Mandy Moore as Crudup’s love interest, and—
…Actually, let’s take a long step back.
Reason #121 why Justin Theroux is on the cover of this issue: Though he once got kicked out of Catholic school for smoking cigarettes, he’s now playing a long-haired, badly mustached “Latin Lover Jesus” in The Ten.
Taking the aerial view of 35-year-old Theroux’s career thus far is a slightly confusing task—his resume jumps from dancefloor acrobatics in Zoolander (and The Baxter) to Sex In The City and Six Feet Under roles, a lead in Lynch’s Mulholland Dr., a supporting spot in Miami Vice, not to mention a subtly moving PETA commercial in which he chills on the couch with his deaf pit bull. Despite being an actor, he does not live in Los Angeles, but rather within spitting distance of Washington Square Park, in a lovely apartment clotted with books, posters and memorabilia (including a gigantic steel ‘S’ that hangs on the wall, salvaged from the old Firestone tire factory in Brooklyn).
The required preamble of biographical details for Mr. Theroux, in a dense nutshell: born in Washington, D.C., weaned on the Fort Reno/Fugazi/post-punk scene, he’s kicked out of a few schools for, among other things, “moonshining a nun, as the nun called it”; he leaves to attend Buxton in Williamstown, MA, a “kind of chop wood, carry water place founded in deep socialist beliefs that kids can maintain the school”; after that it’s a Drama/Visual Arts degree at Vermont’s Bennington College, along with some time spent in Beijing, where he learns enough Chinese to get by “pretty damn good at the time.” Theroux moves to New York City where he lives across the street from CBGBs, slings drinks at a spot called Von Bar and pays the bills with random art commissions and mural work. Proving that it’s called “acting” for a reason, the straight, American’s first major role in his early 20s is in the play Hide Your Love Away, about Brian Epstein, homosexual manager of The Beatles. “I played this sort of teddy boy, rough street kid who was Brian’s lover,” Theroux explains. “That became my New York calling card. Is he gay? Is he English? I can play him on Broadway!” (Case in point: Justin Theroux still “treads the boards,” as the Brits call it. His last part was in Behold the Sons of Ulster Marching Toward the Somme at Lincoln Center, where he played “an English gay guy…cuz that’s what I do.”)
Since then he’s dabbled in everything from sitcoms to music videos. It’s clear that he still has a special place in his heart for the time he spent on cop drama The District. “That was my big foray into episodic network television, which made me want to throw a noose around my neck,” he says. “It’s a formula, a never-ending bad story, and it becomes your life. It’s a cheese factory.” Despite signing a contract that could have snared him in syndication for seven long years, Theroux convinced the producers that it’d be better (and cheaper) if he was given back his freedom. “We were a Saturday night show with a big Midwest following. I’ve never been recognized for it, except when I’m at like a hub in Cincinnati on my way to somewhere else. Post-middle-aged women, sort of geriatric women: Aren’t you the fella from The District? Yup. I did that.” While Theroux’s donated time to other shows like Six Feet Under and Sex in the City, it’s pretty obvious that his future isn’t in cable. “I like doing a season,” he explains. “Or six episodes. Or two episodes is even better. I don’t want a lot of episodic television—I want the story to have a beginning, a middle and an end.”
