Jun 26, 2009 09:30 AM
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San Francisco, 3:04 PM
Tue Feb 9
27 posts in the last 24 hours
We've already seen the dreaded Cobra Commander's live action face reveal in toy form forG.I. Joe. But actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt thinks the character's Daniel Day-Lewis good. We're still not sold... especially when he compares it to a Russian Clown Show.
In an interview with New York Magazine, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, an actor that we normally absolutely adore, talks about what they did to him for his role as Cobra Commander, in the new live action G.I. Joe flick.
There's this crazy kind of get-up that I wear. It's got makeup and it's got all this other stuff, and it's a mask, basically. You can hardly tell it's me. And that, to me, is the best. That's why I love Daniel Day-Lewis or Gary Oldman. Actors like that, where they're so different as each character, the actor disappears. Doing G.I. Joe made it real easy to disappear because of all the elaborate stuff on my face. And it demands a totally different kind of acting style. You sort of check your realism at the door.
Oook that's a stretch with the Oldman and DDL stuff, but he's an actor's actor — it's how they talk, plus he seemed open to it. Moving on...
I was thinking of Slava's Snowshow the whole time [Gordon-Levitt is a producer for the avant-garde Russian clown show]. In Snowshow, they put on makeup; it's old-fashioned makeup, totally different, of course, than what we did in G.I. Joe, but they put stuff on their face to create a character. Now, the guy who put stuff on my face, Kazuhiro Tsuji is his name, the protégé of Rick Baker - he's an artist, man! He's such an admirable artist, and to watch him do this work and have it be all on my face, it's just so fun. And then I get to play with that and create a performance out of that, instead of my own face. It's so much fun for someone like me who gets off on different acting styles, playing with the craft. That's what G.I. Joe is about for me.
Oh JGL stop trying to make this sound cooler than it really is, it's an action movie, with power suits, we know what we're getting into. Who's he really trying to convince here? Although, I do appreciate your attempt to sway me that the mask will be anything but awful.
Send an email to Meredith, the author of this post, at meredith@io9.com.
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