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Dec.5 - Dec.12, 2004 |
The Beauty of Billy Crudup
American actor plays Ned Kynaston in Sir Richard Eyre's movie about famous 'actress'
By Angela Baldassarre
Originally Published: 2004-10-24
Despite his delicate beauty, Billy Crudup has yet to become a household name. Ever since making his debut as a vengeful child abuse survivor in 1996's Sleepers, Crudup has had his share of high-profile roles that have hinted at imminent stardom but never thrust him into the A-list category. But while turns as runner Steve Prefontaine in Without Limits, a cowboy in Stephen Frears' Hi-Lo Country, and a budding politician in Keith Gordon's Waking the Dead garnered the 36-year-old actor a lot of critical heat, all three movies bombed at the box office.
He received a Best Male Lead Independent Spirit Award nomination for 1999's Jesus' Son, and the following year, the role of a larger-than-life rock icon in Almost Famous offered Crudup his most charismatic role to date, but the only real star to emerge from that movie was Kate Hudson.
He's had much more success on the stage, where he won an Outer Critics Circle award in 1995 for his Broadway debut in Tom Stoppard's Arcadia and, two years ago, received a Tony Best Actor nomination for his turn as the deformed John Merrick in a short-lived revival of The Elephant Man.
So now's the chance for the charismatic actor to combine his stage talents with his cinematic opportunities as 17th-century actor Edward "Ned" Kynaston in Sir Richard Eyre's adaptation of Jeffrey Hatcher's play Stage Beauty.
According to Samuel Pepys' diaries, the androgynous actor was the most beautiful woman to trod the English boards at a time when actual females were barred from acting. In Stage Beauty, Kynaston's illustrious career screams to a halt when Charles II (Rupert Everett) opens distaff roles to women and bans men from playing them. The edict promotes Kynaston's dresser, Maria (Claire Danes), into the ranks of stardom, while throwing him into a spiraling identity crisis.
Tandem talked to Billy Crudup when he was in Toronto.
Did you have any qualms about playing this cross-dressing character?
"I had qualms because it was an incredibly demanding role. It's slightly easier when the script asks of you to be a poor cross-dresser. It's something else when the script asks of you to be an exquisite cross-dresser and so I didn't have full confidence in myself that I would be able to pull that off. But that's only one of the demands of a very demanding role. Character goes through a sort of identity crisis, an emotional deconstruction, and that was an incredibly challenging thing for me. To be able to chart that journey through the script and execute it in a space of chaotic time that's all jumbled, is a lot to act."
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