Geckos and Clothespins

I interviewed Aaron Eckhart last year for the cover of Men’s Journal, when he was in the middle of filming The Dark Knight. The production was shrouded in secrecy; when I casually asked Eckhart how long his makeup took, he wouldn’t tell me. It took me a moment to figure out why. At the time, his role as Harvey Dent had been announced, but it had not been officially announced that he would also be adopting Dent’s villainous guise, Two-Face–and if he answered the question with “five hours” or something along those lines, it would have confirmed that plot point.

“I love all my scenes with Maggie Gyllenhaal,” was pretty much all he was willing to say about the movie then. “And I think Heath Ledger’s knocking it out of the park as the Joker.” But off the topic of Batman, Eckhart was more voluble, and proved to be an interesting, complicated guy.

I wrote my article on Eckhart during my first week living in California, taking a break now and then to unpack boxes. It went through an unusual number of drafts, a reflection of the friction I had with an editor who believed Eckhart couldn’t possibly play the dark roles he did unless there was a black abyss in his heart. (Explanations of “acting” were not as useful as hoped for.) I’ve put my favorite version up in the archives.

posted 30 July 2008 in Archives, Articles and tagged . no comments yet

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