The Long, Strange Trip of Hollywood's Most Beloved Outsider
Twenty years, three reinventions, and one career that refuses to behave. A look at the actor who keeps choosing the road no one expected him to take.
The first reinvention came after the early sitcom years. The second came after the unlikely action turn. The third — the one currently underway — is harder to name, which is probably why it’s working.
The pattern beneath the chaos
From a distance, the career looks erratic. Up close, it’s almost too consistent. He keeps doing the same thing: walking into a category at the moment it’s about to peak, and walking out the door before everyone else figures out the trend is over.
He has timed three industry shifts that way. The fourth one is, by the look of his current slate, already underway.
What he gives up to do it
The cost is the kind of fame that produces magazine covers in airport lounges. He has never had that level of name recognition, and people who work with him insist he’s never wanted it. The trade is creative latitude. The cost is the part of the career that the press tour is built to amplify.
That this works at all is a function of the specific niche he’s carved: well-known enough to greenlight a project, famous enough to draw a director, but not famous enough to overshadow the films he chooses.
What’s next
The indie horror release this fall is, by anyone’s reading, a swing. The directorial debut he’s been quietly developing for four years is closer to a swing-for-the-fences. Both projects share a refusal to look like the previous decade.
That refusal is, at this point, the most predictable thing about him.
