Jude Law: Brit pack actor
May 1999
By Ian Watson

“HAVE I done acid?”

Jude Law smiles and leans back in his chair. The actor who made his name with wildly arrogant yet coolas-f*** performances in Shopping (with his future wife Sadie Frost), Wilde (a sneering Bosie to Stephen Fry’s mumsy Oscar), and Gattaca (bitter pretty boy confined to a wheelchair while Ethan Hawke seduces Uma Thurman, enough to rile any man), knows he doesn’t need to chase credibility with a shock admission. So he relaxes and telIs the truth.

“I’ve done it once,” he says, evenly. “Eight years ago. I had an amazing experience, but I was so strung out and frightened by the comedown and sudden awareness of where I’d been, I didn’t want to go there again. Also, I was very aware of an alien form in me and I like being quite clean. I eat organic food. And I was aware of this thing inside me that I couldn’t wait to clean out. It was like, ‘Water, water, f***, get it out of me.”‘

Jude’s talking drugs in the Soho offices of Natural Nylon, the production company he owns with Frost, Ewan McGregor, Johnny Lee Miller and Sean Pertwee, because there are major parallels with hallucinogens and his latest film, eXistenZ. Written and directed by “Crash” director David Cronenberg, eXistenZ is about a computer game that puts players in a virtual reality world where a terrorist war is being fought over, well, virtual reality computer games. Confused? Don’t worry. eXistenZ is, after all, celluloid acid.

“Yeah, definitely,” Jude nods. “The game is escapism but you’re escaping to a reality which is exactly the same as the one you’re living. And also, it’s the idea of losing awareness of where reality begins and ends, and also bad trips, where the chemicals in you are panicking and that takes you somewhere else. I think intrigue in what we do to ourselves influences all of David’s work.”

Jude plays Ted Pikul, a security guard who has to protect Allegra Geller, played by Jennifer Jason Leigh, when a games test session is disrupted by anti-VR activists. Ted’s quite a quiet, passive role. Did you deliberately want to move away from the knuckle-grinding arrogance of your early roles?

“Yeah. I liked the fact it’s almost the female part and Jennifer Jason Leigh plays the bloke’s part. She based it on Lara Croft and learnt kick boxing.”

You were very good at being arrogant, though. I thought you were going to be a c***.

“That’s because I was purging myself, ha ha ha. It takes a lot of energy creating that kind of tension, that volatility, that aggression. And it was in everything for Bosie. Because it was his sexuality. You can imagine he f***ed like a trooper. Gattaca was easier. But, yes, I am aware of what audiences have seen of me and what else I want to show.”

Jude’s next film is The Talented Mr Ripley, with Matt Damon, where he plays a reclusive heir who has an idyllic desert island existence.

“It was a great challenge because it was finally playing someone who is totally happy, confident, and an action hero,” Jude grins. “I had to pump up, sail, play saxophone. I sing in it. In Italian, in a nightclub.”

Have you ever been in a band?

“No, unfortunately not. I gave up the guitar when I knew I’d never be as good as Jimi Hendrix, my hero. There’s a difference between someone who’s talented and this natural f***ing genius that anything you touch becomes different. And he seemed really sweet. So I thought if I can’t match that, I’ll concentrate on something I can be really good at instead.”

Jude laughs when I ask if he wants to be the Hendrix of acting, but he’s a determined, albeit charming, guy who aims to be as brilliant as his acted arrogance implies. I ask what his dream role would be and he says, “Marquis de Sade”, and laughs again, but you can pick up on the f***-off undertones. Try this exchange for proof of his true nature.

You must be famous now. Do people stop you in the street. . .

“(Being humble, yet pleased) Oh yeah, you know, sometimes.”

. . . And go, “Wow, it’s the bloke from Blur!” “Heh heh heh heh,” he replies in a tone that says, “You f***ing c***.”

You don’t seem to like that comparison.

“No, I don’t look like him. I’m always being told I look like someone else. It’s either River Phoenix or a young Malcolm McDowell, or a young Tony Curtis, and now Damon. One day they’ll say they all look like Jude Law.”

Perhaps the real indication of who Jude Law is lies in his next personal project, the story of Beatles manager Brian Epstein. Jude says he’s intrigued by the notion of someone who “threw the biggest party his generation ever knew, and yet was lonely. For me, he’s a symbol of what we all are.” Does he mean that people are flawed or just split between different natures, like the difference between fantasy and reality? The nice, sensitive boy with a talent for playing utter c***s doesn’t say. The answer is somewhere in eXistenZ. And in every film to carry his compelling, capricious, unmissable talent.