John Cusack Never Understood His Cusackness

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/09/14/magazine/john-cusack-interview.html

For certain moviegoers — and I’m one of them — the quick-witted, alternately idealistic and morally deluded characters that John Cusack played in films like “Say Anything . . . ,” “Grosse Pointe Blank” and “High Fidelity” were charismatic guides to the pitfalls and promises of youth and young adulthood. To others, Cusack was more straightforwardly a movie star, as he shared top billing in 1990s and 2000s box-office hits like “Con Air,” “America’s Sweethearts” and “Serendipity,” to name a few. And when the studios didn’t quite know what to do with a no-longer-boyish Cusack — he’s now 54 years old — the actor found success with character work in smaller films like “The Paperboy” and “Love & Mercy.” But that last one was six years ago, and since then he has kind of fallen into a cultural limbo of “Where’s he been?” Gen X nostalgia. (At least for those of us not plugged into progressive-politics Twitter, where he’s very active.) But a pivotal role in Amazon Studios’ upcoming, eagerly anticipated sci-fi thriller series “Utopia” should change that. “It’s always a dance, and you always feel like you didn’t do it well enough,” Cusack said about his career’s twists and turns. “But I tried to do my best.”