Is J. Gordon Levitt losing it?

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He's just taking bad scripts. Too Hollywood, needs to get into more serious work again. That French accent was bad too

He's been doing his crowd-sourced art project, HitRecord, for the past few years. It's a pretty neat project. It even turned into a tv show. You should look it up.

Hi coolbrett, I remember talking with you on the JGL board a while back. I think the two previous replies are fair points. I'm a big fan of a lot of JGL's work, esp. from Manic to (500) Days of Summer, so I've wondered about the way his career seems to have shifted since. I don't think he's lost it, but here's why I think he may seem like a different type of actor these days...

I'm not sure he cares all that much about being taken seriously as a dramatic actor.
Maybe right now he's more or just as interested in becoming an entertainer-performer (e.g., his lip-syncing appearances, his opening routines for SNL, his HitRECord projects, his upcoming musical with Channing Tatum, his developing a Fraggle Rock movie). And his filmography has always included less-than-high-brow projects (e.g., Elektra Luxx, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, Premium Rush). So maybe it's also that he just feels like doing what's fun and interesting to him, which is not always the same thing as "serious fare."

Maybe his film choices lately are more driven by who's directing than how good the material is.
His roles in Christopher Nolan's films were thin archetypes. For Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller's Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, he wanted to come aboard even before reading the script, and later fleshed out his own material. With Robert Zemeckis's The Walk, I don't know if he read the script before signing on, but judging from the finished film, it didn't put much stock on character development, nor did it get Philippe Petit's personality and motivations quite right. Jonathan Levine's The Night Before did not seem good, and I believe JGL again came up with some of his own material. Point being I'd be surprised if JGL was drawn to these projects because of the scripts. But I wouldn't at all be surprised if he was drawn by the directors, because of their body of work and experience, or their past collaboration with him.

Project-wise, his recent films have shifted from intimate character dramas to more plot- or action-oriented, mass appeal mainstream movies.
That tends to affect the kind of performances you'll see. None of his recent movies are meant to be actors' showcases. But I think you can still see the "real actor, not movie star actor" in him if you watch for it in parts of Don Jon and Sin City 2.

Performance-wise, his recent performances are more notable for their external elements than their internal qualities.
Looper, The Walk... the most significant things about these performances are his accent work, mannerisms and physicality. Could we say as much about the characters' psyche; their backstory; the evolution of their motivations and perspective, their desires and fears, their relations with others, the way they may have personally changed over the course of their story? To some extent, yes with Looper, no with The Walk, and in either case the character arcs are secondary to the raison d'être of their movies. So do these characters feel like human beings who live on beyond their films? For me, no.

That said, I think it's commendable that an actor would try to nail a character down to the details of their accent, speech, mannerisms, etc. It may not always work in everyone's minds, but that doesn't mean the actor shouldn't even try (which I feel is the case with too many other character actors these days).

And BTW I think JGL acquitted himself just fine in The Walk, delivered all that was asked with a committed performance. The problem I had is with the characterization itself. I just don't think Robert Zemeckis and his writer got Philippe Petit, and this really handicapped JGL's performance for me.

Career-wise, JGL's been spending a lot of his time directing and producing through his company HitRECord.
I believe, with few exceptions, you can only master what you focus on. JGL's TV show HitRECord on TV felt pretty special and inspired in Season 1. Season 2 also had terrific moments, but was less even, and was made around the time that JGL was filming The Walk and Snowden. Not saying that he can't be a showrunner and a film actor simultaneously, but let's put it this way... Did David Simon do anything else while making The Wire? Did Peter O'Toole do anything else while filming Lawrence of Arabia? To try to achieve at the highest level with either endeavor, maybe JGL, like pretty much any human being, would have to focus on one, at the expense of the other, during a given time period...

Maybe he's simply not pursuing or getting those kinds of offers.
Performances are so dependent on the material. But there is only a certain amount of interesting, quality character work for actors of his age group that he'd be suited for. Off the top of my head, I could see JGL being a fine fit for films like The Big Short, The Nice Guys, Enemy, Nightcrawler, Demolition... But he wouldn't do these kinds of projects, and deliver the kinds of performances that they allow, if he's not interested in them, or not being offered them.

We can't know why he hasn't been doing more arthouse "real actor" fare as opposed to more mainstream "movie star" fare, but sure, personally I'd love it if JGL could find stronger screenplays and roles that he can really dig into and run with, in films that give his characters the space. I know actors say that the projects find you rather than the other way around, that the target draws the arrow, and JGL has said that the only power an actor has is the ability to say no. Still, I'd guess that an actor of his talent, reputation, connections and goodwill in the industry has a degree of choice in his projects.

So in any case, it's all good. Actors choose their endeavors, we choose which of those to enjoy. :)

I don't think he's "losing it" as far as acting ability (I thought he was solid in both The Walk and Snowden), but I think he might be getting a little too "Oscar bait".

The Walk and Snowden were both biopic/docudramas that both flopped at the box office, and Sin City 2 was a flop too.

He might need to mix things up and do a romantic comedy or a non-biopic. He's usually at his best in comedy-drama stuff like 500 Days of Summer or 50/50. Stop trying so hard to be "serious actor" in "serious" movies and do something lighter again, get back to his roots and best comfort zone.



my movie review website: http://www.jestersreviews.com

He's still a decent actor, but he needs to find a better director who values performances more than CGI.