Addicted to love
Joseph Gordon-Levitt has come a long way from 3rd Rock from the Sun, as his new film shows
When Joseph Gordon-Levitt turned 21 in 2002, he bought a computer and editing software. He'd been acting for a decade by this point - including a five-season run as the long-haired smart-mouth teenager on sitcom 3rd Rock from the Sun - and was desperate to direct.
"I wanted to give it a try, making a feature film," the former child star says. "I really thought I could do this." It has taken 11 years, but this month sees the culmination of that dream with the release of Don Jon, which he directs as well as wrote the script for and stars in.
I love to work. And I think those who are best at their work really blend work and play
It arrives on the back of a remarkable run for Gordon-Levitt, now 32, that's seen him work twice for Christopher Nolan, in Inception and The Dark Knight Rises, take the lead in cult time-travel hit Looper, and feature in Steven Spielberg's period biopic Lincoln.
Not that Don Jon is anywhere near as heavyweight. Returning to his romantic-comedy roots, this is more like the Gordon-Levitt we know from his two Golden Globe-nominated roles in (500) Days of Summer and 50/50 - a mix of spiky and sad.
In person, Gordon-Levitt doesn't come across as a gag-a-minute; at times, he can be wary, as buttoned-down as the blue checked shirt he's wearing when we meet. But then this is the actor who opened his 2009 stint hosting Saturday Night Live with the classic Singin' in the Rain musical number Make 'Em Laugh. There's comedy in him, all right. You just need to know how to find it.
In Don Jon, he plays the title role - a New Jersey ladies' man (hence the pun on epic seducer Don Juan of literature) who is hooked on pornography. As he's swift to show, he has no problem picking up women but his relationship with porn is what really drives him. Then he meets Barbara (Scarlett Johansson), who spends her nights gorging on rom-coms - and takes a very dim view of his predilection for skin flicks.
Aside from achieving the impossible - telling a sweet-natured romance built around porn - Gordon-Levitt wanted to tell a contemporary love story. "I thought a story about a relationship between a young man who watches too much pornography and a woman who watches too many romantic Hollywood movies would really be a funny way to get at this question of how [the] media impacts our lives, and our love lives, in particular."