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HYPE: Joe Pantoliano People on the street often give Joe Pantoliano dirty looks. But he doesn't take it personally. In his new book, Who's Sorry Now: The True Story of a Stand-Up Guy, the prolific actor--who has played nasty fellows and hard-boiled types in Memento, The Matrix and "The Sopranos"--says whenever someone stops him and says, "I hated you in that movie!" he knows he has done his job. Pantoliano (aka Joey Pants) grew up in Hoboken, New Jersey, in the shadow of Frank Sinatra's legend. He was one loudmouth among many, to hear him tell it, in his pleasantly colloquial telling-stories-on-the-front-porch style. In the prologue he gives his readers a taste of just what they're in for: "Needless to say, I hereby detach myself from any of the sick and twisted personality traits and psychopathic tendencies I've occasionally taken up on-screen, with two noted exceptions: their typically incessant charm (my dear brothers and sisters, some things are beyond my control) and, of course, the occasional heavy cursing." But throughout the book Pants comes off as soft, not sarcastic, especially when it comes to discussing his dear mom. --Lonny Pugh |
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But unlike many headline-grabbing actresses, Jolie is even more interesting on-screen than off. The dangerously screwed-up beauties she has played in George Wallace, Gia, Playing by Heart, Pushing Tin and Girl, Interrupted have all been tangible, believable creations. In her first big-budget thriller, The Bone Collector, she easily matched the skill and intensity of Denzel Washington. She's likely to stun audiences as the take-no-prisoners action heroine Lara Croft in Tomb Raider, a fantasy adventure adap from the video game by director Simon West (see story on p. 54). And who isn't looking forward to watching her later this summer when she plays the sex-obsessed femme fatale who enraptures Antonio Banderas in Original Sin? When Angelina Jolie greets me for this interview, she strikes me as someone fully capable of doing all that she has done offscreen and all that she's expected to do on-screen as Lara Croft. She's dressed in a black T-shirt and black leather jacket, and she looks like she might throw a mean right if provoked. "Call me Angie," she says, reaching out to shake my hand. I can tell she is indeed something like her father--intense, focused. And I have little doubt that, like her father, she'll be original in her thinking. For Lawrence Grobel's interview pick up the June issus of Movieline. PAGE 1 | 2 |