Bowing down to an icon: The actor Aaron Eckhart calls a “god”
Deifying somebody who makes their living sitting in a makeup chair, putting on a costume, and pretending to be somebody else has the potential to enrage the more puritanical sections of society, but Aaron Eckhart clearly has no issues putting an actor on the highest possible pedestal.
Whenever any performer gets asked about the greatest to ever do it, the name Marlon Brando tends to be the one that comes up more than any other. That makes sense, considering he revolutionised the profession and inspired generations to come, but Eckhart doesn’t see it quite the same way.
Rather ironically, though, he bows down at the feet of somebody who themselves worshipped at the altar of Brando, meaning it could be a long time before there are a full six degrees of separation between any known star naming their number one inspiration without The Godfather and On the Waterfront legend being only a step or two away.
It’s a famed practitioner of the method technique, too, not that Eckhart should ever try immersing himself too deeply into any character after what happened in the past. Deciding that he needed to truly embody the part of a grieving and recently bereaved father in Rabbit Hole, the actor – who has precisely zero children of his own – attended a group for parents who’d lost a child and decided the best way to do justice to the character was pretending he was in the exact same boat.
Queasy? Yes. Uncomfortable? Absolutely. Unconscionable? Probably. Jack Nicholson didn’t need to do anything like that to become regarded as one of the all-time finest actors in cinema history, and he ended up with three Academy Award wins, a laundry list of classic credits, and the ability to become the sort of person people speak about in those hushed, reverential, and Brando-like tones.
When naming his five favourite movies to Rotten Tomatoes, Eckhart plumped for Five Easy Pieces as one of his quintet, with Bob Rafelson’s blue-collar drama netting Nicholson the second Oscar nomination of his career and first in the ‘Best Actor’ category. “Nicholson was a god,” The Dark Knight‘s Harvey Dent surmised. “Is a god. Great movie. Fucking great movie”.
He’s not wrong, with Nicholson on entrancing form as Robert Dupea, the classically-trained former piano prodigy who turns his back on his upper-crust beginnings in favour of working on an oil rig and making the most of his relationship with Karen Black’s waitress Rayette Dipesto. For a short while, at least, until the lure of isolation and self-inflicted alienation proves too strong to resist.
It’s a hell of a performance from an actor who made a career out of giving them, with Eckhart happily likening Nicholson’s work in Five Easy Pieces – and in cinema at large – to a borderline spiritual experience.
