The director who told David Harbour to “act more handsome”
While David Harbour has immortalised himself into the hearts and minds of TV show fanatics with his role as Jim Hopper in the Netflix science fiction series Stranger Things, the New York-born actor’s career goes some way back to the mid-2000s, with several supporting performances in some seriously acclaimed movies.
Harbour’s appearances in the likes of Quantum of Solace and War of the Worlds prepared him for life in the spotlight following the success of Stranger Things, and he also had the fortune to play in one of the greatest movies of the 2000s, Ang Lee’s romantic neo-Western Brokeback Mountain, also starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger.
Lee’s film, an adaptation of the 1997 short story by Annie Proulx, examines the complex, intense and at times reluctant romantic relationship between two cowboys in the American West between the years 1963 and 1983. Both Gyllenhaal and Ledger gave phenomenal performances, and the film won three Academy Awards, including ‘Best Director’ for Lee.
During an interview with Yahoo, Harbour opened up on what it was like working with Lee, saying he “was so funny and weird. I really loved him… It was such a strange thing because I read that script, and I was like, ‘This is one of the great movies of all time. It’s a great love story. It’s a beautiful script.’ And it really was just right from the page, just stunning.”
Going on to explain what the reception of the film was like when he was promoting it, Harbour continued, “I remember on all the talk shows, it was like a big joke, ‘the gay cowboy movie.’ It was just a big joke all over everywhere, how we were making a gay cowboy movie. It was so ridiculous. And I remember thinking that when you see this movie, you’ll get it, but on the page, it looks silly.”
Indeed, at the time Brokeback Mountain was released, the world was not exactly the sex-positive environment that we have slowly moved towards today. Rather, the film was the talk of tabloids, offices and playgrounds and was sometimes used as an insult against homosexuality.
Still, Harbour looks to have a deep love for his being in the film, noting his experience making it, “When I got up there to film it, they were doing some really fun work… You could just feel that we were making something really creative and really beautiful.”
There was an amusing occurrence with Lee, though, in which Harbour was asked to act “more handsome”. The actor added. “He gave me a note as he came in for a real tight closeup at one point, and I did a couple takes of it. He wasn’t quite happy… And then finally he came over to me, came up right close to me and went ‘More, uh, more handsome.’ And then he ran away, and I was like, ‘Bro, I think that’s a note for your casting director.’ But I took it as best I could and tried to square my jaw off. And he liked it.”
