“It was hard for me to even go there”: The scene that almost halted Matt Dillon’s renaissance
Matt Dillon has never been averse to starring in controversial material, so it says a lot that a role actually disturbed him.
Despite his classical good luck and inherent charisma, he has always been an actor who has been willing to take on any role considered to be too edgy by most of his peers. His breakout role in the coming-of-age drama Tex offered a far more grounded, gritty exploration of teen life than most films of the era, and his fame skyrocketed due to the success of Gus Van Sant’s brutal, visceral addiction drama Drugstore Cowboy, which is one of the most important independent films of all time, and Dillon was front and centre in it.
Although he experienced a brief dip in popularity towards the beginning of the 21st century, he never completely was forgotten, where in Crash, considered to be one of the worst ‘Best Picture’ winners ever, Dillon’s performance as a racist LAPD officer was praised by even the film’s most vehement critics, and earned him his first Academy Award nomination for ‘Best Supporting Actor’.
The actor’s most memorable role of the last decade was his shocking star turn in The House That Jack Built, an acridly comic serial killer thriller directed by the great Lars von Trier that offered a grounded, yet absurdist look at the life of a psychopath who murdered women and children, and was subjected to tremendous criticism when it debuted at the Cannes Film Festival. Some saw it as a revelatory work of genius, and others claimed that it was legitimately dangerous, but again, the one thing that all critics could agree on was that Dillon certainly fulfilled the assignment that von Trier had handed to him.
It only made sense that after his experiences with the director, Dillon would end up working with another eccentric, controversial European auteur who had a talent for pushing the line. He was cast in Nimic, a short film from Yorgos Lanthimos, whose previous films had been cult successes, but The Favourite had broken out to become a massive global hit that earned ten Academy Award nominations, including a win in the ‘Best Actress’ category for Olivia Colman.
Nimic starred Dillon as a cellist who develops an unusual relationship with a female mimic, but due to a shocking moment of violence, he admitted that he almost turned down Lanthimos’ request to appear in the film.
“I almost didn’t do the movie because of that scene,” he told The Guardian, “It was hard for me to even go there in my mind. It wasn’t because of the violence, it was because of the degradation, the way he talked to her.”
What’s impressive about Dillon’s insights about the scene is that he understands the intentionality of what Lanthimos was doing; there’s already a heavy amount of violence in cinema, but making personal, targeted attacks on someone can really get under the viewers’ skin, and it’s the bravery to come across as monstrous and inhumane that has made Dillon such a fascinating star.
While his aptitude for darker roles might be a reason why he has never received as much attention as he deserved, he has had a fairly impressive recent run with roles for Wes Anderson and Claire Denis, and will next be seen playing Frank Stallone Sr, the father of Sylvester Stallone, in Peter Farrelly’s awards-contending biopic I Play Rocky.
