James Le Gros on Good One, burning bridges with Tarantino, and delivering Zodiac’s best line

Welcome to Random Roles, wherein we talk to actors about the characters who defined their careers. The catch: They don’t know beforehand what roles we’ll ask them to talk about.The actor: Kelly Reichardt, Gus Van Sant, Todd Haynes, Kathryn Bigelow. All names that appear multiple times in the filmography of James Le Gros, across a career that stretches back to guest spots in the early ‘80s on shows like Punky Brewster and Simon & Simon. An industry stalwart for the past four decades, Le Gros blossomed as a consistently reliable figure during the American independent boom of the ’90s, earning an Independent Spirit Award nomination for his vanity-skewering performance in the showbiz satire Living In Oblivion. Yet despite his hops from marquee hits like Enemy Of The State to cinephile landmarks such as Zodiac, the actor has been able to shield himself from the spotlight. “I have the kind of fame that makes people think they know me from the gym or that I went to high school with them,” Le Gros tells The A.V. Club. James Le Gros' latest, Good One, sees him in a more prominent role as Chris, father of Sam (Lily Collias) and longtime friend of Matt (Danny McCarthy). The three embark on a backpacking trip through the Catskills in India Donaldson’s quiet, humanistic debut, about how a teenage girl starts to see the world in a slightly different light as she discovers more about who these men are.This interview has been edited for length and clarity.Good One (2024)—“Chris” / Girls (2012)—“Jeff Lavoyt”The A.V. Club: I love how naturalistic Good One feels. Not only this gorgeous environment, but the writing and performances. How do you approach that acting style, toning down the theatrics, finding something that feels like we’re not even watching actors performing?James Le Gros: When I started out and I was still learning my way, I had more of a set kind of method and preparation. In the last 20 years of my career, I’ve let the material dictate the approach. So it’s always reinventing itself. What I loved about India’s script is that it’s a style of filmmaking that’s not dissimilar to good short story fiction, in that pretty much everything has a purpose. It’s like when you lift up the hood of your car—Toyota doesn’t put some extra spark plugs taped in there. Everything’s got a function. What I respect about it is that it’s sort of like Chekhov, in that she doesn’t need to lead you—you’ll get there. She has the confidence, as a writer and a director, to let the story take its own time. As far as the acting approach, it makes it easier if you sense the style of the script. I’ll compare and contrast. So Good One is one style, right, but when I was working with Lena Dunham on Girls, that’s a different style. They’re both sort of naturalistic acting, but they’re still different from each other because there’s different expectations related to the material. I’ve worked with some other filmmakers, like Gus Van Sant, Nicole Holofcener, or Kelly Reichardt, and they’re all very poised in their filmmaking and so they allow for that kind of style. They have a lot of confidence that radiates a kind of authenticity, and that’s compelling.Showing Up (2022)—“Ira”AVC: Good One has understandably earned some comparisons to Kelly Reichardt’s work, even just thinking about the environment. JLG: Yeah, with Old Joy. AVC: Exactly. You’ve worked with Kelly a few times now. How did that relationship start? JLG: It’s funny, we have a mutual friend, so I would hear about Kelly and various things through my friend, Larry Fessenden, who I’ve made several movies with. But I don’t believe I met Kelly until we were shooting Mildred Pierce, with her longtime friend Todd Haynes. We were shooting some daytime exterior, pretty big stuff that involved a lot of vintage cars and hundreds and hundreds of extras. I think that was the first time I met her, and I don’t know this for a fact, but I believe a light went off and she was like, “Oh, I could have cast that asshole.” [Laughs] “You would’ve been perfect on a couple of things.” So then, I just was able to be in her consciousness in a more real way. I got asked to be in a few of her pictures, which I’m super grateful to be invited to the club.AVC: I read that she felt like you got ripped off in Showing Up, because she called you with the promise that she’d figure out what the part was, but it ended up not being much.JLG: You know what, I was used exactly as I should be. I was also able to provide some support on a lot of off-camera stuff, working with people who maybe weren’t full-time actors. I was able to be of service, and I’m just so grateful that she thinks of me and lets me be in the club, cause it’s really cool to see her work. She’s a real artist, you know? Kelly’s really an artist. I’m starting a new movie in about a week or so, and I was remarking to a couple of my colleagues that I’m so lucky to have worked with the people I’ve gotten to work with, and how much they’ve helped me to be better. I’ve gotten a lot of support and luck from my colleagues. When you’re working with Michelle Williams, it’s kind of hard to suck. You just got to hit the ball back.Where The Day Takes You (1991)—“Crasher” / Enemy Of The State (1998)—“Jerry Miller”AVC: You’ve got a legacy of working with incredible talent at the beginning of their careers. JLG: [Laughs] I like to say I’m a rite of passage. I worked with Will Smith on his first picture, and Philip Seymour Hoffman. I can run down the boring list, but you work with me and then you go onto great success, and I wave goodbye as you disappear over the success horizon.AVC: You worked with Will Smith on his first movie, Where The Day Takes You. After that he becomes the biggest movie star in the world and you work with him again, seven years later at his peak, on Enemy Of The State. How did it compare collaborating with him in those two very different phases of his career?JLG: I’ve been asked that—not in a press setting, but privately a few times—and you know what, he was kind of the same guy. Very agile as an actor, very open. Not precious about stuff. On a human being level, I remember on Where The Day Takes You, he already had fame as a rapper and somewhat as a television star, but this was his first movie and after the day’s work he was there outside his trailer signing autographs. After a full day of work, you know? I just thought, “Wow.” And it was the same thing on Enemy Of The State.Knight Rider (1984)—“Trasher”AVC: I want to take you back to the beginning. Your first IMDb credit is an episode of Knight Rider, where you play a guy named Trasher in an episode titled “The Rotten Apples.”JLG: I never saw it! So you got that on me.AVC: In your first scene you show up with this group of troubled kids, stumbling out of a van and you’ve all got lines like “Radical!” and your first line is “A mean scene!” Do you remember anything from working on that?JLG: I auditioned for that and I remember being super happy that I got the job. I remember the jacket I wore! It was some kind of leather jacket, and there was a woman who was the guest lead on that episode. She was a few years older than us. This is a vague recollection, but she wanted that jacket. When we wrapped, she took it and she told me, “Don’t say anything.” Later, they asked me if I had taken the jacket, and I was like, “No, I didn’t.” Then they asked if she had taken it, and I said, “I don’t know what she did.”David Hasselhoff was super nice. We had a mutual friend, Paul Reubens, and after work he invited me to his dressing room, which was like a mobile home, for margaritas. He gave me a bunch of merch from the show, like a hat and some stuff. That’s what I remember. It was one of those early jobs that I was really grateful for, like that and Simon & Simon and Punky Brewster.But I just thought about these [projects] that I learned so much on, which sort of leads me to the first lead I did on a movie, which was Phantasm 2.Phantasm 2 (1988)—“Mike Pearson”JLG: It was like three or four months of shooting and that was back in the day when all special effects were in camera. I learned so much about acting in front of a camera—different lens sizes and different sorts of moves. It really heightened my consciousness about how to work performance with a camera. I’m so grateful for all that work. I’m so grateful that those people took a chance on me. Thanks to things like that, by the time I got into something that was good—in 1988, with Drugstore Cowboy, which was probably my first good thing—I was ready.Drugstore Cowboy (1989)—“Rick” / Singles (1992)—“Andy”AVC: I saw Drugstore Cowboy when I was a teenager, growing up in rural Delaware which had a very heavy heroin scene, and that movie so effectively captures the aura of living in that space. People are hustling to get their next fix, but a lot of it is just sitting around and philosophizing.JLG: Everybody was bringing their A game on that one. Here’s a funny story about Drugstore Cowboy. I was trying to get an audition and I couldn’t get in for whatever reason, which was a little bit odd because I had auditioned for those casting directors before. I was helping other actor friends of mine for their auditions, and I guess they just weren’t finding the right fit for the Rick part. I was friends with one of the producers, Laurie Parker. We had both taken a directing workshop with a great theater director, Jose Quintero, and I helped her on her graduate film at UCLA. She remembered me and they asked me to come audition for Gus, and then I got that part.AVC: You had a similar thing happen on Singles, right?JLG: I auditioned for the part that Matt [Dillon] got, and I thought I was going to get it. Cameron Crowe was sending me all of these CDs, telling me “Think about this,” da-da-da. Then it was radio silence. I didn’t hear from anybody. Then I heard they were going to go a different way, and then I heard Matt was doing it, so I was just like “Oh, okay.” The part tha