The New Everyman: Joseph Cross
The young actor is juggling genres, racking up accolades, and finding time to study. In the meantime, he'll be hiding in plain sight at a certain lodging.
Nick Haramis
November 30, 2007
By Peter McQuaid
Cross, left, the Chateau Marmont, Hollywood.
At 21 years young, Joseph Cross has managed to pull off that most difficult of career transitions: Tweenthrob to Serious Actor. There have been a few others as well: College Student to Working Stiff; Suburban Dude to Urbane Artist.
Actually, sitting in the ghostly-lit lobby of Hollywood’s Chateau Marmont, Cross is hilariously unassuming. “I love this place. I got introduced to it when Ryan Murphy interviewed me for Running With Scissors.” He gestures to one corner. “He interviewed me over there.” He gestures to another corner. “And that’s where he told me I got the part.” He laughs. “It still took me a while to realize that this hotel wasn’t a secret place that no one knew about.”
Indeed, it would appear that Sharon Stone, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Rufus Wainwright have all crashed Cross’s hideaway this very afternoon. He laughs again when he realizes this.
Thanks to screencraft short on gimmickry and long on nuance and smarts, as well as a just-this-side-of-Everyman handsomeness, Cross is “in” with the “inn” crowd. He’s no slouch when it comes to range, moving from Amy Sedaris‘s manic Strangers With Candy, to Clint Eastwood’s Flags of Our Fathers, to Running With Scissors with equal aplomb.
Next up, he tangles with Diane Lane’s cyber-cop in Untraceable, in which he plays a cyber-villain-a really, really nasty one. “I love observing people and getting into what makes them tick,” he says. He recently transferred from Hartford’s Trinity College to Columbia University, where he hopes to dip his toes into Psychology 101. That is, Cross says, “if I ever get the time.”
Photo by Shawn Mortenson.
Posted by Erica on Thu May 15, 2008 at 10.17 pm
Untresed movie was really good, besides the plot, the rol of “bad Boy” suits joseph perfectly.
You are really hot!! keep it cool