Edward Harrison Norton (born August 18, 1969) is an American actor and filmmaker. He has received numerous awards and nominations, including a Golden Globe Award and three Academy Award nominations.
Born in Boston, Massachusetts and raised in Columbia, Maryland, Norton was drawn to theatrical productions at local venues as a child. After graduating from Yale College in 1991, he worked for a few months in Japan before moving to New York City to pursue an acting career. He gained immediate recognition and critical acclaim for his debut in Primal Fear (1996), which earned him a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor and an Academy Award nomination in the same category. His role as a reformed neo-Nazi in American History X (1998) earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. He also starred in the film Fight Club (1999), which garnered a cult following.
Norton emerged as a filmmaker in the 2000s. He established the production company Class 5 Films in 2003, and was director or producer of the films Keeping the Faith (2000), Down in the Valley (2005), and The Painted Veil (2006). He continued to receive critical acclaim for his acting roles in films such as The Score (2001), 25th Hour (2002), The Illusionist (2006), Moonrise Kingdom (2012), and The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014). His biggest commercial successes have been Red Dragon (2002), Kingdom of Heaven (2005), The Incredible Hulk (2008), and The Bourne Legacy (2012). For his role in the black comedy Birdman (2014), Norton earned another Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.
Despite critical plaudits, Norton has gained notoriety for being difficult to work with, including incidents such as editing the final cuts and rewriting screenplays against the will of other producers. He is discreet about his personal life and has expressed no interest in being a celebrity. Besides acting and filmmaking, he is an environmental activist and social entrepreneur. He is a trustee of Enterprise Community Partners, a non-profit organization which advocates for affordable housing, and serves as president of the American branch of the Maasai Wilderness Conservation Trust. He is also the UN Goodwill Ambassador for Biodiversity. He is married to Canadian film producer Shauna Robertson, with whom he has one child.
“I don’t have anything to prove to anybody.”—Edward Norton
“Life, like poker has an element of risk. It shouldn’t be avoided. It should be faced.”—Edward Norton
“All people are paradoxical.”—Edward Norton
“Duality is just a complexity.”—Edward Norton
“Instead of telling the world what you’re eating for breakfast, you can use social networking to do something that’s meaningful.”—Edward Norton
“It’s better for people to miss you than to have seen too much of you.”—Edward Norton
“The best films of any kind, narrative or documentary, provoke questions.”—Edward Norton
“A lot of why I do something is just the novelty of the experience.”—Edward Norton
“I never think that a film should answer questions for you. I think it should make you ask a lot of questions.”—Edward Norton
“I like making movies for myself and my friends and people with my sensibility.”—Edward Norton
“I don’t smoke and I don’t want to smoke.”—Edward Norton
“I always felt that acting was an escape.”—Edward Norton
“You always end up getting involved in things because of the strange things your life brings you into contact with.”—Edward Norton
“At this point in my life I’m not bent on proving anything.”—Edward Norton
“Fame is very corrosive and you have to guard very strictly against it.”—Edward Norton
“I just like working with smart people.”—Edward Norton
“Young people know how to use these social networking tools, and they know how to use them effectively.”—Edward Norton
“I’ve always thought of acting as more of an exercise in empathy.”—Edward Norton
“Every little thing that people know about you as a person impedes your ability to achieve that kind of terrific suspension of disbelief that happens when an audience goes with an actor and character he’s playing.”—Edward Norton
“I like music, but I need to get outside more.”—Edward Norton
“You can’t control everything that comes to you.”—Edward Norton
“I’m not particularly precious about the theatrical experience any more.”—Edward Norton
“I just love movies.”—Edward Norton
“The incentive for business is not, and cannot, be anything other than the root incentive for all business: they must profit.”—Edward Norton
“Life, like poker has an element of risk. It shouldn’t be avoided. It should be faced.”—Edward Norton
“I don’t flatter myself.”—Edward Norton
“I like it when the deeper you go with the character, the more you see the layers start to peel away.”—Edward Norton
“Popularity is the slutty little cousin of prestige, my friend.”—Edward Norton
“Sometimes we don’t see certain things until we’re ready to see them in a certain way.”—Edward Norton
“I’ve observed over and over that people seem to get a much deeper sense of fulfillment out of something they’ve done as an act of service than out of the things they do for themselves.”—Edward Norton
“A lot of why I do something is just the novelty of the experience.”—Edward Norton
“Unpopular speech is absolutely vital to the health of our nation.”—Edward Norton
“My generation is having its midlife crisis in its 20s.”—Edward Norton
“Champagne for my real friends, and real pain for my sham friends.”—Edward Norton
“Sometimes we don’t see certain things until we’re ready to see them in a certain way.”—Edward Norton
