Eighteen-going-on-thirty, Edward Furlong talks about having had a rough life, not having done drugs, never having gone clubbing with Leonardo DiCaprio, and having gotten in Before and After, "such a great part that you don't even have to act to look great on film."
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It's early on a rare-fine California morning. An archer, bow poised precisely, draws back his arm. A whir rips the air. By his satisfied look, he's scored a palpable hit. A moment passes before I notice he had no arrow to release; he made the whirring sound himself; there's no target. I notice then that the archer is a well-known entertainment lawyer. On the knoll not far from him, well-dressed dog owners gaze vacantly, Prozac-calm, as their big, unruly pooches bark, snarl and lunge at a tiny terrier. There's more noise than bloodshed, but the sangfroid of the dog owners is dead weird. As if to put a fine point on it, wind shivers in the trees.
Welcome to the dog park on Mulholland Drive, a spot well-known to West-side Angelenos for casual celebrity-spotting and the place Edward Furlong has insisted on for our hookup. I thought at first of nixing this location. Too precious and too distracting. Then again, pinning down a meeting time with Furlong was like trying to play tiddlywinks with quicksilver. Anyway, the ambiance of the park begins to work on me. Here's a place to imagine what might happen if Michelangelo Antonioni remade 101 Dalmatians.
Up pulls a dusty black SAAB ragtop with Edward Furlong inside. Best known so far as the kid with the great haircut in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Furlong is currently the focus of industry buzz for his performance in the new Barbet Schroeder movie Before and After, in which he co-stars with Meryl Streep and Liam Neeson. Just 18, he has survived such post-_Terminator_ dross as Pet Sematary II, Brainscan, and the more ambitious but equally trying American Heart and Little Odessa. Thanks to his ability to rise above bad or lachrymose material, and to a look -- all cheekbones and slight, androgynous body -- that sets him up perfectly to play ravishing boy-men/changelings, Furlong is, like Leonardo DiCaprio, one of the young actors to whom moviemakers turn when they need an actual performance.
I note immediately that Furlong, terse and radiating a whatever attitude, emits offscreen the same sort of bereft, piercing, street-kid melancholy that makes him so watchable on-screen. Hard to imagine him smiling, much less skylarking: for one reason or another, his soul is already shredded.
Furlong begins by apologizing for being late -- "We had to find a toy for Frances," whereupon he introduces his excuse, a canine of dubious pedigree, boundless energy and killer charm, who, Furlong explains, was named in tribute to the character played by Kathy Bates, his screen mom in A Home of Our Own. Furlong then mumbles an introduction to his other companion, a petite, dark-haired woman I guess correctly to be Jackie Domac, his much older and much gossiped about companion of the last few years. Jackie, who is thirtyish, goes about arranging sliced fruit and napkins on the out-of-the way picnic table we choose, and then makes it apparent that she is not there to hover over Furlong, but to keep a watchful eye on Frances, whose leash is immediately swiped by two of the hellhounds from the nearby knoll.
"So, Edward," I begin, "are people telling you you're getting a big head for someone so young and relatively green?" I have, in fact, heard that since Furlong received better reviews than Vanessa Redgrave, Maximilian Schell and Tim Roth for his role as the son of a dying mother and brother of a violent gangster in the clinically depressed indie Little Odessa, he's gotten a groove thing going with himself. He says, shrugging, "I've never had anybody say that to my face, because if I did, probably I'd kill them. With Little Odessa, for instance, the other people in it got really good reviews also, but it was my first film where I really got great reviews. That didn't make me go, 'I'm just the greatest.' It makes me try harder next time. But, you know, it can be hard sometimes not to seem like it's gone to my head. What stops me is that I just think, 'It's my business. It's just what I do as my job.' Anyone else can say exactly what they want about me. I can't control that."
Is it really so clear, I ask Furlong, what's business and what's personal in Hollywood, where temptation is everywhere? "First of all, I'm totally with Jackie, totally," Furlong says, staring off at Jackie and Frances playing tug-of-war. His gaze makes it totally clear that he totally thinks he means it. "If a woman ever gives me the eye, I'm as sullen as, well, as sullen as the leather jacket you're wearing. I've always liked women, but the thought that I might do something about it, might let that go to my head, never even crosses my mind. It's hard to tell in this business when people are being sincere or whether they just want to get close to you because you're well-known. I can usually tell right off, though. That can make you seem kind of standoffish, but I don't go around thinking, 'Oooh, how can I be an asshole today?' And if I am an asshole, who gives a shit? Everybody can be an asshole sometimes. I hope I'm not, but if i am? OK, well. That's for Jackie or someone close to me to decide. But, as for the press? Most of that's pure bullshit."
Much of the bullshit -- or truth, however you want to look at it -- surrounding Furlong started early and stemmed from the turmoil of his home life. Self-described as "half Mexican, part Russian, and just American," he was one more lower middle-class kid from a splintered Southern California family, busier sneaking into theaters to see movies than sneaking into starring roles in movies, until the Terminator 2 casting agent discovered him hanging out at the Boys & Girls Club of Pasadena. When the money and praise from James Cameron's opus kicked in, a custody struggle between Furlong's mother, whose house he'd moved out of, and his aunt and uncle with whom he then lived, heated up. Long since settled (in favor of aunt and uncle), the case got Furlong labeled in People as "Problemo Child," which is like blaming the victim, but the label stuck.
For sheer gossip value, his relationship with Domac, his stand-in on T2, picked up where the custody battle left off and kept tongues wagging. Furlong muses, "What people say about us doesn't matter. Either you love some-one or you don't. Age has nothing to do with it at all. I live my life like I want to live it, not for anybody else. Jackie and I are nobody else's business. I don't care what other people do or don't understand."
Given his own family problems, does he feel any kinship with Macaulay Culkin, whose family warfare has recently been making magazine covers? "Everybody's situation is different, but I feel sorry about what happened in his family," Furlong asserts. "It seems this stuff happens with a lot of movie kids whose careers just blow up like that. If you blow up too much, it's bound for disaster. Anybody's family can be fucked up, whether you're an actor or not. When you're in Hollywood, you just hear more about how fucked up someone's family is because people just want to make up stuff and make a huge fantasyland out of your life. Again, bullshit. A lot has been written about me. My life wasn't any Brady Bunch, that's for sure. I had a really tough life. But that stuff is all behind me now. It's been said, Steve, you know?"
Does he feel fame imposes unfair scrutiny? Take I'affaire Hugh Grant and the Sunset Boulevard hooker, for instance. "It's really none of my business to judge anything about Hugh Grant, but I think people made a bigger deal of it than it is. Drive down Sunset and you see so many guys grabbing hookers and you don't see them getting humiliated. When [newspapers and magazines] talk about me, it has nothing to do with my career, so I'm like, whatever. Fans are what matters. Fans I like. Those are the people that go to the movies, pay for the tickets and get me parts."
What about fans who go too far? I've heard Furlong has experienced such stuff. "If somebody sat down at our table in a restaurant, well, that would be rude," he explains. Then, putting on his sweetest, best-mannered voice, he continues: "I'd say to the person, 'You know what? We're eating and I don't know you and, well -- get the fuck outta here!'" Rapping our tabletop, Furlong confides, "I've gotta tell you this story. Jackie and I went to a small-town mall while we were shooting Before and After, and all of a sudden, like, 50 people showed up and rushed me. It was cool at first, then suddenly there were so many fucking people following us, it was, like, meet the fucking Beatles, So, anyway, this one dude came out of the crowd and kissed me on the cheek right here." Furlong traces on his cheek the precise spot on which the smitten lad planted one. "My first reaction was, like, punch the guy. I had to fight Jackie, because I just wanted to go ballistic. But I didn't and these two kids came up and said. 'Oh, man, don't worry, we'll go find that kid and beat the shit out of him.' It was weird and funny.
I really don't like it when someone-- guy or girl--invades my space." So, would he think of protecting himself by packing a piece? "No gun, no bodyguard, cause that would probably freak me out. It's really not that big yet, my fame. Hopefully it will be that big one day." What if someone were to make a threatening move toward Jackie? "I'd beat the shit out of them, that's all," Furlong snaps back, all 130 pounds of him. "That is, before Jackie beat the living shit out of them herself. See, when it's not the business, I live like a normal person. When we're at home, we invite over a couple of friends, just chill out and watch a laser disc. Or we just watch TV all night together. The rest of it is all just fake."
With whom does he chill? Someone told me that, although he and Leonardo DiCaprio are often up for the same roles, they've been seen partying together. Furlong rolls his eyes. "Oh, yeah, me and Leo go way back. Look, I have never clubbed with Leonardo DiCaprio. In fact, I guess I've never met any of the real Hollywood people. I definitely have to say that I hear that Leonardo DiCaprio is up for every freaking film that I am, but friends? Now, I'm not saying it's impossible for actors to be friends, 'cause, you know, anybody can be friends, but..."
"But," I say, only too happy to complete that sentence for him, "actors are too competitive to truly be pals?" He gives out a dubious look. "I am very, very competitive and ambitious," he says, with an edge of tempered steel. "I would definitely fight hard for a role I believed in. But I will never kiss anybody's ass. No way, man, I would say to Quentin Tarantino, 'Hey, man, pretty awesome,' but I wouldn't be like 'Hey, man, let me do one of your movies,' even if to do one of his movies would be totally trippy."
How did it come about that director Barbet Schroeder chose Furlong after checking out all the usual suspects when casting the all-important role of the mesmerizingly off kid in Before and After? "Barbet and I met two years ago in an office, and, at the time, he was seeing everybody." recalls Furlong. "It was the role, out of all the scripts I have read, that I really wanted the most. It was almost like such a great part that you don't even have to act to look great on film. Two years later, I got a call from my agent that the movie was on again and that Barbet wanted me and that was that."
Furlong, who shuns acting classes, knew that playing a character who "changes in every scene -- every one of which is dramatic," would make for a grueling four-month shoot. "I figured it would be tiring," he explains, "and it was, but what a roller coaster ride." As of today, he has only seen Before and After in rough cut, but he declares the movie "awesome." Given the talent involved, it surely has, at least on paper, more than a shot at living up to its prerelease hype. About some reshoots that took Furlong back to New York far a week last fall, the actor says, "I can't tell you about what we shot because it would give away the story, but the stuff actually turned out better than what we originally shot."
So things are looking up, career-wise? Furlong concedes, "It's looking good. For a little bit there, it was slowing down." Which explains, maybe, Furlong's dip into lame-o horror and sci-fi, with Brainscan. And we will soon see whether the screen version of Truman Capote's marvelous story The Grass Harp, a period ensemble piece with a cast that includes Piper Laurie and Walter Matthau, falls into the category of dubious items on Furlong's résumé. Matthau's son, Charles, who directed the show, was nearly booted off the film by the studio executives early in production. "Definitely a troubled shoot," Furlong admits. "I'm kind of judgmental because I read the book and that was so beautifully written, I really don't know too much about the trouble, except that the director wasn't really getting along with the studio. They just didn't click. It was a weird shoot." And with that, Furlong shrugs and makes his face a mask that seals over the subject.
Coming out of his "slowing down" phase, Furlong reunited with his old sidekick Arnold Schwarzenegger on a hugely-expensive Terminator Universal Studio's tour short that director James Cameron shot with state of the art special effects, in 3D, yet. How did Furlong get along with the infamously volcanic Cameron this round? "I look at it this way," philosophizes Furlong. "If I was directing a $100-million film, I'd be yelling and screaming and everything, too, you know? Jim is a real perfectionist. He kinda wants everybody to just do the best they can. He yells, but he's a really nice guy and he always makes up for it in the end. He's never yelled at me. The worst he's done is snap at me when I was being stupid or not getting something, you know?"
What movies has Furlong been up for and lost? I've heard he's been talked about for that long-stalled Warner Bros. bio of James Dean, a project that DiCaprio has also been mentioned for. "Anybody who's going to play James Dean is just asking for bad reviews. Although I do think Val Kilmer made one hell of a Jim Morrison." How about the rumor that he was under consideration to play the Boy Wonder in Batman Forever? "Chris O'Donnell is a lot older than me, but it might have been cool. 'Eddie Furlong is Robin!'" To Die For? "I really wanted that part and thought I'd had an interesting meeting with Gus Van Sant," he admits, of the role of the teen killer played by Joaquin Phoenix. The Susan Sarandon-and-her-many-sons movie, Safe Passage? "I went in and read for that. I think, but I look at so many scripts I forget them. I think I was up for Primal Fear, and I heard a lot about the Winona Ryder movie that Lukas Haas got. But, I tell you, there are very few scripts where you get sucked in within the first five pages and you're just in it. I would love, love, love to be in a movie set in the '60s. I drive Jackie nuts because I'm always saying, 'I wish we could be back in the '60s, sitting all day in some Berkeley park being hippies.' I'm crazy about the music, especially the Beatles. But back to your question, another kind of role that would be so much fun to play, even if I'm obviously too young, would be the kind of part Jack Nicholson had in The Shining. I like scary movies. I like the madness, too."
Speaking of scares, what in real life spooks Furlong the most? "Going nuts," he answers very softly, after a long silence. What's inside him when you strip away all the movie star bullshit? "Ooh, like what's in my soul? Well, I'm just, like, someone who lets things come as they come. I think I'm a nice guy, Pretty laid-back, Not very moody. Not much else." If he's so sunny and uncomplicated, then what's with the persistent rumor that he is no stranger to some very '60s-ish hard living, including, maybe, drugs? "Me? Oh, my God." he says, momentarily speechless. "You tell me the funniest stuff about myself." He looks flabbergasted, but mirthless. "Well, you see, I'm pretty heavy on the crack and the horse," he mocks. "Want to check my veins?" Sure. I say, and he rolls up his sleeves, saying, "Pretty clean, right?" I have to agree. "This is more of the fantasy world they're just making up about Holly-wood. The shooting up drugs, the craziness, all of that, it's just bullshit," Maybe, but it's not like drug use is unheard of among young actors in Hollywood. Pointing to himself, Furlong shakes his head and says, "Not here."
When might Furlong, who turns up all the time as a cover or poster boy in teen magazines, do a love scene with a major movie babe? And, if he had a choice, who would it be? Winona? Alicia? Claire? "I've never worked with any of them and I haven't even seen an Alicia Silverstone movie," he answers. "To tell you the truth, I hate kissing scenes. I know you're going to press me on this, but I swear, the best definition of why I hate kissing scenes is that they're just weird." Wait. Isn't this the guy who told an interviewer about his first screen peck in American Heart that he kept trying to screw up take after take to prolong the pleasure? "This is now, man," he says. Furlong muses for a moment, then adds: "The whole thing about this teen stuff is that, before I was in the business, I heard so many times. 'God, you're short,' or 'You're ugly.' Then you get into the business, and suddenly you're the greatest looking guy in the universe. Fuck."
Since he seems to groove on the weird-ness of Hollywood life, I ask Furlong if he'd like to riff on some typical teen idol questions. He's game. So, what kind of girls does he prefer? "Whatever Jackie is. I'm a real romantic. That's one thing for sure." Boxers or briefs, button-fly or zipper? "Briefs and button-fly." Roll-on or stick? 'I'm usually a stick man," he says, cracking up. Hard body or natural? "Whatever Jackie has," he says. A perfect date? "Doing anything with Jackie," he gushes. Doing my best Rona Barrett imitation, I ask, do they plan to tie the knot anytime soon? "Nobody's business," he says, "But this is for life. Definitely."
Since Furlong's salary has risen exponentially from the $30,000 he reportedly copped for T2, on what sort of cool stuff is he blowing his money? "I've always wanted to be a Harley-Davidson biker, not have a home and be a happy wanderer. Jackie would kill me if I ever got a bike. But, the money thing -- see, I have such a big team that, by the end, I hardly have any money to blow anyway. Some of my favorite things I've bought, though, are my car and a big stereo system with mega-woofer, surround sound and a laser disc player." A house? He shakes his head. "We rent this three-story house that's really cool and has city skyline and canyon views. Jackie picks the furniture because she says I have no taste. I have one special room, though, where I can decorate it any way I want, like with peace signs and stuff. Let's see, where else does the money go? Oh, also, we have a lot of animals." A lot? "Frances the dog and a lot of cats," he says. "We're just crazy animal lovers. But no, I'm not going to tell you how many cats, because it will wind up in some crazy newspaper, 'Eddie Furlong Has One Hundred Cats.' "
After a break during which Furlong and Domac take a run together with their dog -- anyone who says these two aren't a matching set is not paying attention -- he admits, with refreshing candor, to having absolutely no clue as to what movie he might do next. Not even a bite? A nibble? He shakes his head, no, and appears not the least bit perturbed. "I feel really good these days. I know that a lot is going to depend on how people like Before and After." A lot that may include seeing him step up to meatier roles. "Tell you what, though," he adds, grinning facetiously. "If the career doesn't work out, I'll definitely go to college and try another line of work. If that doesn't pan out, I can always go shoot up and be a rock star."
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Stephen Rebello co-wrote Sex '96 for the Jan./Feb. issue of Movieline.