James Le Gros on Good One, shooting 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 that I got, they had hired somebody else and then fired that guy for whatever reason. I got a call on a Friday asking if I could be at work on Monday. I was like, “Uh, okay.” I went up there, I shot whatever I had to shoot, and then they decided they wanted to expand that for whatever reason for the story, so they added some more stuff for me to do.

Near Dark (1987)—“Teenage Cowboy” / Point Break (1991)—“Roach”

AVC: You have a small part in Near Dark, and then a bigger role in Point Break. Did one end up leading to the other once you had your foot in the door with Kathryn Bigelow and her team?

JLG: Yeah, they offered me Point Break. They asked me which one of the surfers I wanted to be, so I picked that one. Right before the pandemic I ran into Kathryn at the American Airlines lounge at Kennedy Airport. We changed our seats so that we could sit next to each other, and we had a great conversation. She said to me, “Oh my god, when I made those movies with you, I didn’t even know how to make movies back then.” I was like, “Well, Kathryn, you figured it out.”

AVC: One of my favorite behind-the-scenes stories is Patrick Swayze talking about how he was a recreational skydiver and was doing all of his own skydiving for the movie, but then the insurers made him stop and he was super pissed about it.

JLG: Yeah, he was doing all of his own skydiving, and I was doing all of mine as well. It was very exciting. I haven’t done it since, but it was all thrilling. And listen, Patrick Swayze, he was just a good guy. A great heart. He was a real hard worker, and he had a real tough out. I think he really deeply cared about people. He died way too young.

AVC: He and Keanu Reeves have these machismo-driven movies, but both have such sensitivity to them.

JLG: Sensitivity, I was going to say the same thing. You remember Keanu in River’s Edge?

AVC: One of my all-time favorite movies.

JLG: Keanu’s a really good dude. Every now and again, I run into him and he’s always so nice. He’ll put his arms out and go “James!” [Laughs] I’m surprised he remembers who the fuck I am, honestly. He’s a really good guy, and he’s contributed mightily to the form. I think of the legacy of some of those franchises he’s been a part of. Like wow, that guy has sold a lot of tickets.

Guncrazy (1992)— “Howard Hickock”

AVC: You’ve done multiple movies with Drew Barrymore over the decades. Do you have a favorite story from working with her?

JLG: So, she was getting emancipated during Guncrazy. Complicated, difficult family situation. I think I taught her how to drive a stick shift while we were making that movie. Anyway, there was some point where we weren’t getting along very well, and we had to shoot this scene. The camera was above us, and we were in a kind of embrace in the shower, washing blood off ourselves.

The way the camera worked out, it was supposed to go from the drain up through the shower. It was this somewhat ambitious shot. We hadn’t been getting along for whatever reason and then, in that moment, we kind of made up and she walked across and gave me a big hug. It was this beautiful, warm moment, and then in that instant, the glass plate over the camera fell off and missed her by just a few inches and shattered. It would have been an incredibly intense head wound for Drew. If we hadn’t been not getting along there would’ve been no reason for her to come over and hug me. It was like fate.

Living In Oblivion (1995)—“Chad Palomino” / The Passage (2019)—“Horace Guilder”

AVC: Your character in Living In Oblivion is such a tremendous takedown of vapid, dimwit actors. Whenever I’m watching that movie or talking about that movie, someone will mention, “You know that character is based on Brad Pitt, right?” But director Tom DiCillo has vehemently denied that.

JLG: So, here’s the story. I can’t speak for Tom DiCillo, but I’m just going to tell you—they offered that part to Brad before they offered it to me. So, I was the second choice. 

AVC: Which is funny because for Phantasm 2, he auditioned for your part and you got that over him.

JLG: Fortunately they picked me. Oh well. Oops.

AVC: If not Brad Pitt, were there any specific experiences in the industry you were pulling from in developing Chad Palomino?

JLG: In terms of male vanity and ego, I have enough of my own to draw from. [Laughs] I would say in terms of the trifecta of characters—Steve [Buscemi]’s character, Catherine [Keener]’s character and my character—they all seemed to be aspects of Tom. That’s what was great about Tom’s writing, that he was able to tap into that. All of those characters articulated aspects of who Tom is. And here’s another great actor: Peter Dinklage! That was his first movie.

AVC: My favorite bit is when Buscemi comes out and Dermot Mulroney, who has been wearing this eyepatch, is pouting because he doesn’t have the patch anymore. And Steve goes, “Where’s your eyepatch?” Then it cuts to you, and you dramatically turn around with your hands on your hips and you’re wearing that eyepatch.

JLG: Many years later, I was working in Atlanta on a short-lived series called The Passage. It was one of those shows where it’s like a lot of hallways, and doors opening into other hallways where doors open. [Laughs] We’re doing this shot, me and this wonderful actress Caroline Chikezie, and this hallway door opens. The camera’s on us, and the crew is all out there, all 150 of ‘em, and they’re all wearing eyepatches. [Laughs] I totally broke.

Destiny Turns On The Radio (1995)—“Harry Thoreau”

AVC: Around the same time as Living In Oblivion, you did this shaggy neo-noir Destiny Turns On The Radio.

JLG: It didn’t quite work. There’s much laudable in it. I really like Dylan McDermott, and the writers were friends of mine. That thing went through lots of twists and turns, and it just didn’t quite realize itself.

AVC: How was working with Quentin Tarantino as an actor in that? He’s playing this sort of supernatural drifter named Johnny Destiny. The movie came out immediately post-Pulp Fiction where the aura around him was just stratospheric.

JLG: I can tell you a really humiliating story. He probably changed the trajectory of my entire career. It was a late night. It was a Saturday. I think John Travolta was hosting Saturday Night Live, and I remember watching it and as they signed off they said, “We love you, Quentin!” and they all blew a big kiss. I think Steve Buscemi did a little cameo on the show. I don’t know that [Quentin] was ever any more famous than at that very moment.

So, we had to do this shot. The deal in the movie is I refurbished this swimming pool and I’ve filled it with water. And the shot is that Quentin’s character rises out of the water…he’s on a waterproof hydraulic lift that’s in the pool, and it lifts him up out of it then abruptly stops. They made the choice—Why? I don’t know—but they wanted him nude. So they had this bikini thing for him to wear so that he wasn’t actually naked, but that was the idea.

He might have been a little heavy at the time, and he had confided to me, “I’m a little nervous about this. I’ve got to do this shot, and it’s weird.” I was like, “Don’t worry about it, dude. They’re not going to see all that much, and honestly everybody just wants to get the hell out of here.” He’s telling me, “I don’t want to be laughed at,” and I’m saying, “I totally get it.”

The shot, as I recall, was like through his legs and I’m on the other side of the pool seeing this. So, we do the shot and everything and he kind of jiggles as he comes to a rest. Behind him, through his legs, I see Jim Carter, the DP, and the two writer-producers, and I see them starting to laugh. They’re like [chuckles quietly in his hand]. And…do you know who else starts to laugh? 

AVC: James Le Gros.

JLG: Yeah. All of a sudden [shouts] “Cut, cut, cut!” and Jack [Baran], the director, is like, “What the fuck is going on?!” Quentin, who can’t see what’s going on behind him, looks right at me and says “He’s laughing at me!”

And you know what? Then we do the shot again, and I laugh again. We do the shot again, and I laugh again. And after the seventh take of James Le Gros laughing, nobody’s laughing. Nobody’s laughing anymore. I ran into Quentin some years after that, and it was not particularly pleasant.

I’m probably not working on any of his movies. I’m a huge admirer of his work. Obviously he’s a great American artist, and by all accounts a great guy. Everybody loves him. He’s loyal to his people. Unfortunately, my lack of concentration burned a bridge probably forever. I’ve never told that story before in public. You’re the first. But I’m old now, and I don’t really care anymore.

Zodiac (2007)—“Officer George Bawart”

AVC: Not only is Zodiac one of my favorite movies, but you have the best line in the entire movie.

JLG: I haven’t seen it!

AVC: That’s crazy. Okay, there’s this scene where Jake Gyllenhaal is doing some research at the precinct where you and Elias Koteas work. He leaves and you say to Koteas, “Who is that guy?” and he responds, “Some kid. Thinks he’s gonna solve the Zodiac.” Then you smile and say, “Oh yeah? Good for him.” It’s an incredible line delivery, super funny and charming but also genuinely supportive. Like you really think it’s good for him that he’s trying to solve this thing.

JLG: So, Fincher told me, he was like, “You know, the way you say that, it’s gonna get a laugh. And I don’t know if that’s good.” I said to him, “You’re David Fincher. Your movies can use all the laughs they can get.” [Laughs] So, he circled back to me the next day after he watched all the takes, and he said, “You’re right, I’m gonna keep it.”

How the script originally ended was a big ten-page scene between me and Jake at the very end of the movie, where he ends up handing off the case to me. We shot that scene three times. The first time I heard they’d been reshooting, [Robert] Downey was telling me, “Yeah he reshoots everything.” I had other friends, Mark [Ruffalo] and Tony [Edwards], who told me the same thing, so I was emotionally prepared for it, but I felt like I’d let the team down.

Then I was looking at the cast list—you know how they’re numbered, like the lead is number one? As I looked at the cast list, number one is Jake, and then all the way down at number 57 is James Le Gros. What had occurred to me was, like, oh no, they don’t reshoot anything for number 57. There’s a new 57 if 57 stinks. [Laughs] It was one of those things where the good news is that it’s not about you. The bad news is that it’s really not about you. Anyway, the scene never made it into the movie, I was told.

Friends (2002)—“Jim Nelson”

AVC: Speaking of great line deliveries, your episode of Friends is amazing.

JLG: When that episode happened, that was like the week that they were negotiating their uber deal.

AVC: Oh, the $1 million per episode deal for each of them.

JLG: Yeah. So, originally the way the cast dressing room was is that if you were a guest player, you were upstairs where they were, and they were just in a different room. But then when that deal happened, we were jettisoned outside to some trailers outside the sound stage. And we were just kind of waiting for them to come out. We never rehearsed any of that stuff. I think early on we had a read-through or something, and then nothing. We never really did it until we were in front of a live audience.

They were all really nice. I don’t know for other people, but that was my experience. That was my big takeaway from that moment, because I’ve met other people that are at that moment, that zone in their career, and it wasn’t that way.

AVC: I always remember your episode because your character is out of control. You’re on this date with Lisa Kudrow, and she’s asking you what you do for a living, and you say, “I write erotic novels… for children.” She gasps, and you follow up with, “They’re wildly unpopular.”

JLG: I was in New York with a friend of mine, and his old assistant works for the Knicks. He called and was like, “Can we get some tickets to the game? My friend James is in town and I want to take him to the game.” So the old assistant puts us in contact with the person who does that, and she asks who’s going to be there, and my friend says his name, and that he’s bringing this actor friend of his. He says my name, and she screams and goes, “Oh my god, he’s in my favorite episode of Friends!” [Laughs] And we ended up getting courtside seats.

It was crazy. Like, right on the court next to the Knicks bench. I must have gotten a dozen texts of like, “Who the hell did you fuck to get those seats?” [Laughs] “Because you’re not near cool enough to get them.”

Pronto (1997)—“Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens” / Justified (2011–2014)—“Wade Messer”

AVC: You had a guest run on various episodes of Justified, but people might not know that you played Raylan Givens yourself in the ‘90s TV movie Pronto with Peter Falk.

JLG: Let’s just say Tim [Olyphant]’s much better. His performance is way better than mine. The one that I worked on was great in a lot of ways, but I was disappointed with how it turned out. I was bummed, just right out of the gate, because the hat they put me in was the wrong hat. If you read the book Pronto, there’s like paragraphs on the hat this guy wears—it’s a Stetson Open Road. And that’s not the hat they put me in. So it kind of went bad from there. But what was great was that I made friends with Glenne Headly and Peter Falk. We shot in these great locations, so that was really fabulous. But that was a disappointment for me creatively.

AVC: It’s got to be tough when you’re getting the chance to perform Elmore Leonard’s words, to not have it pan out.

JLG: Yeah, the source material is so vivid and so well laid out. It bothered me that there were some things that were important, to me anyway, that they didn’t care about. Elmore came down when we were shooting the Miami part, and he couldn’t have been nicer. Dutch was such a cool guy. I remember asking him about writing, and he was like, “I do what I do. I’ve tried to write screenplays, but I’m not good at it. So I don’t do it anymore.” [Laughs] Which I thought was just such a great, candid admission of not every form being for every person.

He’s got great characters in compelling plots, but what doesn’t ever quite get the adaptations of his work over the top for me, is that they’re missing a lot of the tension in his scenes. He writes in a way that’s histrionic within the person’s thinking process as they’re encountering a scene—like, they’re remembering some relevant fact, but they’re not expressing this. They’re having the dialogue in real time about whatever, but this other tension is layered on top, which is almost impossible to tell cinematically. I guess I always like the books better than the adaptations.

Stray Bullets (2016)—“Cody” / Foxhole (2021)—“Wilson”

AVC: You mentioned working with Larry Fessenden earlier. You’ve made several films with him and several with his son, Jack. Those are guys in the independent space who aren’t letting lack of budget inhibit their ambition. Foxhole alone is nuts. 

JLG: These are guys that really love the cinema. They’re unencumbered by challenge. But they understand fundamental things as well. Good composition doesn’t cost you anything. You just have to figure out what your resource pool is, that’s the big thing about independent cinema in general. And they’re able to do that, and they’re able to figure these things out. Like, Foxhole takes place over three wars, and we just shot that in a tent in Larry’s front yard.

I think of Stray Bullets, which was Jack’s first real movie, and he knew he could make that because of that big front yard he had to work with. There’s one shot in Stray Bullets, where we had a character getting shot from behind. How we did the shot was that we had a squib and then we had a fire extinguisher, that we filled with fake blood, that ran up John Speredakos’ leg. We rehearsed the timing of it, and then we had a leaf blower outside the window that would blow these plastic shards as if the gunshot was coming through the window. 

It was all just figuring out the timing so that we were all synchronized to go. I don’t know what the net cost of getting that shot was, but at the most it was like a couple hundred dollars. Probably the most expensive part was the fake blood, because I think Larry personally owned the leaf blower.