Edward Norton
Edward Harrison Norton (born August 18, 1969) is an American actor. Norton was drawn to theatrical productions at local venues as a child. After graduating from Yale College in 1991 with a degree in history, he worked for a few months in Japan before moving to Manhattan 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 redeemed 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.
For other people named Edward Norton, see Edward Norton (disambiguation).
Edward Norton
Actor
1993–present
1
James Rouse (grandfather), Willard Goldsmith Rouse (great-grandfather), Willard Rouse (first cousin once removed), Pocahontas (ancestor)
Norton 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 Italian Job (2003), 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. Norton has since directed and acted in the crime film Motherless Brooklyn (2019), and starred in Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022).
Norton is an environmental activist and social entrepreneur. He is a trustee of Enterprise Community Partners, a non-profit organization that 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.
Early life[edit]
Edward Harrison Norton was born into a progressive Episcopalian family in Boston, Massachusetts, on August 18, 1969. He is descended from John Norton, a British architect of the Victorian Gothic revival style. He was raised in Columbia, Maryland.[1][2][3] His father, Edward Mower Norton Jr., served in Vietnam as a Marine lieutenant before becoming an environmental lawyer and conservation advocate working in Asia and a federal prosecutor in the Carter administration.[4] His mother, Lydia Robinson "Robin" Rouse, was an English teacher who died of a brain tumor in 1997.[5][6] Norton's maternal grandfather, James Rouse, was the founder of The Rouse Company and co-founder of the real estate corporation Enterprise Community Partners.[5][7] He has two younger siblings, Molly and James.[8]
At age five, Norton and his parents saw a musical related to Cinderella at the Columbia Center for Theatrical Arts (CCTA), starring his babysitter, which ignited his interest in the theater.[9][10] He enjoyed watching films with his father as a pre-teen, but later reflected that he was fascinated with the cinematography rather than the acting.[11] Norton recalled that it was theater and not films that inspired him to act.[11] He made his professional debut at the age of eight in the musical Annie Get Your Gun at his hometown's Toby's Dinner Theatre.[8] At the CCTA, he acted in several theatrical productions directed by Toby Orenstein.[10]
In 1984, Norton won the acting cup at Pasquaney, an annual summer camp for boys in Hebron, New Hampshire, where he later returned as a theater director.[12] He subsequently immersed himself in films, naming Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro as two of his early inspirations because "the ones [he] liked were also the ones who made [him] think [he] could do it because they weren't the most handsome guys".[11] He graduated from Wilde Lake High School in 1987.[13] He attended Yale College, where he earned a BA in History.[5] While there, he also studied Japanese, acted in university productions, and was a competitive rower.[8][14] After graduating from Yale in 1991, conversant in Japanese, Norton worked not-for-profit as a representative for his grandfather's company, Enterprise Community Partners, in Osaka, Japan.[15]
Personal life[edit]
Relationships[edit]
Since coming to fame in the mid-1990s, Norton has opted not to discuss his personal life in public, saying that he "believes that excessive media coverage can distract him from fulfilling his role as an actor".[15][121] Following the release of The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996), tabloids spread rumors that Norton and his onscreen co-star Courtney Love were dating.[15] Norton insisted that he was not romantically involved with Love, and the two were only friends and colleagues.[122] Nevertheless, appearing on an episode of The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, Love stated they had dated for four years. It was in addition to her references in a 2006 interview to their past relationship.[123] She said that Norton had been a "mediator" and "communicator" between her and her daughter Frances Bean Cobain, calling him a "force of good".[124]
After Norton had ended his relationship with Love in 1999, he started dating Salma Hayek, with whom he later appeared in the 2002 biopic Frida.[125] Norton absented himself from the premiere of The Italian Job, in which he starred, to attend the premiere of The Maldonado Miracle, Hayek's directorial debut.[126] The two broke up in 2003.[126] Hayek still remains friends with Norton. She recalled in a 2017 piece for The New York Times that Norton "beautifully rewrote the script [of Frida] several times and appallingly never got credit" after she had rejected Harvey Weinstein's sexual demands and Weinstein, in retaliation, had given her "a list of [four] impossible tasks with a tight deadline," including "a rewrite of the script, with no additional payment, or writer's credit" before he would make the film.[57] In 2011, Norton proposed to Canadian film producer Shauna Robertson after dating for six years. The pair married in 2012, and welcomed their son in 2013.[127][128][129]
Ancestry[edit]
Norton appeared on the PBS genealogy series Finding Your Roots in January 2023, where it was confirmed that Pocahontas was his 12th great-grandmother. Norton, whose family had known of possible relation to Pocahontas and her husband John Rolfe for years, replied to the findings: "It makes you realize what a small piece of the human story you are".[130]
Norton expressed discomfort upon learning his ancestors owned a family of slaves: "The short answer is these things are uncomfortable, and you should be uncomfortable with them. Everybody should be uncomfortable with it. It's not a judgement on you and your own life, but it's a judgement on the history of this country. It needs to be acknowledged first and foremost, and then it needs to be contended with. When you go away from census counts and you personalise things, you're talking about, possibly, a husband and wife with five girls – and these girls are slaves. Born into slavery. ... When you read 'slave aged eight,' you just want to die."[131]
Norton also learned he is a distant cousin of fellow actor Julia Roberts.[132]