Newsday
10-13-1994
By Brooke Comer. Brooke Comer is a free-lance writer.
ERIC STOLTZ' suite in the Paramount Hotel is fashionably small. Designer Philippe Stark's furniture punctuates rather than decorates the space: high-backed chairs narrow and sleek, a dangling contoured aluminum tube that's a lamp.
Then there is Stoltz. Wavy red hair falls below his shoulders and he sports a small, precise beard. He is surprisingly relaxed for someone who's been working nonstop for the past two years. There is calm benevolence in his eyes. And, yes, Eric Stoltz looks like Jesus. Jesus is hardly the person you'd expect Stoltz to personify after his performance as the heroin shooting murderer in "Killing Zoe," or the drug dealer in "Pulp Fiction," or the confused newlywed pushing the parameters of monogamy in "Sleep With Me."
He's taken on these roles back to back. And that's not all. "God's Army" with Virginia Madsen comes out this year, "Fluke" with Matthew Modine comes out in January, and "Little Women" with Winona Ryder is due at Christmas.
"It's kind of a flurry," he admits. "I don't know how it happened, because some years I don't get much work at all. Somehow I've gone from job to job and managed to maintain my energy and sanity. But I don't know how much more work I can do without collapsing."
Success has sneaked up on Stoltz, who turns 33 this month. Although he got his start playing a carefree teenager in "Fast Times At Ridgemont High," then won acclaim as Cher's disfigured son in "Mask," he seems now to be moving into new turf: adulthood. Roger Hedden, co-screenwriter and co-producer of "Sleep With Me," points out that Stoltz has coped with "some big events" in the past few years (his mother died of cancer in June) and gained a maturity that can't help but come across in his performance.
Growing up in Santa Barbara, Calif., Stoltz got into theater as a lark. As a high schooler Stoltz, a trained pianist, found playing for theater companies more fun than practicing alone, and quickly made the transition from the bench to the stage. His opera singer father and violinist mother had no idea his career in drama would supersede music.
"They were supportive and just a little bit frightened," Stoltz remembers. "They understood my passion for my work, but they were always nudging me to get a degree so I could teach. Their support was tinged with concern. Until I started making vast amounts of money."
Now with trio of films out simultaneously, Stoltz still can't sit back and relax. He's in Scotland shooting "Rob Roy" with Liam Neeson and Jessica Lange. He plays a 17th-Century Scot in the lush, romantic epic, hence the biblical look.
"I'm cultivating that 17th-Century Scottish look," he grins. "Pretty scuzzy, isn't it? The cool part is, we get to wear kilts." He stands up and swirls an imaginary skirt around. "Women have it made. They can wear skirts or pants . . . We don't wear anything underneath. It's the most comfortable thing in the world. Except when you're on horseback."
Stoltz is enthusiastic about all his projects, especially "Sleep With Me." " `Killing Zoe' and `Pulp Fiction' are fantasy films, violent epics," he says. "They have nothing to do with me or my life or what I'm going through." In real life, Stoltz has lived off and on with Bridget Fonda for four years; "the secret to a longterm relationship is to never see each other," he says.
Like the character he plays in "Sleep With Me," Stoltz is grappling with the big questions of life: Can you be faithful to one person? How do your friends deal with your relationship?
Does he have plans to marry Fonda? "Noooo," says Stoltz quickly, laughing. "No, no, no. The question fills me with anxiety."
But playing the part of an anxious young 30-something is cathartic for Stoltz. `I think everyone has an anxious side, or a dark side that has to be expressed somehow. On film I get to sleep with whores and shoot heroin and act on the outskirts of society in a completely repulsive way, and it's completely safe and I don't feel like I've really killed anybody. But symbolically, I felt something was expressed that was freeing and wonderful. I think if you can sublimate the dark side into some creative form, you're less likely to go on the Long Island Rail Road with a gun. People have to have an outlet to express the muck inside them. And that's what acting is for me."