#not saying they can't also do comedy and sports entertainment but like the balance is so off and they've gone SO cartoonish with it it's sad

[biancabelairs]

there's a universe out there where all of aew is booked like the continental classic and i think that must be beautiful

[ocw-archive]

Marie Claire UK (2005)

He dates strippes, lives with his brother and Winston Churchill is his hero. He also writes and stars in some of the funniest movies to come out of Hollywood. David A. Keeps enters the weird and wonderful world of Owen Wilson Owen Wilson is stroking the scruff accumulating on his jaw with a look of utter contentment. 'I've never had a beard before,' says the shaggy blond with the famously crooked nose and gravelly drawl. 'It makes me appear more like a young professor - more erudite. I'm trying to work against every review that talks about me being some kind of a stoner.'

The beard is a big improvement on the rakish moustache Wilson sports in director Wes Anderson's latest film The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, in which the 36-year-old also smokes a pipe and speaks in a courtly Southern accent. The film, which follows the exploits of an undersea documentarian [Bill Murray] and his extended family, is a couloufully loopy affair, unlikely to alter the spliffed-up perception of Wilson, who co-wrote three previous cult hits - Bottle Rocket, Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums - with Anderson.

It is this image, informed by what Wilson calls 'my unique brand of charm', that makes him the obvious choice to play the loose cannon opposite co-stars as diverse as Jackie Chan and Ben Stiller in a range of buddy films. Wilson's free-wheeling ways, along with a dating CV that includes rocker Sheryl Crow, actress Gina Gershon and an admitted attraction to strippers, has also earned this man a reputation as a ladies' man. 'It's hard to grow up in Dallas and not have: A, visited lots of strip clubs, which is an accepted part of life for businessmen, or, B, dated a girl who is a stripper,' he explains. To prove the point, Wilson's last girlfriend was a dance at Forty Deuce, a Los Angeles nightclub with a mid-century burlesque vibe. But, as the currently single Wilson also explains, movie stardom has not made him exempt from the basic relationship issues that everyone faces. 'You shouldn't be with someone unless you're prepared to be really honest about whether you're going to be exclusive, or whether you're working towards getting married and having kids,' he says. 'You can't back off from intimacy, becausee it's always building. Guys think it would be great to meet a girl who embraces the cliches about messing around,' Wilson continuess. 'But the few times I've met girls who are that casual, I was, like, "Whoa! No call? I feel a little used now.'" Not ruling out any possiblities, Wilson suspects that his future missus won't be in the entertainment business. 'I'm more interested in being around someone who is doing something that I can be curious about,' he explains. It is also likely, although unspoken, that any serious relationship would have to be balanced against the creative collaboration that Wilson maintains with director Wes Anderson. Over the past ten years, the two have forged a partnership in which they literally do finish one another's sentences. In what seems to be common fashion, The Life Aquatic...had its genesis in a paragraph that Anderson had scribbled down while he and Wilson were students at The University of Texas. 'It was just lying around the flat we shared and I always really liked it,' Wilson recalls. In that single paragraph, Anderson detailed the main character and his quest for a jaguar shark - but it was the phrase about the fish that lodged in Wilson's mind. 'It said: "A species so rare as to quite possibly consitute a one-off mutant flake,"' he recites with relish. It is a description that applies equally well to Wilson: a Texas intellectual who divides his time between dumbed down Hollywood buddy comedies and high-minded independent films; a novelist trapped in the body - and a lanky, cocky body at that - of an actor. As a movie star, Wilson is even more individual. He shares an arts and crafts-style home in Santa Monica with his brother, actor Luke Wilson [who has his own home, nonetheless], their Uncle Joe and a dog named Garcia. Even more out of synch with his Hollywood contemporaries, Wilson often opens his doors to the press, allowing them to snoop at the books on the shelves, the photos on the walls and the ephemera lying about. 'I guess most people would consider that too invasive,' Wilson shrugs. He says he finds it amusing 'that people try to figure out what makes me tick' by looking at his possessions, when the fact is, his housekeeper, Zola, is the one who arranges the shelves. 'The house needs a woman's touch,' Wilson explains. 'And what Zola chooses to display may not be something I would have chosen, or it might be something I was too timid to show off. But I respect her aesthetic.' Futhermore, he has another, very simple explanation for why he invites reporters to his hom. 'I'm lazy,' he laughs. 'If I have to do an interview, it's easier to just do it at home.' None of the Wilsons [Owen is the middle brother between the eldest, Andrew, also an actor, and the baby, Luke] much enjoys the interview process, and they claim they never read the results. If he had his way, Wilson says, he would use the space used for interviews to spin a yarn as though he were a character in a

story, instead of coming at them as a commodity with a project to support and a corporation to please. If he were to tell this tale, then, it might go something like this: Owen Wilson was born on the 18 November 1968 in Dallas, Texas. Before becoming an advertising executive, Wilson's father, Robert, was responsible for bringing Monty Python to the local television station. His mother, Laura Cunningham, a photographer of local renown, ofter cast her sons in her work. Wilson suffered from 'middle child syndrome', a condition in which one worships the elder sibling and demands fealty from the younger one. He was good at making up clubs that had rules and initiations. One rite of passage into these societies was climbing onto a rope swing in treacherous winter conditions at the lake near the Wilsons' home. At school, Wilson was often accused of failing to exercise his considerable potential. One teacher was said to have remarked: 'Owen has his head up in the clouds and needs to come down. He's wasting time up there.' As a student at St Mark's School in Dallas, an all-boys private school, Wilson expressed his disdain for authority by wearing forbidden white socks with his uniform. The following year, he was expelled for cheating in an exam [he stole the teacher's book and copied the test answers]. He finished the academic year in a state school. Hoping to transfer into another private institution, Wilson asked his former headmaster for a recommendation. 'Owen can look you right in the eye and tell you something that isn't true,' was the best the bureaucrat could come up with. Needless to say, it wasn't the profile that the school was looking for. But there was one other alternative: the New Mexico Military Institute, which he had heard about from his brother, Andrew. With a mixture of embarrassment and bravado, Wilson enrolled, feeling that it would be the kind of experience that he could be proud of - or, at least, one that would make a memorable chapter in his life story. Recalling the 'white socks incident' as a precursor to the more widely reported school expulsion still rankles Wilson. 'I do still get worked up about that,' he says with righteous indignation. Then he bounds out of his chair and up the stairs to fetch a biography of Winston Churchill, The Last Lion. He'd been readind an extract to his mother recently and would like to share it with me. 'Winston was distinctly inclined to be inattentive and to think too much of his abilities,' Wilson reads aloud. 'He had been rather too much inclined up to the present to teach his instructors instead of endeavouring to learn from them.' The implication is clear - not so much that he compares himself to Churchill, but Wilson identifies with these misunderstood personality quirks, which are also the defining characteristics of some of Hollywood's most successful actors, such as Brando and Dean. Wilson agrees, but holds himself to a different standard. 'I have no problem with being eaten by a giant snake in Anaconda,' he explains. 'But I would have a real problem if I had written that script.' Since his 1994 debut in Bottle Rocket, Wilson has dabbled in horror [The Haunting] and action [Armageddon], but always returns to some form of comedy, be it retro or contemporary, black or light. 'The stuff that is funny to me is usually something that is sort of a truth,' he says. 'I forget who said it, but it's like that observation: "Wouldn't it be a great world if insecurity and desperation made you more attractive?"' He is completely serious, too, when he suggests that he would like to see a psychiatrist [he did, briefly, after the white socks incident and, later, at the behest of a girlfriend], but only if he could find one 'who was like George Martin was for The Beatles. Perhaps it is the struggle to put things into words that defines Owen Wilson. On film, he is quick-witted. In conversation, however, he drifts and bobs about, lapsing into strings of 'yeahs' accompanied by a grin so luminous, you can imagine that his head really is in the clouds. At the moment, Wilson

definitely seems to be figuring a few things out for himself. It had been reported that he has attended Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, which he confirms as 'research'. 'It defintely helps people,' he says simply. 'But it's probably not great for somebody at AA to talk to the press - and I don't think I'm an alcoholic.' He is slowing down, smelling the roses. 'Before, when I would go on location, I would dread it. I'd just wish I could get back home. That wasn't the way I wanted to go through life,' he explains. 'So I've decided to enjoy where I am, to live in the now. So, since then - it's almost become like a joke - every place I've been, I've thought about buying a place to live.' Wilson also confesses to feeling a bit broody. He has seen Ben Stiller, his co-star in seven films, get married and have a child, and he once famously announced he would like to have three sons of his own by 30. At 36, he is still without an heir. So what's taking so long? To answer this, he wonders aloud in that adorably elliptical Owen Wilson way: 'Is it the example of my parents, who have been married for over 40 years, that makes me think, "I've got to find the perfect mother?"' 'Or,' he says, flashing a boyish grin, 'should I be like Bob Marley, who had tons of kids with lots of women?'