Here is the rewritten article: Giancarlo Esposito is used to frightening people. After all, he’s built a career out of it. Once, while on a flight, a
Here is the rewritten article:
Giancarlo Esposito is used to frightening people. After all, he’s built a career out of it. Once, while on a flight, a woman waiting for the toilet saw him coming up the aisle and was so scared that she begged him to go before her. Bemused, he did: “I came out and said, ‘Have a nice piss!’” Even the tallest, most muscular men who approach him admit they feel intimidated in his presence. “My talents are facial expressions and intensity,” he says. “A guy last weekend said, ‘Wow, you’re not a big man, but you’re so frightening!’ It’s all about energy; that’s all we are as human beings, we’re energy.”
He may frighten people, but it’s all an act: one he has played to perfection. Over the last decade he’s become Hollywood’s go-to baddie since his turn as Gus Fring, the menacing meth kingpin in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. He’s played an aristocratic drug lord in Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen; the war criminal Moff Gideon in The Mandalorian, hunting for Baby Yoda across space; ruthless Stan Edgar in The Boys, wrangling a squad of spoiled superheroes; and corrupt Mayor Cicero in Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis. Next year, he will be Marvel’s newest big bad in Captain America: Brave New World. When we spoke, he was in Toronto filming something he couldn’t tell me anything about, which left me racking my brains for a megafanchise he hasn’t been in yet.
When he’s just being himself, Esposito is warm and effusive, prone to flapping his hands in a way that reveals his Italian heritage. At 66, he is blessed with a face that seems to get more handsome as time adds lines. He’s “Papa” to four daughters, whom he loves talking about. He also brings up energy and love and the universe a lot; more engaged with the metaphysical than I anticipated for a guy who specialises in playing cold, ruthless men. He likes surprising people with his warmth, because he sees himself as an entertainer. “And if I’m just playing myself over and over and over again, without any salt or pepper, is it still entertainment?” he asks.
At a recent convention – he “really loves” fan conventions – he overheard some people laughing at a woman who was so overwhelmed by his presence that she couldn’t look him in the eye. “I could tell she was really an intense human being, and it was a big moment in her life to meet me,” he says. “She didn’t know what to say, and I didn’t want to force her. I didn’t do the…”
His face and posture snap into the blank mask of Gus Fring: shark-eyes, deep monotone. “‘Look at me. Woman, look at me,’” he says, quietly, coldly, then he blinks, and Gus is gone and Papa is back.
She was just really shy and needed a hug,” he says, holding his chest. “So I gave her one! And she put her head right in my chest and she was on the verge of tears. She just needed some love.”
Esposito is having the time of his life. He doesn’t mind when people want him to do a bit of Fring, or when they stop him to show their tattoos of his face, or to pose for a photo – often with him holding something threateningly to their neck, re-creating an iconic Breaking Bad scene involving a box cutter (fans must make do with safer objects, like bananas). He’s happy to do it all, because this level of fame still feels exciting. He describes his career as having three rises to stardom: first on Broadway, then in film, now on television. But with rises come falls.
…
In the late 90s, work began to dry up. “It was a really difficult time. I chased breadcrumbs,” he says. By the late 90s, he was bankrupt. The bank took his house. He got divorced. “I was getting work as a guest star, but I was living over my head – I had too many kids, too fast,” he says. He said yes to small roles in every procedural going: Law & Order, Homicide: Life on the Street, NYPD Blue, CSI, Bones.
Things were so bad that he began to consider the unthinkable: hiring someone to kill him, so his family could get the insurance payout.
It was a horrible thought. But eventually I realised, the sacrifice is you would never experience them being OK. You’d never have the opportunity to experience all the love they have for you and you for them. But I did really consider it.
Did he ever consider quitting acting? “Become Mr. Mom and stay at home to take care of my kids? I probably would have,” he says. “But my instinct was always to go out and bring the world home. And when I act, I tune the world out. Everything is gone. All the voices in my head go away. All my worries about my children, the bills, it goes away, because I’m in flight.”
For him, no baddie is just a baddie. He convinced Gilligan to make Fring a generous employer – if anything, making him capable of kindness just made him scarier – and on The Mandalorian, he talked showrunner Jon Favreau into making Gideon desperate to wield the force, a desire that made him more interesting. He’s never afraid of talking directors into making changes. “Intention is everything. Intention can be seen and felt, but it can also be stated. I like to encourage people to ask for what they want,” he says, then smiles. “My family has a list of Giancarlo-isms, and that’s one of them: ‘Ask for what you want.’ Say it to the world!”
Tell me some others, I say. “Never leave a man behind!” he shouts. “One of my daughters is always wandering off – now it may be my military-school training, but you just don’t leave a man behind! And ‘Head on a swivel’! I’m hyper-vigilant because people recognise me all the time, so I always tell the girls this because they are always walking around like this,” he says, tapping away at an imaginary phone. “Head on a swivel!”
Someone once told him that acting can heal actors, which he still believes deeply. “Playing very intense characters has helped me to realise how intense I am, and made it OK,” he says. “The opportunity to play so many different kinds of characters with foibles – evil, mean, liars, cheaters, killers – has allowed me to tap into an energy, to look at who I am when I’m in that character’s skin. How angry am I? How mean can I be? How happy can I be? How funny can I be? It allows me to look at all the dark and light spaces within myself. And that has helped me all my life.”
FAQs:
* How did Giancarlo Esposito get his start in acting?
Giancarlo Esposito began his acting career on Broadway, with his debut in Maggie Flynn at the age of 10.
* What is his favorite role to date?
Giancarlo Esposito has played many iconic roles, but he has said that his favorite is Gus Fring from the TV series Breaking Bad.
* How does he approach playing intense characters?
Giancarlo Esposito approaches playing intense characters by tapping into his own emotions and experiences, saying “I tune the world out. Everything is gone. All the voices in my head go away. All my worries about my children, the bills, it goes away, because I’m in flight.”
Conclusion:
Giancarlo Esposito is a talented actor who has had a long and successful career in Hollywood. With a variety of iconic roles under his belt, he has built a reputation for being able to bring characters to life in a way that is both intense and captivating. His ability to tap into his own emotions and experiences has allowed him to bring depth and nuance to his performances, making him a beloved figure in the entertainment industry.
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