Billy Crudup has played an Olympian track runner (“Without Limits”), a rock star at the height of 1970s debauchery (“Almost Famous”) and the Elephant Man on Broadway.
He’s widely regarded as one of the most talented and disciplined young character actors in the business.
So, naturally, it was time to play dress up.
In Richard Eyre’s “Stage Beauty,” which opened last week in area theaters, Mr. Crudup acts in drag as Ned Kynaston, a Shakespearean actor in 17th-century London, where women are barred from the stage and all female roles are played by men.
“It does appear that it’s a rite of passage,” quips the hyper-articulate Mr. Crudup by phone of his latest turn in the adaptation of Jeffrey Hatcher’s play, “Compleat Female Stage Beauty.”
The opportunity for theatrical cross-dressing isn’t why he agreed to take on the Kynaston role, though.
In fact, he calls it “an impediment.”
“I didn’t have that much confidence in myself that I could pull it off,” Mr. Crudup concedes.
Beneath its outsized surface — he prances in wig, bodice and truckloads of makeup — he says the role was rich with dramatic possibility. “It’s an incredibly well-constructed part.”
Not to mention a politically timely one, what with all the controversy over same-sex “marriage” and debate asides about vice presidential daughters: “I’m interested in the exploration of sexuality as it relates to identity. I think that’s a very pertinent discussion to be having right now,” Mr. Crudup says.
“One of the defining features is your gender; your rights in this country are, in part, determined by your gender.”
Mr. Crudup, who spends equal time in theater as in Hollywood — his next project is Martin McDonagh’s stage play “The Pillowman” — is comfortable talking politics. He bemoans the free market and what he sees as its cold disregard for the arts (“A marketplace economy just doesn’t meet all the concerns of everyone in our country,” Mr. Crudup explains).
He comes clean about his performance last year in Tim Burton’s “Big Fish” (“It was a walk in the park — just sitting in the room with Albert Finney and letting him rip”).
He has measured opinions about the health of live theater: “I want and expect to be able to facilitate a more vital theater,” Mr. Crudup says. “It doesn’t just need to be preserved the same way we preserve a woolly mammoth tusk; it needs to be injected with contemporary voices.”
What he can’t stand, though, is talking about his private business. There, he clams up.
He says, when pressed, “We won’t be commenting on my personal life,” sidestepping any mention of a reported on-set romance with “Stage Beauty” co-star Claire Danes or his relationship with actress Mary-Louise Parker, with whom Mr. Crudup had a son earlier this year.
But he will tiptoe in generalities. “I think differently about men and women than when I was 14,” he says “and then again when I was 20, and then again when I was 30.” (He’s now 36.) “It evolves — not necessarily from ignorance to enlightenment. It’s just a range of experience.
“I don’t think that heterosexuality, homosexuality or bisexuality adequately explain the universe of human sexuality,” Mr. Crudup continues, adding, “I think it’s more dynamic than that. We find ways of reducing that in ourselves so we can pair up with people of generally like minds.”
Was that a longwinded confession of sexual confusion as a child? Or just a narrative about why we shouldn’t judge one another?
It’s impossible to tell… because Billy Crudup never tells.
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