Norton's character study

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Edward Norton is a hands-on actor.

But the star of "The Illusionist" and "Fight Club" does more than just appear in films. Not only has he directed one — 2000's "Keeping the Faith" — and co-produced a few more, he's done uncredited script work on some of the movies in which he's starred.

"Had I not liked him, it would have been a headache," laughs John Curran, who directed Mr. Norton in "The Painted Veil," which opens in theaters today.

The two recently visited the District to chat up the film, an adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham's 1925 novel about a bacteriologist working in China (Mr. Norton) who takes his wife (Naomi Watts) to a cholera-infested village after discovering her affair.

"I felt like I met a kindred spirit when I met Edward," Mr. Curran says. "There's no ego to the way that Edward works. It's a passion. It's your ego that gets challenged because from the moment he wakes up, he's on it. I'd think, 'I haven't had my coffee yet but it doesn't matter, it's 6 o'clock and Edward's up.' "

He adds, "I love that, it's a great way to work. I've worked with actors who say, 'I did my three takes, I got it on the first one. What more do you want from me?' "

Mr. Norton is quick to respond with the "flip side." "It's really hard to act for directors who aren't looking to get surprised by what you're doing. Because you do wonder, 'What am I contributing?' " he says. He recalls "wigging out" before filming started on his third film, Milos Foreman's "The People vs. Larry Flynt" (1996), because the screenplay wasn't completed.

"I'm a theater actor, there's got to be a script," he recalls saying. "Milos says to me, 'The script will never be more than 50 percent complete on the first day of filming, never ever,' " he adds, with a decent rendition of Mr. Foreman's Czech accent. "The reason I work well with people like Milos, like John, like Spike Lee (2002's "25th Hour"), is if the director has the presence of mind to celebrate the continuing — the continuing — unfolding of the thing in front of them in surprising ways, you're off to the races. The creativity on a film never stops."

Mr. Norton and Mr. Curran seem to have a special rapport. This reporter's first question led them into a discussion (with the two playing off each other) that encompassed about half the allotted interview time. Their ease has made for a satisfying professional relationship.

"Ron [Nyswaner, screenwriter] and I had worked on the script for six years before any idea of the whole context of the shooting of the protesters leading to an environment of anti-foreign sentiment came into the film," says Mr. Norton, a two-time Oscar nominee. "John really brought that idea into it. That opened up a whole second level of resonance in the movie because it was also a whole examination of how Western rationalists project onto a place like China — 'This is a problem that can be fixed' — without regard to what someone else's culture is."