Spotlight on Edward Norton

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Edward Norton

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Norton, who helmed 2000's Keeping the Faith, says he will direct again. For several years he's been working on adapting Jonathan Lethem's 1999 novel Motherless Brooklyn for the screen; fans of the book will be interested to hear he's transposing the action from contemporary times to 1950s New York. After he finishes shooting Pride and Glory, a cop-corruption movie he stars in with Colin Farrell, he wants to take another acting vacation and finish the script. ''I can already tell I don't really wanna act right now,'' he says. ''I think more and more, if I'm only gonna act, I really want it to be in a circumstance like Fight Club or 25th Hour, or with people who I have a deep affinity for their work, or who I completely trust.''

When it comes down to it, Norton wants to be a part of movies that make audiences go, ''Oh my God!'' Ask him about Pride and Glory, and the hyperarticulate Yale grad's lengthy response will reference Serpico, James Frey and Oprah Winfrey, Abu Ghraib, and — a key word for him and his moviemaking — the zeitgeist. ''Look, there's no zeitgeist in The Score,'' he says, referring to his 2001 caper flick. ''Sometimes you do a movie because De Niro and Brando are in it, and it's a piece of entertainment. But I think if I have an abiding interest, if there's something that guides my choices, it's, 'Is there anything about this [film] that's examining the times that we're living in, and what's dysfunctional about them?' I think that's what tends to make the best work hold up.''

EDWARD NORTON'S MUST LIST

His five essential books, movies...and political leaders

A Soldier of the Great War (1991)
''Mark Helprin's novel, about a young Italian soldier in WWI, is absolutely staggering.''

The New World (2005)
''A masterpiece. [Director Terrence] Malick is like an Impressionist in a roomful of photographers.''

N.Y. state attorney general Eliot Spitzer
''He and Barack Obama make you want to fight the good fights.''

Mountains Beyond Mountains (2003)
Tracy Kidder's look at one doctor's quest to heal the world is ''a cure for apathy.''

The Devil and Daniel Johnston (2006)
This doc about a manic-depressive singer ''reminds you that sometimes creativity is a compulsion, not an ambition.''