By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com
The world's stroppiest actors
Winnowing the clip file, I came across an article I wrote for a British magazine that’s never been online: a search for the ‘World’s Stroppiest Actors,” or in Left Coast, difficult talent. Here’s the opening; the link takes you to the rest.
“WARREN BEATTY WILL NOT BE SPEAKING WITH YOU. Burned by journalists in the 1960s, Beatty was one of the first Hollywood bigs who refused to submit to the indignity of journalistic interrogation. Adam Sandler’s used his box-office clout to resist interviews for his latest comedies, and you can’t blame him. How many times can you answer the same questions about your life, your loves, your latest movie? There are actors like Tom Hanks or Harrison Ford who soldier onward, revealing little but at least making the gesture. 
Tom Cruise is all smiles and intense eye contact, a shining exemplar of all the self-help non sequiturs that stream from his anecdotes. Tom Hanks is all sunlight and jollies. He doesn’t say much, but it’s always with lighthearted good-cheer. While Ford does the circuit, he telegraphs answers shorter than the dialogue of any character he’s every played. “I do this because it’s part of my job, I do this because, what’s the word,” he told me recently. “It’ll come to me.” He slow-burns that famous smile, nearly a smirk. “I’m a profit participant.”
Yet those luckless artistes earning less than $20 million a picture are contractually obligated to meet the ladies and gentlemen of the press. Most Hollywood publicity is manufactured during an exhausting weekend-long clusterfuck, day-long series of seven-minute television interviews and twenty-five minute roundtables where journalists fire their impertinent (or idiotic) questions at increasingly punchy performers. We’re all working here, you want to shout at the stroppy lot.” [More at the link, including Mr. Jones on what makes a good dog good.]
