What’s the difference between an actor and a movie star? Both are giving a performance. But for the latter, the performing never ends.
To be a movie star of Robert Pattinson’s caliber means understanding that a walk down the street is itself a series of decisions: Assuming you’re seen and recognized, how will you appear? Cool? Dignified? Goofy? Approachable? Make the wrong choice and you’re pilloried on social media; make the right one and you’re praised.
Such calculations, such heightened awareness, could drive even the most self-possessed person around the bend. Unless, that is, you’re willing to fully embrace the absurdity of the position you’re in. In his profile of Pattinson, editor at large Nick Haramis finds that the actor, who’s been a celebrity for the entirety of his adult life, answers the strange state of fame through the kind of work he chooses to do, taking roles in films that are often perplexing, even off-putting. It’s a challenge to himself, but to his fans, as well: “You think you know why you love me, but do you really?”
We also celebrate a different kind of performer in “Freak City”: the New York freak, a character intrinsic and essential to the city, who endures even as it has become richer, less accessible and, to many, less interesting than it once was. “Freaks are scroungers, thrifters, salvagers; they’re unmatched in their ability to repurpose the discarded, to find value in things — and in people — that it sometimes seems nobody else wants or esteems,” writes Mark Harris in his introductory essay. “They are, by nature, retrievers and rescuers: of things, of people and, in New York, of neighborhoods. Starting in the 1960s, many of them found themselves and one another near the piers of the Lower West Side of Manhattan.” Some freaks, he notes, are exhibitionists, instant standouts; others are secret freaks, their appearance belying the glorious weirdo within. What they share is a determination to do things their way, see things their way. It’s not always easy to chart your own course — you can be mocked. You can risk harm. But it’s worth it. The freest person isn’t the richest or the prettiest; it’s the person who within them has created their own world, and they are its ruler.
On the Covers
The post When Life Becomes a Performance appeared first on New York Times.
