Actor Edward Norton takes on romantic turns

NEW YORK - American actor Edward Norton may have taken some surprise turns as romantic male leads in several period films released this year but don't call him a modern day Cary Grant just yet.

The 37-year-old Norton, whose early film career in the late 1990s was marked by modern roles including a former neo-Nazi skinhead in "American History X" and an insomniac who descends into anarchy in "Fight Club," has adopted more amorous tones of late.

He is starring as a quiet, serious English doctor in the "The Painted Veil" -- a love story set in the 1920s and the third film adaptation based on the classic novel of the same title by W. Somerset Maugham.

"Edward's pretty self-aware," he said. "I have heard him say, he looks in the mirror and he realizes he ain't going to be getting stacks of romantic leads. (This) is the kind of film that he doesn't get that he wanted to do."

But Norton, who has twice been nominated for an Oscar including for his first feature role in the 1996 thriller "Primal Fear," said his turn toward love stories was more about the type of film rather than pursuing romantic leads.

He battled Hollywood studio executives to make "The Painted Veil," shot on location in China, saying he was inspired to attempt a more sweeping romantic epic like the 1985 film "Out of Africa" set in early 20th century Kenya.

"Not many of those films are done any more," he said.

Norton argues he plays more of a romantic role in "The Illusionist," an independent film that made more than $37 million in its first ten weeks of release.

"In some ways 'The Illusionist' was a quote unquote romantic figure in the sense that he is almost more of a Heathcliff," he said, referring to the anti-hero of Emily Bronte's classic novel, "Wuthering Heights."

"He is this dark, mysterious romantic figure."

As far as any future roles, Norton will play a detective in two separate upcoming dramas. Looking further, he doesn't romanticize what his choices will be -- as long as they are interesting.

The film, which has a limited U.S. release this week, follows "The Illusionist" from earlier this year in which Norton played the title role of a 19th century magician attempting to secure the love of a woman.

Norton, whose performance in "The Painted Veil" has been warmly received by critics, spent seven years bringing it to the screen, courting actress Naomi Watts to co-star in the story of how a bacteriologist and his wife's move to a remote cholera-infected village in China tests their marriage.

"It was a type of thing I don't see very often," Norton told Reuters of the script. "It was so inextricably bound with another person's performance it was probably more intimate than anything that I had done."

The film's director, John Curran, was more candid about why the Boston-born actor known for his intensity and political activism invested so much time to get the film made.