![]() ![]() If possible, some of each year is reserved for the stage. Stoltz is as open to ensemble pieces as to bravura parts. When it comes to choosing roles, gut rather than pocketbook predominates. “Without facial hair, people confuse me with Jodie Foster or Suzy Amis.” ![]() “I’m often mistaken for (World Cup soccer player) Alexi Lalas and, until recently, for (late Nirvana lead singer) Kurt Cobain,” the actor acknowledges. Still, two dozen films to his credit, the 32-year-old Stoltz is one step removed from a household name. Ironically, his approach seems to have worked. “Other actors of his generation, most notably the Brat Pack, went for big roles in bigger pictures,” observes director Michael Steinberg (“The Waterdance,” “Bodies, Rest & Motion”), who also co-produced “Sleep With Me.” “But Eric distanced himself by sidestepping the obvious. (“You must think I’m the black hole of hotel guests,” he remarks to the front desk after losing his second room key in two days.) (“My role? To make Neeson look bigger and more handsome.”) His manner is gentle and unfailingly polite. A dark green suit and crisp white shirt set off red shoulder-length hair and a goatee he’s sporting for a part in “Rob Roy,” an 18th-Century adventure now shooting with Liam Neeson and Jessica Lange in Scotland. In fact, Stoltz is anything but cool sitting poolside at a Westside hotel, having his picture taken during a record-setting heat wave. “For all his intensity, Eric never had ‘edge.’ Now he does. “People started looking at the kid in ‘Mask’ as an adult,” observes Tarantino. Surrounded by actors with parts more flamboyant than his, the actor emerged as the anchor for the picture that won the audience award at the Sundance Film Festival and two Independent Spirit Awards for best picture and screenplay. “The Waterdance” (1992), in which Stoltz played an embittered paraplegic, was the turning point. He plays a heroin dealer in Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction” and a suspected murderer in “Fluke.” Only the role of an angel in “God’s Army” and another in the holiday release “Little Women” recall the early Stoltz-a wholesome, slightly gawky boy next door. The actor appears as an ex-junkie/bank robber in “Killing Zoe,” which opened last month, and as Meg Tilly’s misogynistic husband in MGM’s “Sleep With Me,” due Sept. Still, with four of his own movies surfacing by the end of the year-and three more in 1995-it’s a case of “do as I say. On an ideal day, he’d read newspapers in bed, lunch with friends, indulge in some mid-afternoon sex, and cap off dinner with a really great film. Laziness, actor Eric Stoltz maintains, is an underrated virtue. ![]()
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