Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
I just was watching youdie very dramaticallyonscreen.Ah, yes.
I had one TV credit and one big film credit, this movie calledSmokewith Harvey Keitel.
It was really early on in my career.
This audition forRomeo + Julietcame up, and every young actor in town was vying for this role.
I think I auditioned for it six times.
And it was the first time in my career I got two jobs around the same time.
I got this and a job calledBlood and Winewith Jack Nicholson.
Everybody was fighting for my time.
The whole thing was kind of amazing and surreal.
Why did you have to audition six times?
What was different about each audition?I think Baz is just one of those guys whos very detail-oriented.
And I think each time he saw someone, he saw a different thing he liked.
The first time was for the casting director.
The second time was to be put on tape for the casting director to send over to Baz.
Then it was some other producers, then he came and watched by himself.
Theyd shot a sizzle of the film before, so he was really being specific.
I think someone else had played Mercutio in the sizzle.
Apparently Ewan McGregor, Christian Bale, and John Leguizamo auditioned for the role of Mercutio.
Did you know that?Oh, no!
I had no idea.
I just knew they had opened it up and they were seeing everybody, and I just went in.
I was a young dude.
I didnt know all of those guys auditioned.
They have an idea or a vision, and thats it.
But Baz was so interested in finding things out, searching things through.
After the third or fourth audition, I realized I had to loosen up a little bit.
Because it was Shakespeare, I was tense.
Id never auditioned for Shakespeare before that.
This one, I just had to relax and be who I was.
As it turned out, for this particularRomeo + Juliet,who I was really served the character.
He didnt need to sound like he had standard American speech or a British accent or iambic pentameter.
Turns out my faults in theater were my virtues in this audition.
I didnt know that until I got to Mexico and I went to a fitting.
I was like, Whos that dress for?
]Whos wearing that skirt, me?I didnt know any of that.
I didnt know what Baz was looking for, and I dont think anybody did.
And we were like, Oh, okay!
We can do that.
How did Baz explain Mercutios love for Romeo?
It doesnt necessarily have to be a sexual thing.
But sexuality is a thing that young men are always talking about.
So it could be confusing.
And Mercutio is full of great passions.
Of the badasses that could be out there, Mercutio was the baddest ass there was.
Thats sort of the stuff we played with.
It was really quite awesome.
He was looking to capture American sounds.
Zak and Jamie were supposed to sound like Beavis and Butthead, and at the time that made sense.
I had this dumb-rapper-Brooklyn sort of thing, and Romeo playing around in the middle.
He wanted the sound to be very, very American.
Even though they came out of this text.
The only thing that was ambiguous was the relationships: love or lust.
That was left up for interpretation.
I achieved it sometimes and not other times.
That was a real struggle.
We had a long enough time with the text, though, and a dialect coach.
That took longer than memorizing.
I knew he was a movie star, or was on his way to being a movie star.
He certainly wasnt the movie star hes become, but hed already been nominated for an Oscar forGilbert Grape.
I remember meeting this young kid and going, Okay!
He can do anything.
I was really impressed by him, because I was trying so hard to do it right.
And he would just let it happen.
So I kind of learned from him that you’ve got the option to just let it happen.
Youve done all the preparation, youve done all the work, now just let it happen.
Leo could turn it on and off at the drop of a dime.
Hed be goofing off and be like, Are you guys ready?
And Id be like, Wait, I gotta prepare!
This kid was ready to go all the time.
Well, hes a good-looking kid.
We cant deny that, can we?
Hes a good-looking dude.
If that were my predilection …
I couldnt say no, right?
You cant say no to young Leo.Right, you cant!
Did you guys become friends?Oh, yeah.
We all became quite close friends.
We were in Mexico, and we kind of only had each other.
None of us really spoke the language.
They were a little younger than me, so they were really having a wilder time than I was.
But I liked hanging out with them.
Mexico City, at the time, there was a lot happening.
I think a lot of that wild energy really worked in the film.
And we all stayed really good friends for years and years and years.
He actually even helped my kids get into a school.
It was kind of amazing.
I dont want to blow up his spot; he didnt do it with any fanfare.
But he gave quite a substantial donation to the school.
Pretty impressive, I gotta be honest.
So youre still friends?Yeah, if we see each other, were still friends.
We dont keep in touch, but Id count him as still friends.
There was a lot of that.
A lot of girls.
I dont know what to say here … [Laughs.
]There was a lot going on.
We had to be really careful.
Leo had a bodyguard.
Like I said, he was already a star, so wed go places and it would get frenetic.
There are people like, Oh my God, hes here!
And they were like, Somebody just kidnapped our makeup artist.
Did they get him back?Got him back, a little beat up.
For $400 bucks!
Let the dude out!
You had no idea what was happening where.
A lotta crazy energy.
Sounds Shakespearean.I think thats what Baz wanted, to set it in Mexico City.
It felt very Shakespearean.
I imagine thats what Verona was like back in the day just on the edge, all the time.
Theres still an internet fascination with Claire Danes and Leos relationship, about what happened with them on set.
They hinted thatthey didnt like each other, then suggested they had crushes on each other.
Mercutio and Juliet were never in the same place.
But she was so young.
She was 16, and he was 21.
Sometimes Im sure acting is confusing, you get mixed up, especially that young.
What did David Blaine teach you?He just taught me some up-close magic stuff.
Just simple magic stuff.
None of the great stuff he does.
Like, making things disappear or reappear.
We did a couple of card tricks.
It was an added thing for the character.
And David Blaine is very mysterious, too, so watching him was really helpful.
Even though Mercutio kind of lays it out, theres still a bit of mystery about him underneath.
Where he comes from, why he does what he does.
Did you play Mercutio as on drugs the whole time?Not the whole time.
Certainly on drugs that night.[Laughs.
]But not on drugs in the other scenes.
And clearly got stabbed for it.
Hed give his life for Romeo.
So thats what he does.
Its one of the best cinematic entrances of all time.
What do you remember about filming that?I remember it being a really, really late night.
And it was a really long, late night, and I had the most to say that night.
So I was really kind of nervous.
It was a long, tiring night of doing the thing I love to do, which is act.
I know you studied as a dancer did that help with the drag dance scene?
I spent a long, long time as a dancer, so the rehearsals were great.
If youve been to Alvin Ailey, you’ve got the option to dance anywhere with anybody.
We had hundreds of dancers and I could communicate in that language all day.
It was no stress.
Just physically long, long days.
I knew how to act, but I was still really learning.
You sing and dance to Young Hearts, Run Free in both of those early scenes.
How many times do you think you listened to that song, conservatively?Wow.
I would say hundreds.
To record a dance number is long hours in little pieces.
So conservatively, hundreds of times.
If you heard that song now, how would you feel?Tired.[Laughs.]
[Sings]Young hearts!Oh, God.Not that again!
Lets talk about the death scene.
Youre on the beach, dying this extremely dramatic death, and a storm is brewing in the background.
And apparently a hurricane was actually on its way in real life?Yep.
Those winds, when he actually dies, that wasnt fake.
That was really happening, in real time.
And it felt like hours.
Because the sand is blowing in your mouth.
I was like, Dude, can we go home now?
We were there for a long time.
So for me, that was me playing in the field I loved to play in.
And at the end, it was like, Okay, theres a storm coming, cats!
Were you scared?Yeah!
We were just out there, and we were gonna film until we got it.
It was like, If we die today, we die today.
But Id rather not.
How close did you cut it?The lucky thing is that the hurricane really hit at night.
So we filmed up until there was no more sun.
We filmed all day, until you couldnt film anymore.
Thats what stopped us.
And then we get into the choreographer with me and John [Leguizamo].
[Pretends to get angry] Are you saying Im fucking him?
Is that what youre saying?
It gave us time to really play with those emotions.
Am I gay, motherfucker?!
I dont ascribe to that, but thats whats happening for those two men.
And thats really all it takes.
He wants to fight anyway, but thats it.
And he turns it from an argument of words into, Oh, you must want to die today.
And boys that young dont care enough about life.
But yet, death was really on the table.
Theres a line where you accuse Tybalt of calling you a minstrel.
It takes on a whole other dimension with a black man in the role of Mercutio.
Did you talk about that layer?Yes.
It was certainly a small layer.
But it was more about … penis.
I dont know how else to say that.
He says, Heres my fiddlestick!
Hes talking about his penis and his gun.
That definitely is an undercurrent, but the other part is … penis.
Theres definitely a lot of penis stuff going on in this.Yeah.
Theres a lot of reverence for these kids penises.
It felt like an experiment.
And when the movie came out, it felt like the experiment didnt work.
It didnt get a lot of the praise that I thought it should.
In fact, there was only one Oscar nomination, for costumes.
Catherine Martin was the only one to get nominated.
I remember Whoopi Goldberg saying something about it at the Oscars that year, howRomeo + Julietwas slighted.
From the adults, it didnt get the kind of praise I thought it deserved.
But what became really clear pretty quickly was that kids loved it.
People who didnt have a real background in Shakespeare, who werent expecting theZeffirelli [version].
It so impacted them.
Suddenly there were people who wanted to study Shakespeare, like, What is this?!
And so that was really clear.
But they werent writing reviews.
It was just kids in class.
At the time, we were like, Well, we tried.
And Claire Danes is one of the greatest performances ever.
So Im still surprised about the initial response to it by the adults.
But thats just how it went down.
Thats how I saw it, in English class!Did you?!
Like, Whats happening?
When was the last time you saw it?Oh, you got me on that one.
My middle daughter, Wynter, shes 12, shes seen it.
But my youngest hasnt really seen it yet.
You gotta be really careful.
I die in a lot of things.
It gets hard for them.
So Ill give her a few more years.
But my two older kids love it.
How often do people recognize you and come up and talk to you about it?A lot.
Its usually people who are like, When I was in high school …
I get recognized quite a bit from it.
People will look at me and go, Oh, you look so familiar.
Your voice sounds so familiar.
Some of them were great, some of them not so great.
It set up this idea that I wasnt a flash in a pan, but an actual actor.
And I could probably do pretty much anything.
But that also meant, people didnt know what I could do.
It was a really weird Catch-22.
Like, Hes good, but can he dothis?
But its definitely one of the premiere, seminal moments in my career.
People who do remember, its like, Oh my God.
Ive always been so proud of it.
We really worked hard.
And that was the reason I got to doThe MatrixandOzand all of these other really cool things.
It was really the big game-changer.
I feel a little salty.
Like, I think there should have been some Oscar nominations.
We shouldve gotten a little bit of that.
But I do feel vindicated.
Its like, I told you!
