One Cool Jude

By Belinda Luscombe

Jude Law keeps all the shirts he has been killed in. And he has been killed rather a lot, often quite horribly. There was a bashing with an oar, a climactic shootout and immolation in a garbage-disposal unit, to name a few. The fake-bloodied shirts seem like an apt, if slightly macabre set of trophies for his career to date, since Law has built a career around playing mesmerizing bullies. But the garments may be ironic talismans because, really, what most of Law's fans want to see is the man with his shirt off.

The ardor that Law elicits has not been dampened at all by the frequency with which he plays bad guys--from the careless, egocentric Dickie Greenleaf in The Talented Mr. Ripley (dispatched by the oar) to the creepily murderous Maguire in Road to Perdition (the shootout). There's a troubled, sometimes even unwholesome streak that runs through all Law's characters--even Jerome, the athlete whose identity Ethan Hawke's character assumes in Gattaca (the garbage disposal). It's as if Law, who has the green eyes, long lashes and aqueduct eyebrows of a very pretty girl, has been on the run from his gentle side.

Or, perhaps, from his gentle fans. "I wanted to avoid [romantic] roles in my 20s," says Law, "because I didn't see much longevity in my career were I to take that path. I've not seen many films like that when guys come across as anything but shallow. It's all [in a dopey voice] 'I'm in loooove.'"

But now that he's hit 30, Law has finally taken on the type of role he seems genetically engineered to play--man in loooove. In Cold Mountain, Anthony Minghella's captivating Civil War epic from the Charles Frazier book, Law embodies the cinematic romantic hero down to the chest hair. He plays Inman, a curt country carpenter who falls for the new preacher's sophisticated daughter (Nicole Kidman). They share perhaps six awkward conversations (his declaration of love: "It's like when you wake up and your ribs are bruised thinking so hard on somebody") and one kiss before he marches off. To get back to her, he has to battle not only Yankees and Confederate Home Guards but also the suspicion that his soul is now too polluted to be capable of love.

But even with a story that romantic, Law prefers to focus on the Homeric aspects of his character over the Titanic ones. "Inman was the first person I've played that I wanted to learn from and emulate," says Law. "I don't see me in him at all. A lot less than all those bastards and murderers I've played. There's a simplicity to him and a morality to him that I love."

Simplicity appears to be the last attribute Law has wanted to project in his life. He glares into cameras, moving and still, oozing an omnivorous, feral sexuality. Adder-hipped and puff-lipped, he possesses a beauty that seems almost fanged. He and ex-wife Sadie Frost were Britain's hippest couple, hanging out with her cool friends (who include Kate Moss) or his (who include Ewan McGregor). After their divorce this year, with its attendant rumors of infidelity and satyriasis, he's even more precious tabloid metal, the single dad mucking about with his three kids or on the town with his current co-star and new girlfriend, Sienna Miller. It all bespeaks such virility, it's no wonder that Martin Scorsese has him playing Errol Flynn in the all-star Howard Hughes biography The Aviator. His press makes it clear: the man is gorgeous, charming and 20DEG cooler than you the moment he wakes up.

The pictures don't lie, exactly, but in person, Law is rather more chipper and unassuming. He can't quite seem to get all the buttons of his shirt into their corresponding holes, and his pants sit well south of the top of his undies. He makes an unabashed bid for the devoted-dad-of-the-decade title, showing off pictures of his three kids, Rafferty, 7, Iris, 3, and Rudy, 18 months, and chortling over their Christmas-present lists. (Spoiler alert, Rudy! You're getting a toy car.) For a looker, Law is unnervingly eager to please--and in an act of impressive self-control, he checks himself out in the mirrored wall only once during our interview.

But for a looker, Law isn't afraid to work hard for his roles. The Cold Mountain shoot, which took place mainly in Romania, was particularly brutal. Law dived right in, being buried alive and dragging himself through swamps, mud and snow. A former vegetarian, Law discovered he was 20 lbs. underweight and had to bulk up for the role. "I remember looking out the window of my hotel room in Brasov and seeing Jude running up and down the hotel car park with his personal trainer on his back," says Minghella. That trainer--the 200-lb. Eddie Joseph, who has a good 40 lbs. on his client--chuckles at the memory. "There wasn't any gym equipment there," he says, "so I also had Jude pull big logs and push one of those tennis-court rollers around too. He did it all without a word of complaint."

Law has been that serious about his acting since he was a little lad in a working-class part of London, says his mother Maggie. From her, he inherited his green eyes, a penchant for tattoos (she has one on her back; he has several on his arms) and a love of the stage. She left a job teaching children when she was 40 to study and teach drama. "I don't know how he does it," she says, teary-eyed after seeing Cold Mountain. "I can't see the acting at all." While still in school, young Jude did lots of extracurricular theater, and his parents weren't surprised when he dropped out at 17 to take a role on the British TV soap Families.

It has taken a while for Law to get from soap dish to plat du jour, but that has been deliberate. "I've always desperately wanted to be taken seriously as an actor," he says. Minghella, who directed Law in Ripley and operates as something of a rabbi for him, feels the actor has moved beyond that: "I think he has accepted that he can carry a movie." And having assumed the mantle of chief romantic interest, Law is opening the floodgates. In quick succession after completing Mountain, he made his first comedy (David O. Russell's I Heart Huckabee's), his first biopic (The Aviator) and his first remake (Charles Shyer's Alfie). He also took on a parody of his newly minted hero persona, the role of Sky Captain, opposite Gwyneth Paltrow, in the retro futurist The World of Tomorrow. Next up is Mike Nichols' Closer, the children's-book author Lemony Snicket and Tulip Fever, a love story set in 17th century Amsterdam, from a script by Tom Stoppard. None of these roles will involve too much wetwork, as they say in the hit-man business. But Law's dark side isn't totally banished. "Sometimes on Alfie Charlie said to me, Where the f___ are you going with this scene?" says the actor. "You're trying to get her into bed, not murder her."

Law seems to have understood, instinctively (or just by dumb luck), that sex-symboldom, like deity, is not just about desire and admiration. It's also about fear. All the bullies Law has played have been instructive, since heroes are just bullies with a cause and a love interest. Interestingly, it wasn't until Law's charmed life began to develop cracks that he started playing happy roles. "It is weird that after the year I've had, I'm now playing three really chirpy chaps," he says. Sometimes even the most desirable among us want to be someone else.