<p><span>For the&nbsp;</span><em>Deliver Me from Nowhere</em><span>&nbsp;star, risk-taking isn&rsquo;t a choice. It&rsquo;s a way of life.</span></p>

<p style="text-align: center;"><strong>Text by SAMANTHA SIMON</strong><br /> <strong>Photography BOBY</strong><br /> <strong>Styling FERNANDO ECHEVERRÍA</strong></p>

"Almis" wool, silk and linen chevron blouson, "Elia Penny Bar Collar" cotton and silk shirt, wool, silk and linen chevron trousers and moccasins, LORO PIANA

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<p style="text-align: justify;"><span><em>&ldquo;Bruce is on my mind a lot,&rdquo; </em>says Strong.<em> &ldquo;He talks about how deeply you can inhabit a song, and I think I'm trying to do the same thing. In my case, the song is a character in a film or a play or a television show&mdash;but it's about how fully and deeply you can be embodied within it.&rdquo;</em> He equally relates to the passion of his own character. &ldquo;<em>As a critic, Jon Landau wrote about the danger of becoming a pro&mdash;how, when we stop loving something and it becomes a job, we have to go back and find what it is we loved in the first place,&rdquo; </em>says Strong, labeling Landau and Springsteen&rsquo;s half-century of work as <em>&ldquo;an artistic goal.&rdquo; &ldquo;When they talk about music, it isn't a job or a business; it's a reason to live. That's how I feel about acting: It's not a job. It's not a career. It's my&nbsp;</em></span><em>raison d'&ecirc;tre."</em><span></span></p>
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<p style="text-align: justify;"><span>Simpler roles don&rsquo;t do it for Strong, either; it&rsquo;s the more complex characters that reel him in. &ldquo;I'm not interested in doing this if it's something that comes easy to me,&rdquo; he says, invoking the&nbsp;<i>I&rsquo;m-only-interested-in-what-I-can&rsquo;t-do</i>&nbsp;mentality of artist Frank Stella. &ldquo;I'm interested in the difficulty. When I read scripts and consider roles, the degree of danger and risk are essential components&mdash;when I&rsquo;m up against a challenge, that's the only thing that makes it vital. There&rsquo;s the common denominator of wanting to find a new impossible wave, or a different mountain to climb, that remains the same&mdash;and there&rsquo;s always the feeling of being a beginner. You start from scratch every time, because you've never done it before.&rdquo;&nbsp;</span></p>

Jacket, shirt, and pants LORO PIANA

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<p style="text-align: justify;"><span>Recently, Strong has been the one doling out lessons onscreen. He&rsquo;s taken on back-to-back mentorship roles, with his portrayal of Landau coming off of last year&rsquo;s turn as Donald Trump&rsquo;s attorney and advisor Roy Cohn in&nbsp;<i>The Apprentice</i>. &ldquo;These two mentor relationships are like night and day, and it wasn&rsquo;t intentional, but one was a tonic to the other,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;Jon told me that he was there to help Bruce define the nature of his vision; Roy Cohn&mdash;the progenitor of fake news who taught Trump denialism, which we're seeing sort of [at] muzzle velocity now&mdash;was there to help his apprentice define what, to me, is a malignant vision. So one is uplifting and beautiful, and the other is a heart-of-darkness, nihilistic vision.&rdquo;</span></p>
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<p style="text-align: center;"><span>For me, it's just about deepening the game. I'm very clear when I do these things that it's artifice.</span></p>
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<p style="text-align: justify;"><span>Perhaps it&rsquo;s that hunger that leads Strong&mdash;who&rsquo;s notoriously influenced by Daniel Day-Lewis and Al Pacino&mdash;to balk at the suggestion that future acting generations could someday regard him with similar reverence. &ldquo;It is hard for me to take that in,&rdquo; he says, peppering in a quote from 20th-century English novelist D.H. Lawrence about one artist&rsquo;s work being the salvation of another. He continues, &ldquo;I guess I don&rsquo;t see myself the way that I see those actors&mdash;who I've either worked with, worked for, or sought out in some kind of apprenticeship-type way. They&rsquo;re like North Stars or beacons of light that are guiding me. But there&rsquo;s only a certain amount that you can internalize from other people, their values, and their way of working. When I was in my twenties and thirties, I was very much still absorbing lessons from some of the greats&mdash;but then you kind of have to let that all go and throw it away to find your own line.&rdquo;&nbsp;</span></p>

<p style="text-align: center;"><span>I'm not interested in doing this if it's something that comes easy to me.</span><b><span>&nbsp;</span></b><span>I'm interested in the difficulty.</span></p>

<p style="text-align: justify;"><span>The contrast between the two&mdash;and the chance to explore both onscreen&mdash;is what Strong finds most exciting. &ldquo;Right now, Bruce is out there speaking truth to the power that Roy Cohn engendered,&rdquo; he says, hailing Springsteen&rsquo;s &ldquo;willingness to go there and be vulnerable&rdquo; as &ldquo;the opposite of self-preservation or self-protection&rdquo; as he reflects on attending the singer&rsquo;s Milan show in July. &ldquo;I don't know if you've ever been to a Bruce concert, but it is like church. There's something profoundly spiritual and uplifting, and he really gives a shit. He cares about our common humanity and sings for the Left and the Right. He's there for everybody, and he's bringing big medicine to the world.&rdquo;</span></p>

<p style="text-align: center;"><span>I think we could all stand to worry less about how we're seen, and focus more on what we see.</span></p>

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<p style="text-align: justify;"><span>No matter the end result, Strong is just happy to be on board. &ldquo;There's no security or certainty at any point,&rdquo; he says of the entertainment industry. &ldquo;None of this is a given, and whatever I've done before doesn't ensure that something else will catch fire. There's always an amount of continual surrender and humility in the face of the unknown.&rdquo; Perhaps that ambiguity is the&nbsp;</span><i><span>real</span></i><span>&nbsp;reason why he chooses to focus on his own creative desires, rather than public perception. &ldquo;This might seem a bit abstract, but follow me here,&rdquo; he laughs. &ldquo;I think we can either be the seer, or the seen. If we are seeing our lives and paying attention to the things that matter to us, I think that's a very empowering place to be. But if we are in a place of being seen, then it becomes about what others think of us&mdash;and I think we could all stand to worry less about how we're seen, and focus more on what we see.&rdquo; He pauses. &ldquo;Of course, doing this interview right now, I'm half in a place of,&nbsp;</span><i><span>What does she think about what I'm saying? Are people going to read this and think I'm whatever?</span></i><span>&rdquo; To a seer like Strong, it ultimately won&rsquo;t matter.</span></p>
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<p style="text-align: justify;"><span>The state of the world weighs heavy on Strong&rsquo;s mind as he prepares for&nbsp;<i>The Boys from Brazil</i>. Based on Ira Levin&rsquo;s 1976 book&mdash;later adapted into a film starring Gregory Peck&mdash;Peter Morgan&rsquo;s limited series stars Strong as a Nazi hunter loosely based on Simon Wiesenthal. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s about world conditions being primed for a reawakening and resurgence of fascism,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;It feels clear to me that we're in that time again and that we have forgotten lessons from the past, which we will be doomed to repeat unless we wake up. So it&rsquo;s a profound morality tale, cloaked inside of a high-concept drama thriller.&rdquo; When asked about making his return to the small screen, Strong is indifferent. He identifies as &ldquo;platform-agnostic&rdquo; and points to the fact that this is, after all, a&nbsp;<i>limited</i>&nbsp;series. Plus, all that matters to him is the quality of the material. &ldquo;Peter is a juggernaut and one of the greatest living dramatists,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;Although this is a Sci-Fi about Hitler being cloned, so it does have a sort of outrageous conceit. Yeah, it&rsquo;s a big swing.&rdquo;</span></p>

<div class="page" title="Page 5"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p style="text-align: center;"> <span>GROOMING</span> <span><strong>Mads Stig Studio</strong><br /></span> <span>PRODUCER</span> <span><strong>Narrow Agency</strong><br /></span> <span>PHOTO ASSISTANT</span> <span><strong>Tobias Hoffmann</strong><br /></span> <span>SPECIAL THANKS</span> <strong>Soho House Copenhagen</strong></p></div></div></div>

Jeremy Strong Is Finding the Edge

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