Joseph Gordon-Levitt: King of Pop Culture

It’s a dangerous rhetorical proposition to equate a child actor’s current celebrity status and cultural relevancy with the character they played on a decades-old television show. How would that distinctly magazine-profile logic be applied to, say, Miley Cyrus or Jonathan Taylor Thomas or Ron Howard? How tenuous would be the lessons learned? Or worse, what would those lessons say about us?

And yet, in the case of Joseph Gordon-Levitt, the comparison not only seems true, but almost inevitable, as though the only way to make sense of him — as an actor, as an intellect, as a sex symbol, as a man — is to consider his 15-year-old self.

My whole life, other people had been rolling the camera, but I wanted to be the one pushing the record button.

That’s when he starred in 3rd Rock From the Sun, the high-concept NBC sitcom about a group of extra-terrestrial explorers come to earth to study our mysterious homo sapien ways. Gordon-Levitt played Tommy, a pervy old man (alien) trapped in the body of a pervy (human) teenager. This is how he was introduced to tens of millions of viewers, as a deeper, ironic thing tucked insidiously inside another seemingly innocent thing.

It goes without saying that Gordon-Levitt nailed the role, because, really, it was the role he was born to play. He was, and is, and has always been somewhat out of time — an old soul in a young man’s body, a star outside his generation, a living, breathing nostalgia trip in and of himself.

Think about the man as he is today. He’s known for his boyish good looks (he’s 34) and easygoing smile, his lackadaisical California coolness, that special unnerving feeling certain celebrities can channel that makes them feel both totally approachable and totally otherworldly — there’s a bit of Rat Pack in him, a bit of guys like Jimmy Stewart, Cary Grant or George Clooney.

They’re there in the way he talks, with a deep, ancient voice, and the way he moves, fluid and confident, and the way he understands the intricacies of the profession and its strenuous demands, from performing to the arduous task of sitting at home on a hot Los Angeles afternoon making work calls.

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What else is there to say about Gordon-Levitt’s childhood? He grew up in Hollywood, the son of two journalists-turned-lefty political types who introduced him to acting long before his 10th birthday. And the rest of it? We watched it unfold, through various hairstyles and adolescent voice changes, for six seasons on a hit TV show.

3rd Rock from the Sun

We saw him evolve from fringe-character cuteness to leading role handsomeness. We saw him dodge interview questions and, at least in front of the late show cameras, act refreshingly his age. (“When I was younger, I pretty violently hated that part of my job,” he says, speaking of his early interactions with the press — and if you don’t believe him, search out early appearances on Conan or Jon Stewart, where he isn’t just uncomfortable, but downright pugnacious.) And we saw him quitting acting to study literature at Columbia, then quitting college for acting again — by no means the more familiar path for child actors (that would be powering through, flaming out, becoming a punchline), but definitely the more successful.

What he did then, in his early 20s, is the surprising part. Or maybe not so surprising, considering we’re talking about Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who has gone to great pains to avoid falling into any particular kind of Hollywood mould.

Either way, it involves the Internet.