From child star to directing his own flicks, JGL has had a pretty faultless career so far.
Becoming famous at a young age usually goes one of three ways. The kid can fade back into obscurity, like the actor who played Charlie in the original Willie Wonka film, Peter Ostrum (his only film role, trivia fans).
Another option is the child grows up and goes off the rails, of which Amanda Bynes is just the latest example in a very long line. And then there is the rarest of all catagories, the kid who transitions smoothly to more mature roles and becomes a bona fide star as an adult too.
As it stands nobody in recent years has made that jump more successfully than Joseph Gordon Levitt. By the age of six he was appearing in TV movies and at 15 he was cast in
Third Rock from the Sun, the sitcom that would make him world famous.
At the time he spoke about how much he disliked being ‘a celebrity’ and by the time the show finished in 2001, he had already began to study history, literature and French poetry at Columbia University.
In 2004, the actor dropped out of college to return to acting. Now aged 23, Levitt vowed to only appear ‘in good movies’ and in fairness to him, he has pretty much achieved that.
His first role on his return was the part of a gay prostitute in
Mysterious Skin, a part a world away from the teen idol/sitcom star he was known as.
In 2005, another offbeat role, that of Brendan Frye, a teen investigating a murder at a high school in the excellent
Brick, won Gordon Levitt further plaudits and he had begun the rise to serious movie star at that stage.
His lead role in
The Lookout (2007) was also well received and he began to get some more mainstream visibility when he starred with Zooey Deschanel in
500 Days of Summer, a more off kilter romcom. That role earned him a Golden Globe nomination and it was now clear that his time as a child star was long forgotten.
We’ll forgive him his appearance in the frankly dire
GI Joe: The Rise of the Cobra in 2009 (hey, we all make mistakes) as he followed it up with parts in some of our favourite films of recent years.
Christopher Nolan’s mind-bending thriller
Inception was the movie that really propelled Gordon Levitt into the realm of major star, playing alongside Leonardo DiCaprio with ease and he followed it up with another Nolan flick,
The Dark Knight Rises, the following year, playing a cop who gets close to Batman. Anyone who appears in one Nolan film is good with us. Two and we really, really like you.
In 2012 he also popped up in the Bruce Willis time-travel flick
Looper, as a young Willis, and he also appeared in Steven Spielberg’s
Lincoln.
By this time, he was already dabbling in direction, helming a few short films, but he got his shot at the big time with
Don Jon, a film he not only stars in, but one he also wrote and directed.
We’ve seen the likes of Ben Affleck go from in front of the camera to Oscar winner behind it and after a stellar run in his career so far, we wouldn’t back against Joseph Gordon Levitt repeating the trick down the line. And,
as we discovered recently, he's a top bloke as well.
