Why Edward Norton Doesn't Get Many Movie Offers

What happened with "Red Dragon"

During the filming of the Silence of the Lambs sequel, Red Dragon, Norton showed up on set to film his scenes as FBI profiler Will Graham. In his hand: brand-new (and totally unsolicited) script pages that Norton had taken it upon himself to write, and that he demanded to film. Director Brett Ratner and his producers didn't take kindly to that, and there was much arguing.

You can't blame them though—movie scenes have to be carefully planned out, budgeted, and storyboarded before filming … not to mention the basic chain of command that makes a movie set run smoothly. Norton disrespected all of that, so you can see why everyone else was angry with him.

What happened with "The Incredible Hulk"

In 2008, Marvel Studios reacquired the rights to the Incredible Hulk from Universal, following the poorly reviewed 2003 Hulk. Marvel opted to reboot the franchise as The Incredible Hulk and hired Zak Penn (who'd co-written a couple of X-Men movies) to write the screenplay. The studio approached Norton to star, and he initially turned it down. But after meeting with director Louis Leterrier, Norton signed on, provided any suggestions he made to Penn's screenplay be incorporated into the shooting script. Norton evidently did a substantial rewrite of the movie just weeks before filming started—far too late to change anything structural or major.

But Leterrier shot as much of Norton's script as possible, along with Penn's, which resulted in a very messy, convoluted cut of The Incredible Hulk that apparently out-terrible'd even the Universal version. Marvel executives hated the edit, and ordered a new one, with more action and less dialogue and character development—the latter two were largely Norton's focus. Understandably, the star was livid.

What happened with "Frida"

In Frida, the 2002 biopic about legendary Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, Norton played Nelson Rockefeller, the billionaire who commissioned Kahlo's husband, Diego Rivera, to paint a mural in New York's Rockefeller Center. Norton's then-girlfriend, Salma Hayek, starred as Kahlo, and Frida was her passion project—she'd been trying to get the movie made for years.

She obviously wanted to get every detail perfect, so even though the writers turned in a fine screenplay, Hayek wasn't satisfied. She asked Norton to conduct scores more research on Kahlo and use whatever information he found to extensively rewrite the Frida screenplay.

Norton did just that, and despite claiming that he wrote the movie, he was denied credit by the Writers Guild—an organization of which he was not a member at the time. An angered Norton trashed them in the press—while doing interviews for Red Dragon, Norton told a reporter, "I got shafted by the Writers Guild at the last minute, but I wrote the draft that got made."

What happened with "Death to Smoochy"

It's not just studio bigwigs, producers, writers, and directors that Norton will go toe-to-toe with: He'll even clash with the costume department if he has to. During production of the 2002 dark comedy Death to Smoochy, the film's costume designer, Jane Ruhm, presented Norton with a wide variety of clothes for his character, a laid-back children's show host. Ruhm's selections befitted that of the hippie described by the film's script, but that wasn't good enough for Norton.

Without Ruhm's knowledge, or anyone else really, Norton commissioned Armani to design him the ultimate in hippie chic: a suit made of actual hemp. Then, because he wasn't being enough of a jerk, he apparently forced Ruhm to deal with all the paperwork and negotiations associated with getting such a suit made and sent to set.

What happened with "American History X"

Norton was nominated for an Oscar for starring in the searing 1998 skinhead drama American History X, but that's not all he did on the movie: He also edited it, not that anybody had asked him to beforehand. During the shoot, Norton and director Tony Kaye clashed often about character motivation and dialogue, but nothing major. Things got really bad during the editing phase, however—Kaye worked with film editors to create a tight, economical, 95-minute cut of the film. When he saw it, Norton thought that Kaye had cut way too much of what they'd filmed, consequently ruining the movie. Not wanting to upset their bankable star, the production company relented to Norton's demand that he make his own (longer, and more Norton-centric) cut of the movie. That new cut, which clocked in at well over two hours, made it to film festivals and theaters. That really made Kaye mad—He even asked the Directors Guild to remove his name from the film's credits and replace it with "Humpty Dumpty," but his request was denied. His $200 million lawsuit against the production didn't fly, either.)

Despite the film's obvious success, Kaye and Norton have not worked together since—probably the 40 ads Kaye took out in trade papers eviscerating Norton, and that time he told a reporter the actor was "a narcissistic dilettante who raped the film" had something to do with it.