03/09/2001

Chris Vognar / Dallas Morning News

It may have reached a fever pitch in this age of 5 million channels, but the toxicity of fame is hardly a new idea. Artists and celebrities lamented life under the microscope long before Kurt Cobain decided he had enough seven years ago.

Some who wanted no part of their exposure have started out by actively seeking it. That would include Jackson Pollock, the Grand Poobah of modern painters who shot to the cover of Life Magazine in August 1949 - and rammed his car into a tree seven tempestuous years later.

Granted, Pollock was helped along his descent by alcoholism, just as heroin lent a hand in Cobain's demise. But Ed Harris, director and Oscar-nominated star of the new biopic Pollock, was drawn largely to his subject's contradictions - including a hunger for the prestige that would ultimately prove to be his poison.

"When your work is what matters to you in your life, it's not about your family and friends," Mr. Harris said through a stream of unfiltered Camel smoke at last year's Toronto International Film Festival. "Pollock's art was what gave him his solace and his sole means of expression. And celebrity severs that art from you. It takes the person away from his work."

The film starts with Mr. Harris' Pollock autographing a copy of that famous Life magazine, its banner headline asking the question, "Is he the greatest living painter in the United States?'' It then flashes back to paint a portrait of a man who desperately wanted to be just that, who chafed when other artists got the credit he thought he deserved. It's a powerhouse performance, one of total, painful immersion. And it's never more painful than when Pollock gets what he wants and finds that he just can't stand it.

"Other people are getting the attention, and he's saying 'I want it, I need it,'" says Mr. Harris. "But he was mistaking that attention for love. The mistake is thinking that kind of attention is going to make you feel better or more a part of something. It doesn't quite work that way."

Mr. Harris became interested in Pollock in 1986, when the actor's father, then working at the Chicago Art Institute, sent his son a book about the painter for his birthday. The next year, he sent him another. At this point, he became interested in perhaps playing the painter.

But as the obstacles grew, Mr. Harris' interest became more passionate. And he soon realized that if the film were to be made, he would have to direct it himself.

"I've gotten more and more into it over the years, and my knowledge and feelings for this man and the subject matter all grew and it became a bit more of an obsession," Mr. Harris recalls.

Thankfully, not too much of an obsession. Though he says he can relate to Pollock, he has also learned to put the people in his life ahead of his craft. He's very close to his family - his wife, Amy Madigan, plays Peggy Guggenheim in the film - and he has no intention of being haunted by his celebrity.

"This whole experience has made me more appreciative of the fact that I've been able to work through a lot of my own insecurities and doubts," he says. "I'm very close to my family and I have a lot of good friends. There are some things about my life that are a lot more important to me than my work, and Pollock didn't have that. I'm so grateful that I'm not in that position."