1outside's fantastic voyage

Globes, Ricky Gervais, Johnny Depp & Robert Downey Jr

aka three of my fave actors/men - and the Golden Globes.

The newspapers & blogs have reported that neither Johnny nor Robert liked Ricky’s hosting of the awards. I’d like to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Johnny is basically an European. He’s a proper rockstar among the acting elite. His performance of Captain Jack Sparrow was part homage to Keith Richards and part taking the funny of Keith’s mannerisms & translating it as exagerated comedy for kids and adults alike. I don’t think he takes himself that seriously either. That just doesn’t fit his whole personality. He might have been a little confused by Ricky’s kamikaze of a “performance” but I’m almost sure his energetic chewing ona gum was an attempt not to laugh.

Then there is Robert. An ex-junkie, ex-drunk who twenty yers ago was a great promise to film. Then he almost self-destructed. But he came back, and just like Johnny, is praised by both critics & audiences. This is the man who played a blond, blue-eyed Australian actor who would do anything for his acting. Even go black - pigmentation and all, in Ben Stiller’s excellent (but not for everyone) comedy Tropic Thunder. He played a caricature of the likes of Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro, well loved actors - but showed that what lies behind their performances can be sometimes very ridiculous.

Robert did this just as he was about to become a global acting superstar himself - again - thanks to Iron Man. It would make me incredibly sad if he took himslef too seriously these days. He who is known for his sense of (sometimes self-deprecating) humour which he brings into everything he does. I choose to think that his comment about the awards evening hosted by Ricky being “mean-spirited” was in fact playful - and not a “jab” at Ricky.

Robert unlike Johnny When-I-don’t-act-pay-no-attention-to-me is indeed a very sharp comedian of sorts in his own right and from what I’ve seen of him off-screen he likes to keep the attention on himself. He might have been jealous that Ricky said things he probably would have liked to be able to say - if in his own style - but can’t any time soon because he likes when people like him, he enjoys he’s now at top of his game again. I can take this vanity. He’s an actor after all…

There always is another option tho: Robert isn’t nearly as cool and I’d like to think, he gets easily offended as any other snotty film star and his sense of humour is not nearly as good and I thought it was.

Hopefully not.