In an industry that can devour its youngsters, Jason Bateman is one child star who made good.
"I certainly did not come through unscathed," he says. "But I was just a little smarter about getting caught and didn't spend 24 hours a day being an idiot or an outlaw. That's not an overriding instinct for me, to do massive amounts of drugs or rob liquor stores. I don't have to fight that urge."
Bateman, 38, started acting professionally when he was 10 years old. He was the scheming Derek Taylor in the teen TV hit Silver Spoons and its spinoff, It's Your Move. He starred in a series of Valerie Harper shows (Valerie, Valerie's Family and The Hogan family) before he reinvigorated his career with the cult TV comedy Arrested Development.
As a young star, he recalls, "the borders are a little wider for you. People let you get away with a lot of stuff. But if you have the right kinds of friends and family, they don't let you get away with being a jerk."
Bateman is now moving into a movie career that is headed in many directions: as a U.S. soldier captured by terrorists in the drama The Kingdom, or as a straitlaced accountant in the children's film Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium, which opens Friday.
"I'm just trying not to screw it up," he says, and that means knowing his place in the hierarchy and taking smaller roles in better films.
He wants to be a supporting player with big stars, the people he calls "the cool kids:" actors like Jennifer Garner and Jamie Foxx (from The Kingdom), or Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, and Helen Mirren (from State of Play, an upcoming film in which he plays a bisexual sex club promoter), or Will Smith and Charlize Theron (from John Hancock, which he just finished.)
"Any movie I'm offered the lead of right now is a pretty stinky movie," he says.
"The films I'm offered to do, where I'm the lead, are not great scripts. The films I'm offered to do where I'm third or fourth down on the call sheets, they're pretty good films, because numbers one, two and three on the call sheet are great actors, so they have consequently attracted a great director."
He's even willing to play second banana in a movie that was his own idea: an action comedy called The Remarkable Fellows about two "revenge specialists" who hire themselves out to rich people who want to pay back their enemies. He calls it Dirty Rotten Scoundrels meets The Bourne Identity, and he plans to play No. 2 brother, "and some great big huge guy will be the star. A cool kid."
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