At some point, every young actor grows up and becomes an adult, and whether they stay in the business or not, they inevitably find themselves in that moment where they've done something (even mildly) racy and the internet has a good giggle about the juxtaposition of their adorable past and current provocations.
For Adam Brody, his moment comes in a porn... ish.
To be clear, the kid who burst onto the scene and stole a generation of girls' hearts as hot geek Seth Cohen on Fox's The O.C. has been working quite steadily since that soapy SoCal drama ended in 2007, with spots on TV shows and leading roles in movies both big and small. But few have been so buzzy and ironic and funny as his part as the groundbreaking porn star Harry Reems in Lovelace, the story about the making of Deep Throat and the breaking of a young, abused woman's heart.
It's set in the 1970s, and he's dressed accordingly. He puts on a silly voice. He gets several fake blow jobs from Amanda Seyfried, who gives a brave performance as accidental porn star Linda Lovelace. And, most prominently, Adam Brody has a pretty excellent porn mustache, which he is quite excited to talk about.
"I enjoy a mustache. I always have," he tells BuzzFeed during an interview in New York. "You've got to do a lot of explaining otherwise, or take a lot of shit for it. It's like a real statement, it seems like."
At the moment, he's got some real facial scruff working, a bit unruly in a way that works for people who obviously have their shit together. It looks like he's been working on it for a little while, and he sort of acknowledges the effort it takes for him to grow a fine facial thicket.
"I hadn't shaved for a pretty long time when I got the part, I hadn't shaved for a couple weeks, and then I had another few weeks," he explains, discussing what went into the prodigious lip fur for the film. "It's probably longer than I'd like to admit, but still, I could have done more."
Brody discussed a range of topics with BuzzFeed, from porn and celebrity culture to his career — and yes, more about his mustache. Lovelace, which co-stars Peter Sarsgaard, Hank Azaria, Bobby Cannavale, Sharon Stone, and Juno Temple, is out in theaters on August 9.
This interview has been slightly edited and condensed.
After I watched this movie, I watched The Canyons, which stars a real porn star. But I thought about how Linda was forced into things, and the tragedy behind her life, and how even today there are lots of manipulative actions behind the scenes in show business.
Adam Brody: Porn is so much more mainstream [today]. You have a lot of celebrities starting their career by leaked sex tapes — which I guess is not porn in the traditional sense, but it becomes it. I know that was a time of newfound openness, maybe even more so people were running wild, but I think the communication is so much greater now, with the internet, just technology, and I think there's a different thing going on now. Obviously, abuses go on, but I like to think that women have made some strides in the last 40 years in terms of equal rights and getting out from under the thumb of men.
With Lindsay Lohan, there are these social figures. With Linda, the difference is she was living before social media and there was this image projected of her and people thought of her as this, but really there was this darkness behind the scenes where this is what was happening, where she wasn't in control and she wasn't really doing it. She was forced into it. Now, Amanda Bynes and those situations, you're involved in their daily life, they're really communicating it and feeding off it, and it seems like they're in the driver's seat, I don't know how much manipulation is going on behind the scenes.
It seems like today they feed directly into the audience and get it right back, and it can be a good or bad cycle, but that's how I feel like it's changed. Linda, it's like you don't know her and I feel like celebrities today, you have much more the chance to get to know them, through all social media. I'm not saying they're in control of themselves — some are out of control — but I don't know that there's a puppet master like there was. I feel like we're all implicit in it, because they're in direct contact and it's this love-hate cycle.
Do you feel like the public knows a lot about you?
AB: To a degree. I try to not be ubiquitous. I'm a fan, personally, of the actors and artists and everyone I like — on the one hand, I'm a very talkative, communicative, relatable, personable person. And so I might be trying to emulate the wrong artists, but the ones I like are the ones that are a little more... not reserved, but they keep a little bit of this air of mystery and, at the end of the day, if you're an actor and you want people to believe you in certain roles, perhaps the less people know about you the better. Maybe mystery is the wrong word. I won't say I'm shrouded in mystery, but I just think less is more sometimes.
You were number one on BuzzFeed's list of the 51 Hottest Jewish Men In Hollywood.
AB: I got some nice emails about that. I was flattered, it was nice. I got an email from Mark Feuerstein about it that was full of praise and jealousy.
You help make the geek cool. Do you feel responsible for that?
AB: I don't feel responsible (laughs). That was coming anyways. I just think it was right place, right time, and I got to sort of ride that wave a little bit. And I'll take it, and that's great. Much easier for me to emulate and try to be Woody Allen than Russell Crowe.
How do you feel like the roles you've been offered in the years since The O.C. have been? Do you feel typecast or in good shape?
AB: It's been fun; I definitely don't feel typecast. That's the most fun, actually. I feel like I've gotten to play a variety of roles and a variety of genres, and some of that is just the age. For such a long time, you're a kid and you're playing a kid and there's a couple archetypes of kid to be, and then, all of a sudden, you're playing an adult and you are an adult and there's a variety.
So did you take this role as a porn star for bragging rights?
AB: Yeah, but more to be in a movie with all these great actors than to be a porn star. And mustache bragging rights.
It was pretty good.
AB: My only regret was that I didn't have more time. I could have done better.
What kind of statement does a mustache make?
AB: Well, I don't know. It's a conversation starter. It's divisive; people are for it or against it, but they'll let their opinions be known. This was nice because it was the best of both worlds: I get a mustache, but it's for a cool movie. So it's my job.
If a paparazzo catches you with a mustache, it's all over the internet.
AB: And it's because he's a working actor!
It's such a classic porn 'stache too.
AB: Yeah, and in a way, if you think about it, this is the first mainstream porno, and [Linda] was the first female porn star. Harry Reems, in sort of every way, was the first male porn star. This is the quintessential; this is THE first porn 'stache. I like to think of this as ground zero for the porn 'stache. So it was an honor.
Deep Throat is complicated because it meant a lot to First Amendment rights, but it also had this seedy side, with Linda Lovelace's story. So what do you think its legacy is?
AB: That's such a big question. Without it, I think we'd still be exactly probably where we are, but it was certainly the first of its kind, one of the very first story-driven porns. And it definitely was part of the first shot in mainstreaming porn. It will always be this cultural moment where porn, very noticeably, broke through to the mainstream. And there's the dark-side aspects of it: the legacy of censorship that happened after it; Harry Reems getting arrested for it. Obviously, its associations with Watergate add another layer of intrigue and darkness to it.
You'd be hard-pressed to see this movie and then walk away and never just think of Deep Throat and Linda Lovelace as a one-off joke, some sort of sexual gymnastics only. There's a real human behind there, and someone who, even though this was her 15 minutes of fame, didn't really want — and deserved more [than] — to be known for this one sexual act, which was really a minor part of her life. I think were she here today — and I think her kids really do — she'd appreciate her story being told.