Joseph Gordon-Levitt Talks About Cobra Commander

Joseph Gordon-Levitt performance as Cobra Commander is sure to be the highlight of G.I. Joe when it is released in August. Information about the role so far has been kept well under wraps by Paramount, but in a recent interview with Nymag.com Gordon-Levitt revealed his thoughts on the role and his transformation to Cobra Commander:

"Yeah. My face is in it. There's this crazy kind of getup that I wear. It's got makeup and it's got all this other stuff, and it's a mask, basically. You can hardly tell it's me. And that, to me, is the best. That's why I love Daniel Day-Lewis or Gary Oldman. Actors like that, where they're so different as each character, the actor disappears. Doing G.I. Joe made it real easy to disappear because of all the elaborate stuff on my face. And it demands a totally different kind of acting style. You sort of check your realism at the door.

I was thinking of Slava's Snowshow the whole time [Gordon-Levitt is a producer for the avant-garde Russian clown show]. In Snowshow, they put on makeup; it's old-fashioned makeup, totally different, of course, than what we did in G.I. Joe, but they put stuff on their face to create a character. Now, the guy who put stuff on my face, Kazuhiro Tsuji is his name, the protégé of Rick Baker — he's an artist, man! He's such an admirable artist, and to watch him do this work and have it be all on my face, it's just so fun. And then I get to play with that and create a performance out of that, instead of my own face. It's so much fun for someone like me who gets off on different acting styles, playing with the craft. That's what G.I. Joe is about for me."