Jason Bateman has recalled a “painful” misunderstanding he had with a Hollywood legend who was trying to help him early in his career.
The actor and director, whose career was launched as a teen star in Eighties sitcom The Hogan Family, scored a role in 1994 film This Can’t Be Love opposite Oscar winners Katharine Hepburn and Anthony Quinn.
In the made-for-TV romantic comedy, Bateman, who was 25 at the time, played the driver of Hepburn’s character; the future Arrested Development star shared all of his scenes with the screen icon, who was 86.
One such scene required Bateman’s character to get emotional, and the actor recalled struggling to “cry on cue”, telling Vulture’s Good One podcast: “I was really trying, I was really squeezing it.”
Midway through the take, Hepburn – whose films include classics Bringing Up Baby (1938), The African Queen (1951) and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967) – told Bateman: “Oh, stop acting!”
Bateman, misunderstanding her, asked: “You mean professionally?” to which Hepburn replied: “No, just say it! Stop trying to cry.” Relieved, Bateman took the “great note” and decided to deliver his lines authentically.
“Once I was being real and stopped trying to manipulate the audience and whatnot and be raw, it flowed, it worked,” he remembered.
“So it was a really great piece of advice that was painful to hear at the beginning, but ended up being very helpful.”
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Hepburn had just two more credits after the release of This Can’t Be Love – the 1994 romantic drama Love Affair, written by Robert Towne and Warren Beatty, and the festive TV film One Christmas, also released in 1995.
Her health started to deteriorate soon after, with Hepburn admitted to hospital with pneumonia in 1996. Her health worsened in 1997 when she started showing signs of dementia, and in 2003, a tumour was found in her neck. She died from cardiac arrest on 29 June 2003, aged 96.
Meanwhile, Mexican-American actor Quinn, whose films included Lust for Life (1957), Wild is the Wind (1958) and Zorba the Greek (1964), died in 2001, aged 86.
Bateman, who was considered a teen idol in the 1980s thanks to his role in The Hogan Family, struggled during the 1990s, starring in four shows that were cancelled after just one season.
But he had a career resurgence in 2003 when he was cast as Michael Bluth in the comedy show Arrested Development, and went on to star in films Starsky & Hutch (2004), Up in the Air (2009), Horrible Bosses (2011) and Identity Thief (2013).
Proving he’s more than a one-trick pony, Bateman started producing and directing and, in 2017, released Netflix drama Ozark, in which he also played the lead role – a then-rare serious turn from the actor – opposite Laura Linney.
He most recently appeared in HBO comedy-drama series DTF St Louis, playing a weatherman embroiled in a love triangle that turns fatal.
