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Tavis: I'm pleased to welcome Edward Norton to this program. The two-time Oscar-nominated actor has starred in a number of seminal and notable films, for that matter, (laugh) including 'Primal Fear,' 'American History X,' and '25th Hour.' Many suspect there is another Oscar nomination in the near future for at least one of his two films this year. First, 'The Illusionist,' which is still in theaters. And beginning this week, you can catch him in 'The Painted Veil.' He's also a producer on this project. Here now, a scene from 'The Painted Veil.'

Tavis: Edward, so mean. (Laugh) Golly.

Edward Norton: He's being tough on her there. He gets better.

Tavis: (Laugh) That's an understatement.

Norton: It's a romance. It's a...

Tavis: (Laugh) A romantic comedy, he's being tough. No, it's, nice to have you here, man.

Norton: Thank you very much, nice to meet you.

Tavis: I'm told that this took a while to get made.

Norton: This one did. This was a long road. I've been working on it for about seven years, and the writer, Ron Nyswaner, and my producing partner Sarah, who've been working on it for 10 years. So, and Naomi's been involved for four, and so there's a lot of years, between all of us.

Tavis: Why so long for this particular project to get made, number one, and number two, what is it about a project like this that says to you, 'This is something I have to keep fighting until I get this on the screen?'

Norton: Well, I think to go with your second question first, it's just something I responded to very strongly. Sometimes you read something, and it gets in your brain, and it just hangs around in there. It was not like other things I had seen. It was that kind of a film, like an 'Out of Africa' or something like that, that it seemed to - it had huge scope to it. Big, sweeping scope. And it was also a treatment of a love story, not in kind of just the glib romantic comedy sense.

But it's a real examination of the saga of this relationship. And you don't see many of those films. They only come along every now and then. And it was in China, which I had never seen filmed. So all of those elements, I couldn't stop thinking about it. And I think the difficulty of it is that when you - to make a big film, to go to China and do the 1920s and all of that, you've gotta convince the people who put up the money for these things that it's worth it.

And the elements have to be right. And over the years, Naomi got nominated for Oscars and did this little movie called 'King Kong,' (Laugh) and then things kind of come together when they're right, and this finally did.

Tavis: Mm hmm. You used two phrases I wanna go back and pick up on. You refer to this project, 'The Painted Veil,' as one that has scope, and then you talked about glib romantic projects that are made in this town. Why, again, fight so hard for a project that has scope, but hate to break it to you, that glib romantic stuff usually makes a lot of money.

Norton: It does, it does. I'm not knocking it; I'm not knocking entertainment, either. I think one of the best things you can do in this work is work on things that you understand yourself, that you relate to. Make the kinds of movies that you grew up wanting to see. And like I said, there was something in it that it made me think of those David Lean films, and those Sydney Pollack films.

The big ones, 'The English Patient,' movies like that. And I always wanted to make a movie like that. Have the experience of going to a far-off place and trying to do all of that and yet tell a story about a relationship that would resonate for people now. That people could see their own relationships in. See the struggles that men and women go through. Punishing each other, and forgiving each other.

Tavis: I was about to say, all of my relationships are just like that. (Laugh)

Norton: You gotta get to the forgiveness part.

Tavis: Yeah, that's the best part, though.

Norton: Yeah, the make-up, right?

Tavis: Yeah, exactly, that's the best part right there. Talk to me about your time in China.

Norton: It was a remarkable experience. Now, I had spent some time in China, because my father lived in China for six years. He founded and directed The Nature Conservancy's program in China. A big conservation management project there. And so I had spent some time in western China, out in Yunan, near Tibet, which is very, very beautiful.

Very, very beautiful. But for the film, we worked in Beijing and Shanghai, and then in those beautiful southern mountains in the south central part of China. And we were there about five months, and it was an absolutely peak experience in my career and in life. It was just to live and work in a place with, make Chinese friends and colleagues, and Australians and Kiwis. And it was everything you dream about when you imagine getting into the movies and making a big movie in a far-off place.

Tavis: Now, I saw a clip of you. You actually speak - we're talking about China, of course, but you actually speak, is it fluent Japanese?

Norton: I spoke Japanese very comfortably at one point in my life. I've probably lost a lot of it, but I still, when I go over there and show a movie or do press or something, (unintelligible). I wish I spoke Chinese. I feel like, with no disrespect to anybody, when you're a kid, you get directed into languages. I studied French and I ended up studying Japanese. I wish I had studied Spanish and Chinese; you could speak to half the world.

Tavis: Half the world, exactly. (Laugh) That said, that makes you a pretty well-rounded person. You spent time living in China, you speak another language. That well-rounded life helps you as an actor in what regard?

Norton: Well, I think that on a basic level, I think acting's, really, if anything, it's a talent for empathy. You're absorbing kind of different aspects of people's experiences, emotional experiences, or down to just the skills of a magician or a card player or something. And you're absorbing it, and then interpreting it. And so I think that the more you open yourself to the world and people, and the deeper your pool is to pull from, and I think that you have to be.

Someone said to me, like - I got a degree in history - and someone said, 'What are you gonna do with that?' And I said, 'What's making movies? History's just stories, and if you don't have a sense of stories, if you don't have a sense of the drama in life, how can you tell good stories?'

Tavis: You mentioned the card tricks a moment ago. You did the stunts? You did all the stuff in 'Illusionist?'

Norton: In the 'The Illusionist,' yeah, I did the bulk of it. There were certain effects they were doing back then in the nineteenth century. They were doing spirit manifestations, like we did in the film. But they did them in extremely low light environments. And if we had done it the way they were doing it, we wouldn't have been able to film it. And so, those ones we had to use a little bit of computer enhancement, and things like that.

But the bulk of them, we did them very much the way they did them back then. And it was really fun. I had wonderful teachers and coaches. Some of the greatest magicians in the world.

Tavis: I wanna go back to this wonderful line you used about empathy, which is perhaps one of the best definitions I've ever heard, or certainly heard in a long time, for what it means to be an actor. So thank you for that. I'll give you attribution the first time I use it.

Norton: Okay, thanks. (Laugh)

Tavis: (Laugh) After that, it's as I always say. That said, what do you think there is for us to learn from China these days? That is to say, we, the United States, beyond the economics? That's the easy answer, on the economic front. Everybody wants to get in to make money. What's there to learn for us from them?

Norton: Well, I think as a broad statement, I think that people in the United States could open themselves to other cultures in general, more than we do. I think that one of the things I find when I go around the world doing this work and also just traveling is that I think that sometimes, we're a little more insular than other people in the world. Other people tend to speak a lot more languages than we do.

They have a sense of other cultures in some ways more than I think we do. And I think that with all that's going on in the world, with the enormous, explosive growth that's happening in China. People are calling this the Chinese century. And I think economically, I think environmentally, so many things are gonna be happening there that are gonna affect us, affect our lives.

They're gonna be partners with us in many things. And it almost seems to me it would go without saying that people ought to take more of an interest in China generally. But in terms of what we can learn from them, I don't know. It's a big country. It's a big country. Saying you've been to China is like saying you've been to the United States. It's enormous.

The number of different types of people, the different ethnicities, cultures, the landscape. It's as big and diverse as the United States. And I think we have a tendency to sort of - a lot of people, I think, still look at China as a bunch of people in Mao suits, you know what I mean?

Tavis: Very homogenous, yeah.

Norton: Yeah, very homogenous. And as dynamic as the United States is, China is that dynamic as well. And I think it's a fascinating, fascinating place, and there's an enormous amount of flux going on there right now, which is fascinating, as well.

Tavis: Your father has done wonderful work. Your grandfather was no slouch.

Norton: No, he wasn't. (Laugh)

Tavis: (Laugh) I know about your granddad, preparing for our conversation. But tell me about your grandfather.

Norton: He was an amazing man. He was very famous within his field of urban planning and urban development, both as a thinker and a philosopher, almost. And then also as a practical - he was a developer. And he was one of those rare people who straddled the line between sort of philosophy and conceptual approach to an idea like urban planning. But then he was one of those people who kind of walked the walk as well, in the work, in an applied way, on the ground.

He's sometimes credited with founding the term shopping mall. He would hate what the shopping mall has become, in the sense that he was a big believer in the potency of cities, and in the central role that cities play in our lives. And he wrote with a lot of prescience in the fifties and sixties about what was gonna happen to the American cities if people started fleeing them for the suburbs.

And he was proved to be very right in that sense. And I think he worked most of his adult life to work on urban rejuvenation, finding ways to bring vitality back into downtowns. And then later in his life, on the issue of creating more affordable housing in the United States. So he was an amazing man, he was a guru to many people in development and in urban planning.

And he was also a very vital, wonderful person. And before he died, President Clinton gave him the Congressional Medal of Freedom, which is the highest honor you can get. He was a great inspiration to me and most other people that he met.

Tavis: See, there are folk watching right now saying, 'I didn't know Edward Norton's connection to the shopping mall.' (Laugh)

Norton: (Laugh) Yeah, he...

Tavis: Now you're gonna be a trivia question for the rest of the week.

Norton: I actually worked for his foundation, The Enterprise Foundation, when I was in New York out of college, and I'm still on the board. It's an issue very close to my family and me.

Tavis: Let me close our conversation - I could talk for hours, if I had the time. I'm curious, though, as to how it is you go about crafting this career that you have developed so wonderfully. And I raise that specifically, Edward, because every now and then I talk to people on this program who I'm really impressed with, the choices they've made. Stretching themselves, pushing themselves out there to try different characters, different roles. I guess it takes it back to your comment about empathy. But I can't imagine you ever being pigeonholed in your career, or typecast. I assume you work hard at that.

Norton: Well, it may be a function of the fact that I don't - I like to put myself outside of my own comfort zone, if that makes any sense. And I think that when you've done a certain kind of a thing, it becomes easier and easier to recapitulate work in that frequency. And I find that a lot of times if I look at a piece of work and it makes me feel uncomfortable, if I doubt my own ability to get inside it because it seems very alien to me, that often moves me toward it.

Because I know that I'll have an interesting experience. Films like 'Fight Club' or 'American History X' or 'The 25th Hour,' the ones that have meant a lot to me and I've put kind of my deepest efforts into have been ones that I feel like - they're not often particularly commercial, per se, but I do feel like they represent the experience, the psychic experience that I see people having around me.

And I think the films that I grew up on that I cared about the most were mostly films like that, that were sort of documents of their time. And if I can, in the next few years, sort of feel like I've made a couple movies that I feel like reflected my generation's experience; I'll be very content with that.

Tavis: Well, I respect the courage and conviction of your choices.

Norton: Thank you. Thanks a lot.

Tavis: Glad to have you on.

Norton: Not at all, it was fun talking.

Tavis: 'The Painted Veil,' starring Edward Norton, and of course 'The Illusionist,' still in theaters as well. Nice to have you on the program.

Norton: Thank you.

Tavis: Up next, a special performance from jazz pianist Eric Lewis. Stay with us.