This Was the Year Jason Schwartzman Made Every Movie Better

To close out the year, GQ is revisiting the most fascinating ideas, trends, people, and projects of 2023. For all of our year-end coverage, click here.

A lot of actors have had great years. Jacob Elordi and Charles Melton made the transitions from teen-TV heartthrobs to serious stars. Leonardo DiCaprio turned in another towering performance in a Martin Scorsese movie. (Big shock there.) And American Fiction gave Jeffrey Wright one of his best big-screen roles to date.

But maybe no actor had a better year than Jason Schwartzman. Let's take stock.

Schwartzman reunited with Wes Anderson—the director who put him on the map by casting him in Rushmore twenty-five years ago— in Asteroid City, playing an actor playing a war photographer in a play about an alien invasion. He was the voice of the reality warping villain The Spot in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. He reprised his role as Gideon Graves from Scott Pilgrim vs. the World for Netflix's anime Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, adding new layers to the supreme evil ex. He popped into The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes as deranged television host Lucky Flickerman, making punchlines out of child deaths. And speaking of games, there he was again, in Quiz Lady, as a smug game show contestant. Oh, and I almost forgot: Tim Robinson stopped him from talking about his kids in I Think You Should Leave season 3.

Schwartzman's talent has always been well-regarded, but from Max Fischer forward, he's largely been a solid supporting player. And yet his output this year made me think we've been taking him for granted by expecting him to reliably show up in Wes Anderson movies and do his Jason Schwartzman thing—which, to be fair, is a thing he obviously does very well.

It seems even Anderson realized that Schwartzman was up for a challenge this year, writing him the complex, multifaceted role of Jones Hall, the queer actor cast as Augie Steenbeck, the star of the fictional play "Asteroid City.” Asteroid City—the movie, that is, not the play within it— requires Schwartzman to give a layered performance where he not only jumps between parts, but between accents and emotional states.

When I interviewed him for GQ over the summer, Schwartzman told me he was nervous because the role was so big. "It's like, jeez, I hope I can do the best I can for this," he said. He needn't have worried: What he does as Jones and Augie is both impressive and shockingly emotional; he’s using both these characters to tap into Anderson's questions about why we make art.

But Anderson wasn't the only filmmaker who thought Schwartzman could handle multifaceted material. It felt like Across the Spider-Verse was only a teaser of what he will do in its sequel, but as The Spot, a former scientist who can now hop through dimensions thanks to a collider explosion caused by Miles Morales, Schwartzman demonstrates range yet again. Using only his voice, he pulls off the trick of making The Spot laughable at first, before his rage becomes actually threatening and scary for our heroes.

In the Scott Pilgrim series he almost does the opposite: Record exec Gideon was the big bad in Edgar Wright's 2010 film, but the new animated series gives him a fall from grace so humbling he reverts back to his former persona, Gordon Goose, a nerd with no friends.

Perhaps Schwartzman's turns in Hunger Games and Quiz Lady are the most expected for him— in both, he's a smug know-it-all with gleaming white teeth—but they equally demonstrate his knack for broader comedy. In one of Hunger Games’ best moments, director Francis Lawrence cuts to Schwartzman's Lucky calling a restaurant to explain that he'll be late, because the kids in the arena are somehow staying alive.

Schwartzman is not exactly chameleonic—he is always quintessentially himself—but he is adaptable, and within that often surprisingly remarkable. When I asked Schwartzman about appearing in multiple high profile projects at once he launched into a metaphor, likening himself to a brush or a tool that a director might use to help complete their work.

"I'm very grateful to just be even something that would be considered reaching for," he said. "I never thought I would be here and I appreciate it so fucking deeply. It's insane. I get kind of choked up about it because just the fact that someone could ask you to do something and have faith in you—as you go on, you realize it's the ultimate thing, to be asked to be a part of something."

Well, Jason, we're grateful too.

Originally Appeared on GQ