.SimonRex partied his way through the early aughts, lost his career for a decade, and now, improbably, is being celebrated by the Hollywood elite. kn8 reports
Photo: Ryan Pfluger Simon Rex will be appearing with Red Rocket director Sean Baker at Vulture Festival in Los Angeles on Saturday, November 13 to discuss the film with our critic Alison Willmore. It’ll be a good time; you can get tickets here.
It wasn’t just the pandemic that sent Rex into the desert. The truth is he was tired. Of calling his agent, wondering if there was anything out there. Of clawing for any opportunity. Of sitting around hung-over, doing the math on how long he could get by until the next paycheck.
Photo: Ryan Pfluger Rex is not just his looks, but his story won’t make sense without talking about them. “Simon was like fully smolderingly handsome,” says the record producer Mark Ronson, who modeled with him in the ’90s. Young Simon had a vulpine stare, piercing green eyes, and abs for days.
Gus Van Sant liked what he saw too. The director thought Rex might have the right vibe to play a bully who gets beat up by Matt Damon’s character in Good Will Hunting and invited him to audition: “I get there, I’ve never acted in my life. I’m reading with Matt Damon. I start reading the lines robotically, and he says, ‘Simon, I have to stop you. This is one of the worst auditions I’ve ever seen.’ ” Still, Van Sant spotted a seed of talent and sent him to acting class.
This era, Rex says wistfully, was the last time nightlife was fun, the time right before camera phones ruined everything: “People standing on a table, getting up and genuinely having a good time, before you’d get busted and tagged at the location. There would’ve been a lot more footage of me being a total wasted asshole.” He is reluctant to talk too openly about those days when a recorder is running. One, he doesn’t want to throw anyone under the bus.
One thing was clear: Rapping to teenagers about doing drugs wasn’t cute anymore. Actors, especially male ones, may be able to stay relevant in middle age, but Rex didn’t think musicians could. “There’s something sad about the old rock star trying to be young and sexy,” he says. “You can’t age gracefully into that, at least not as Dirt Nasty.” He wanted to give it up, but the gigs were his main source of income.
Baker’s next A24 project, Red Rocket, was inspired by research he had done on the adult-film industry a few years earlier. It follows Mikey Saber, a down-and-out porn star who returns to his Texas hometown and winds up grooming a local high-schooler. The character’s a sleazeball, constantly spouting off about the comeback he’s sure he deserves.
Mikey’s vulnerability is Rex’s, too. “I don’t know if I could have gone to those depths before I got slapped down,” he says. So is Mikey’s motormouthed charisma — whenever the character was about to veer too far into irredeemability, Rex would flash his boyish side: Ooh, a dragonfly! With Baker, he came up with Mikey’s distinctive method of dismounting a bike, hopping off at full speed and letting it careen into a wall. It’s pure slapstick, and it brings down the house every time.
Rex with director Sean Baker on the film-festival circuit. Photo: Photo by Juan Naharro Gimenez/Getty Images By the time the Red Rocket promo tour rolled around, Rex had been living in total isolation in the desert for months. He’d had a girlfriend early in quarantine, but they broke up shortly after he finished the movie. “I’m not kidding, man. I was losing it,” he says.
Rex’s Joshua Tree house has clean modernist lines and plenty of natural light — “an Instagrammer’s wet dream,” he says. Vestiges of the Airbnb idea remain: The compound is full of little stations, almost like an adult summer camp. Over here, there’s a fire pit; up there is a spot for hammocks. For relaxation, there’s an outdoor tub; for entertaining, a dining table carved from Tahoe cedar. A guesthouse is under construction near the driveway.