Gordon-Levitt plays the team's second in Inception, the character responsible for explaining the rules and for the film's most technically demanding sequence, a zero gravity fight staged inside a rotating set. He plays competence with dry humour, which keeps a film built on exposition from becoming a lecture.
He began as a child actor in American television comedy and deliberately stepped away to study before returning to independent film as an adult. He founded a collaborative production platform for artists, and he has directed and written as well as performed, which is unusual for a performer who came up through American network television.
Recurring subjects: reinvention, young men who are more capable than they are given credit for, and comedy delivered without signalling. He plays intelligence lightly and is comfortable in supporting positions, and his physical commitment to demanding sequences is a consistent feature of his genre work rather than an exception.
His independent film work of the late two thousands, particularly a romantic comedy that inverts the genre's assumptions, is widely admired, and his collaborations with one major director span several significant films. His corridor sequence is a standard reference in discussions of practical effects work.
For viewers who want a supporting performance that carries the exposition. Suited to anyone approaching the dream heist film, and to those who should follow it with the independent films he made either side of it.
