INTERVIEW: John Slattery

“Slattery's sudden late-flowering has only gone to prove the George Clooney dictum that in a movie universe increasingly ruled by Tween diktat, the only reliable source of bona-fide stone-washed masculinity is television. 'There’s a lot of shit on television but there really is a lot of creativity and smart people as well,” he says. “That part of the — I won’t say the good part about getting older, but you do gain perspective. I’m grateful for the fact that its happening now rather than having already happened and on the downslide. The downslide happens to everybody so I guess it’s best to peak later. We’re all headed in the same direction eventually." There’s a strong streak of amused fatalism to Slattery, grooved by thirty years in the business before he got his break playing the sharp-tongued, sharp-dressing advertising executive Roger Sterling on Mad Men, dropping smart bombs like olives into his martini. In The Adjustment Bureau, he brings the same phlegmaticism to the role of a bureaucrat whose job it is to terminate Matt Damon’s romance with Emily Blunt. His performance is a nice blend of menace and mordancy, threatening to turn Damon’s brains to mush with the crispness of a waiter refusing a credit card." — from my interview with John Slattery for Mr Porter