Still Gazing in Awe at Jude Law

The 47-year-old actor has played with beauty throughout his career. But it’s never been more chilling than on HBO’s The New Pope.

- E. Alex Jung

JUDE LAW is looking at art. I am looking at Jude Law.

He walks deliberately and unhurriedly through the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, as though he’s doling out each step as a treat for the early risers this November morning. When he squints to examine a work, a fine spray of crow’s-feet sprouts alongside his temples. His hair, a fading blond, has grown sparse along his widow’s peak—a testament that no man can survive the erosion of time.

But I think he would agree it’s all for the best, his handsome looks still intact but honeyed with age and freed from the burden of perfection. At 47, Law can now be mortal, a far more interesting place to be as an actor. “People talk about getting into your mid-40s as a turning point, and I really felt it—this sort of ahhh, ability to breathe,” he says. “It’s not about proving; it’s not about feeling like you need to be cutting edge. You take your time a little more and perhaps feel a little more confident in your own skin and your own little journey, as opposed to the impact you’re gonna make.”

How ironic, then, that his role as the charismatic, imperious American pontiff, Lenny Belardo, in HBO’s 2016 series The Young Pope and its sequel, The New Pope, leans into his beauty to the point of the absurd. Paolo Sorrentino envisioned an unlikely scenario for the show: The seat of political power in the Catholic Church, a space traditionally for the stooped and gray, would be filled by someone undeniably good-looking. This would be beauty as divine right, a blessing from the heavens that makes the pope float above the mortal coil. Sorrentino imagined an actor like Paul Newman; his wife suggested Law.