Billy Crudup is in an echoey east London rehearsal room, practically vibrating as he unpicks one of the best scenes in one of the year’s best films. The star of Almost Famous and The Morning Show, dressed in a grey quarter-zip fleece, looks faintly horrified by his own enthusiasm. “It’s the nerdiest job I’ve ever had,” he says, eyes lighting up.
In Jay Kelly, Noah Baumbach’s Fellini-like meditation on ageing and Hollywood vanity, Crudup plays Timothy, a former drama-school classmate of George Clooney’s fading movie star of the title. Though clearly the more talented of the pair, Timothy didn’t “make it” as an actor, and became a child therapist instead.
