Edward Norton Academy Award for Best Actor. Later, Norton starred with Matt Damon in "Rounders", which follows two friends who urgently need to earn enough cash playing poker to pay off a huge debt. In David Fincher's 1999 film "Fight Club", Norton played an unreliable narrator who feels trapped in his white-collar position. It is based on Chuck Palahniuk's novel of the same name. To prepare for the role, Norton took lessons in boxing, taekwondo and grappling. "Fight Club" premiered at the 1999 Venice International Film Festival. During promotion for the film, he said, "I feel that "Fight Club" really, in a
Edward Norton breaking through with his 1993 involvement in Edward Albee's "Fragments", at the Signature Theatre Company. In his film debut "Primal Fear" (1996), Norton played Aaron Stampler, an altar boy who is charged with the murder of a Roman Catholic archbishop and is defended by Martin Vail (Richard Gere). The film is an adaptation of William Diehl's novel. Ken Tucker of "Entertainment Weekly" wrote: "Norton gives a performance that's fully the equal of Gere's – he's as slyly self-effacing as Gere is slyly ostentatious." Alison Macor of "The Austin Chronicle", in review of the film, wrote, "Norton's performance and the well-paced