Thank You For Smoking Should Have Made Aaron Eckhart an A-List Star

Viewed from a distance, director Jason Reitman’s 2005 dark comedy Thank You For Smoking is an exceptionally odd little film, precisely for where it chooses to plant the base of its moral compass. Imagine, if you will, a premise revolving entirely around cigarettes … in which the effect of cigarettes is not the primary antagonistic force of the story. Given the vilified nature of smoking and smokers in American society, as the segment continues to steadily shrink–only about 12% of Americans are reported smokers today–the thought of making your protagonist a man who “speaks for cigarettes,” who styles himself as the public face of the loathed tobacco industry, seems almost ludicrous. Making the character of Nick Naylor charming or likable to the audience in a way that doesn’t seem like manipulative tobacco industry propaganda should have been a genuinely difficult balancing act for Reitman’s film to pull off. And yet it does so effortlessly, thanks to the innate warmth of a single, undervalued acting commodity: Aaron Eckhart. Without him, there’s no way that Thank You For Smoking would work.
This I immediately concluded upon seeing the film for the first time some 18 years ago, and I left with the certainty that only a budding, 19-year-old film geek would probably feel: This guy was going to be a major movie star. Square-jawed and leading man handsome, he radiated some form of old-school cool that called to mind the visages of movie stars past–faces like Cary Grant, Robert Mitchum or Harrison Ford. Here was a guy whose name was going to be everywhere, combining the slick charm of a Cary Grant snake oil salesman with a more genuine sense of affable approachability not often seen in the top tiers of Hollywood stardom. He seemed like a guy who could beat you in a fight, but somehow become your best friend in the process.
And yet, it never quite happened. Aaron Eckhart has had an eclectic and consistent Hollywood career, but one that never coalesced into a run of top-tier leading man roles, as I found myself expecting after Thank You For Smoking. Aside from the major visibility of playing Harvey Dent/Two-Face a couple years later in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, and a good run of features in the late 2000s, including the excellent Rabbit Hole, it feels like filmmakers have largely failed to tap into the same vibrancy Eckhart seemed to display so effortlessly as Nick Naylor. This has seemingly led to a gradual decline from the spotlight, in which the actor can increasingly be found starring in low-budget genre movies–films with simplistic, VOD-esque titles like Erased, Wander, Afterward, Muzzle, Incarnate or Line of Duty. It feels uncomfortably familiar to the trajectory of so many other former stars who have ended up trapped in VOD action movie purgatory in their 50s, 60s and beyond.
It’s not our intent here to disparage the quality of the career that Aaron Eckhart has had–he’s still getting plenty of work in both film and TV, including a prominent role last year playing former President Gerald Ford in Showtime’s anthology series The First Lady. The man’s phone is clearly ringing regularly. But it doesn’t feel like quite enough for the guy whose tender performance in 2000’s Erin Brockovich was hailed as a refreshingly sensitive portrait of blue collar masculinity. Where were the opportunities to play a great romantic lead in its wake? Is there an ardent defender ready to speak up for 2007 romantic dramedy No Reservations, which saw Eckhart playing a dueling fine dining chef alongside Catherine Zeta-Jones, sparking a relationship amid haute cuisine kitchen politics? Or is more fair to say that’s the sort of movie that largely vanishes from public memory within a few years of its release?