Jesse Bradford makes a child's confidence look practised, necessary and fragile in King of the Hill. His romantic lead in Bring It On brought wider recognition, but we would start with the boy trying to conceal his poverty.
Fi1m perspective
Jesse Bradford's Aaron Kurlander tells his classmates that his family has money, and Bradford lets us see how carefully the boy has learnt to sound convincing. In King of the Hill (1993), confidence is something he needs to get through the day. He watches the adults and works out what they will believe, without asking us to applaud his cleverness or pity him. We were moved by that effort to keep up appearances, because the confident talk comes from a child left in a hotel with no money.
Steven Soderbergh trusts him to carry the film, and the performance holds up without any pleading for our sympathy. We believe Aaron can manage for a while, even as we can see that no child should have to. Our reservation concerns the last half hour, which tidies things up more than it should; Bradford has made the uncertainty worth sitting through. There is no need to qualify the praise by calling him promising, as though the acting only counted as practice for a later role.
The later casting often favoured sympathetic young men in teen films. Bring It On (2000), with Bradford as Cliff Pantone, brought wider recognition; leading parts in Clockstoppers and Swimfan (both 2002) followed. He then moved towards supporting feature work, including Rene Gagnon in Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers (2006), and recurring television roles. Those shifts make a straight line from child actor to leading man a poor way of reading the work. We would look for the alertness he brought to Aaron, rather than judge each part by its size.
That also keeps our enthusiasm for Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet (1996) in proportion when considering Bradford. He plays Balthasar, but our praise for the romance rests chiefly on Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes, whose performances make Shakespeare's words credible in the modern setting. The noisy interruptions remain a caveat, and a strong film does not automatically give every actor equally revealing work. Start with King of the Hill if the teenage romantic leads are all that come to mind.
Biography
Jesse Bradford is an American actor. Born Jesse Bradford Watrouse on 28 May 1979 in Norwalk, Connecticut, he began working as a child actor and received Young Artist Award nominations for his performances in King of the Hill (1993) and Far from Home: The Adventures of Yellow Dog (1995).
He is known for roles including Balthasar in Romeo + Juliet (1996), Cliff Pantone in Bring It On (2000) and Rene Gagnon in Flags of Our Fathers (2006). Bradford graduated from Columbia University with a degree in film in 2002 and appeared as Ryan Pierce in nine episodes of The West Wing.
