Norton's busy year embodies indie spirit

December 22, 2006 Edward Norton is smart, talented and more invested than most working actors in the final cut of his movies. David Jacobson's micro-budget neo-Western "Down in the Valley"; Neil Burger's $16 million sleeper hit "The Illusionist"; and "The Painted Veil," a $21 million period adaptation of the W. Somerset Maugham classic co-starring Naomi Watts. Since his breakout film debut in 1996's "Primal Fear," the Yale-educated Norton, who earned two Oscar nominations before he was 30 and is now 37, has figured out how to apply his high standards to his movies.

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