A friend of mine recently stumbled upon the discovery that movie stars, like Coke cans and cardboard boxes, are endlessly recyclable. He was watching a DVD of John Frankenheimer's original The Manchurian Candidate and decided that Lawrence Harvey, the strong-jawed, stoic 1960s actor, was a literally dead ringer for Jude Law. "In fact," he told me later, "I was convinced that he was Jude Law — even though that was impossible."

My friend can be forgiven for seeing Jude Law everywhere these days, even for imagining that he could defy time, space and the Hollywood studio system. Law is now starring in three different films — I Heart Huckabees, Alfie and Closer — all released nationally within the last month. He provides deadpan British narration for next week's children's fantasy Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. He has been named People's Sexiest Man Alive. He is about to appear as Errol Flynn — Errol Flynn! — in Martin Scorsese's upcoming Howard Hughes biopic. His perfect teeth gleam from the cover of a dozen glossy magazines. He might be hiding under your bed as we speak.

It is inevitable that the Jude Law Backlash will surface soon; already I've heard moviegoers complaining that they want to see something, anything, that doesn't star the cleft-chinned Brit. But Law's biggest problem is not his ubiquity so much as his reduction. Each new role he has taken this year has been a sad step away from the distinctive presence that made him a magnetic actor in the first place.

Most contemporary stars have become popular by being synthetically sympathetic. When we watch Tom Hanks or Mel Gibson we see versions of ourselves, with the same desires and worries writ large — only with better looks, more charm and nary a failed seduction. Law has never been a part of this trend. He broke into public consciousness in The Talented Mr. Ripley, playing a playboy so suave, self-possessed and glowingly handsome that both Matt Damon and the audience could do nothing but envy him. He was a tangible object of desire, a male ingénue: almost reptilian in his distant hauteur, but so delicately beautiful that he seemed available to both sexes. It only made sense that his next role, in Steven Spielberg's A. I., was that of a burnished robot designed to provide sexual pleasure to anybody who paid. His sensuality was literally magnetic, made of two parts metal and one part chromatic charisma. Even when makeup made his fingernails and teeth rotten in Road to Perdition, his repulsiveness was still entirely Other, still a presence to be watched and feared from a distance.

You can look hard and long at Law in any of his three new lead roles, but you will find nothing of this allure. He is still a playboy in all three movies — the entire plot of Alfie revolves around his philandering — and he is no more sympathetic or any less distant. In two of those films, weeping women offer to make him dinner just to keep in the room for a few more minutes. (He refuses, of course. A boy's got to watch his figure.) But these roles have reduced him to the simplest caricature of a gigolo, with none of the self-possession or mystery that once defined his appeal. His mesmerizing narcissism is gone, replaced by a dull pout and a bored expression. No longer is the audience left with the feeling that Law's characters are thoroughly fascinated with themselves; they now seem fascinated by nothing at all, even the women who throw themselves on them. It's his only job to stand in the center of the screen and flash those teeth every few minutes, and he seems tired of the task. Directors are using Jude Law like a piece of furniture — a Chippendale chair, perhaps — that sits in a corner and looks pretty.

I Heart Huckabees is by far the best of Law's current crop of movies, and his best 2004 performance, but it's also the most telling example of his downfall. Director David O. Russell uses Law's callous corporate suit as a satirical whipping boy, an indictment of materialism. But Law is so obviously empty, all fake smiles and unfeeling glad-handing, that he seems for the first time like an easy target. When he is finally called upon to break down in tears, even vomit in self-loathing, his heartfelt acting still feels like the destruction of a very handsome straw man. You can't deconstruct someone who has already deconstructed himself.

Law's decline is not the unavoidable result of his higher profile. He has always starred in expensive, polished products; to accuse Law of selling out to Hollywood is like saying Michael Jackson fell off when he started trying to make gold records. Instead, the trouble stems from the actor taking roles that smooth away his animal charm, that diminish him to a set of traits shared by all good-looking players. He has become a brand, a British accent and a few fine features, and like any brand he is easy to purchase and not very exciting to have around.

Perhaps Law's recent shortcomings are more obvious because another actor is doing what he used to do, and doing it better. Peter Sarsgaard is in less movies that Law, and he has never played a lead role. But in Garden State and Kinsey he steals every one of his scenes with a fierce, sensual presence. He is not so ostentatiously gorgeous as Law, but more intelligent an actor; it is impossible to watch him and not wonder what he's thinking. And Sarsgaard shares with his predecessor an inherent distance: in last year's Shattered Glass, he was cast as an upright newspaper editor for the audience to empathize with, but he seemed so smart, so careful, that he became a man to be feared and — most importantly — watched.

Sarsgaard may prove more difficult than Law to typecast, simply because brains are less brandable than beauty. Or it is equally possible that Jude Law will soon surprise us with a performance that recovers his disquieting glamour. But for the moment, Peter Sarsgaard has fought the Law — and Law's losing.



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