Esquire

IN 1998, ESQUIRE INTRODUCED AN INTIMATE, PROBING INTERVIEW series called What I’ve Learned. Longtime Esquire writer Mike Sager sat down with Oscar-winning actor Rod Steiger for an unusual conversation. Why unusual? I remember encountering the Steiger story when I was 18. Flipping through the issue, I landed on the interview and didn’t know who this guy was or why he deserved my attention. The headline was simply his name, age, the date of the interview, and current location. I quickly learned that it was Steiger in his own words, with punchy aphorisms and delicious nuggets of wisdom (“Fear is an impossible thing to avoid”). Also, there were stories about sex. Reading the interview felt like candid advice from the uncle who slips you a beer when you’re still years away from…

Writer, 58, Los Angeles Interviewed by Michael Sebastian, November 14, 2025 I never thought this would be a job. Sitting at the bar alone is one of the great luxuries in life. I have had great emotional breakthroughs just sitting at the bar. My parents viewed restaurants the way many families view Broadway shows. Going out to a restaurant was a big night out for us. My dad would cut Ruth Reichl’s reviews out of the Los Angeles Times and say, “We’re going here.” I’m not an extraordinary cook. I make extremely good French toast, though. I put in a lot of vanilla, a lot of real cinnamon, and a lot of egg. I hate Champagne. I know, it’s inexplicable. I can’t quite explain why. When I went to Side…

WE ARE LIVING THROUGH THE DUMBEST possible times. We are a nation of adults who know which Harry Potter dormitory we’d be sorted into. We are a country whose newspapers regularly use the phrase “claps back” in breaking-news headlines, whose Department of Homeland Security said “womp womp” in official correspondence, whose finest actresses are calling each other things like “greedy little pig bottom” on Ryan Murphy’s All’s Fair. It is dangerously stupid out there. Do you want to know how I know it’s bad? I know it’s bad because I know it’s bad, and I’m one of the five dumbest people I’ve ever met. It was not always this way. I am old enough to remember when George H. W. Bush’s vice president, Dan Quayle, corrected a child’s spelling test, marking…

WHETHER YOU’RE A SMALL- fry studio or a big-time star, the prevailing wisdom for how to succeed in Hollywood these days is simple: find a niche and stay there. Horror producers produce horror movies. YA writers write YA. Slambang action stars star in slam-bang action flicks. Being a Swiss Army generalist now feels as dated as celluloid and drive-in theaters—which is precisely why Rian Johnson confounds people. I mean, who the hell is he? The eye-candy confectioner behind nine-figure Star Wars tentpoles like The Last Jedi? The stealth power player who produces streaming hits like Poker Face and 3 Body Problem? Or the twice Oscar-nominated writer and director of the deliriously entertaining, pretzellogic Knives Out murder mysteries? Johnson is impossible to pin down. He likes it that way. On a sunny…

I HANG A RIGHT ONTO THE FOXEN CANYON Wine Trail in the hills north of Santa Barbara, and the 2026 Lucid Gravity seems to defy physics. My hands grip the steering wheel as the vehicle carves country roads with a slalom skier’s dexterity and the gusto of a much smaller car. Not bad for the seven-seat, all-electric SUV, which handily wins Esquire’s Car of the Year. “Three-row SUVs usually either have a lot of space but aren’t much fun to drive, park, or get around, or they’re sporty and dynamic but lack the space,” says Derek Jenkins, Lucid’s senior vice president of design. “When we began planning Gravity five years ago, we saw an opportunity to do an SUV with plenty of interior space that still drives like a performance sedan.”…

Italian shoemaker Santoni has a unique way of making bespoke shoes. Instead of starting with finished leather, it cuts the upper part of the shoe from what it calls Origine: vegetable-tanned but undyed calfskin, the perfect canvas for Santoni’s in-house craftspeople to work their magic. Painstakingly, they build layers and layers of pigment and patination to create a one-of-a-kind color and finish like what you see on the smoky-blue Uniqua pair shown here. The double-monk-strap shoe—made from a single piece of leather and available with solid-gold buckles, if you so choose—certainly lives up to its name. But something so singular takes time. You’ll need to give it about six weeks for the first fitting and up to six months for the final shoes. If you ask us, it’s well worth…