It was all in fun, but Corden, like many celebrities, is a Met Gal a regular.

Then there are the first-timers. These guests, no matter how famous in their field, often profess a bit of starstruck wonder at the concentration of celebrity around them, and even some nerves, like a kid arriving at a new school.

Work-life balance: Chicago Sky rookie Angel Reese walks the Met Gala red carpet after practice Monday

For example: Stray Kids. The K-pop band arrived at their first gala en masse, all eight dressed by designer Tommy Hilfiger in different iterations of red, navy and white. Entering the museum they ascended the grand interior staircase, hit the receiving line, and then headed to cocktails, where, they said, they slowly started to relax.

“We were nervous at first.” said band number Bang Chan. “We didn’t know what to expect, who we would meet,” added bandmate Felix. But they were settling in nicely, and had already spoken to Chris Hemsworth, Steven Yeun, and Brooklyn Nets guard Ben Simmons.

Then there was Ayo Edebiri, star of “The Bear,” who has been a multiple winner on the awards circuit this year but was attending her first gala. She seemed almost out of breath after greeting hosts Jennifer Lopez, Bad Bunny, Hemsworth and Anna Wintour at the top of the staircase.

“I’m really, really, really excited to be here,” she said. “This is another really beautiful thing that I will try to do my best to remember.”

Some other memorable moments and scenes from inside the gala:

A magical forest

Though the name of the gala’s accompanying exhibit was “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion,” it wasn’t really about Princess Aurora from our fairytales. Rather, it was about highlighting and illuminating fragile garments from the museum’s collection that were now being “awakened” to the world. Still, it’s safe to say the museum went all in on the fairytale vibe.

Entering the Great Hall, guests passed a huge centerpiece, 32 feet tall, representing a “whimsical tree.” Huge green flowers made of fabric sprouted over a forest-like undergrowth with twisted branches that looked just like the foliage Sleeping Beauty’s prince had to hack through to give her a true love’s kiss. Guests then walked through a live string orchestra and a tableau of performers dressed as woodland creatures — in tunics and tights — frolicking in the forest.

Fashion is art

Given the choice of viewing the exhibit or heading straight to cocktails, most guests chose the latter. But some did head to the show, a multi-sensory fashion experience involving not only sight but sound, smell and touch. Lena Waithe spent time alone inspecting the garments, and said she was “just blown away by the work that I’m seeing.”

The actor/producer added that she, as many, often thinks of fashion as fun and light. “But then I come here and am reminded that it’s an art form,” she said. And she recalled a speech Meryl Streep, as a Wintour-like character, makes to Anne Hathaway in “The Devil Wears Prada,” about the clothes we wear having been chosen for us. “I think we need to be reminded of that, that our style is influenced by people who are long gone,” Waithe said.

Seth Meyers stays in his lane

Late-night host Meyers, attending the gala with wife, said it was a nice break to get an evening away from childcare. But he also jokingly asked why his little ones — ages 8, 6 and 2 — weren’t invited. “I think it’s very rude that Vogue didn’t invite them,” Meyers quipped. “It’s so kid-friendly here. And they’re so good at keeping their mitts off things.”

Meyers said what he most enjoyed abut the gala was seeing “a lot of people that I’m a fan of, or have interviewed on the show.” But as for fashion, he likes to play it straight, he said: ”Nobody wants a guy like me taking a big swing. I stay in my lane.”

The Broadway crowd

There’s always a strong Broadway contingent at the Met Gala, because Wintour is a huge theater fan. At this gala, Jonathan Groff, fresh off a Tony nomination for “Merrily We Roll Along,” laughed and joked with good friend and fellow “Glee” alum (and “Funny Girl” star) Lea Michele, expecting her second child and resplendent in baby blue Rodarte. Groff reminisced about former Met Galas he’s attended, including one where he performed from the show “Hair,” and another in 2016 where guest Beyoncé had just released “Lemonade” about a week earlier. “That,” he recalled, “was epic.”

‘Little me would be so happy’

A table away sat another Broadway star, J. Harrison Ghee. Last year Ghee attended their first gala, a month or so before winning the Tony for best actor in “Some Like it Hot.” Ghee wore a dramatic feathered look by designer Howie B inspired, they said, by a caddis worm — perfectly in sync with the nature theme of the evening. The night, Ghee said, was proof that fashion was a vital and expressive art. And they added that “Little me would be so happy. I check in with them all the time — would they be proud? They would.”

A dress greater than the sum of its (broken) parts

As Sánchez and Bezos toured the exhibit, her distinctive dress made an equally distinctive noise as it scraped across the floor. “We won’t lose you,” joked Bezos. Sánchez said she had burst into tears when she first tried on the eye-popping design by Fernando Garcia and Laura Kim of Oscar de la Renta. The voluminous skirt had pearl and mirrored appliques and was meant to evoke Tiffany glass. “If you need a mirror just use my dress,” Sánchez quipped. She added that she felt the dress symbolized life — where everything is a bit broken, and it depends on what you do with the pieces. And she was misty-eyed when she described trying the dress on for Bezos: “He told me I had never looked so beautiful,” she said.

Fun fact: Sánchez said Garcia had told her he needed an item to fix the dress, and had ordered it on Amazon.

A clarion call to dinner

How do you get hundreds of chatting celebrities to hike across the museum for dinner? Organizers have tried a number of ways. One year, it was a team of buglers. Another year, Jon Batiste and his melodica led a band snaking through the crowd. Last year, David Byrne did the honors. On Monday it was a huge choir that emerged, singing original music entitled “Future of Us,” accompanied by dancers. Then a bell rang, and the performers called out: “To dinner!” And off the crowd went — slowly — to the Temple of Dendur, where the fairytale motif continued with tables featuring “enchanted candelabras entwined with flower arrangements.”

What’s to eat?

Arriving late is still fashionable; Some guests were still arriving at 9 p.m. and even much later. But for those who made it for dinnertime, here’s what was on the menu: a main course of filet of beef, pea tortellini, morels and spring vegetables, followed by a dessert of petits fours inspired by the Brothers Grimm fairytale of, yep, “Sleeping Beauty” — along with confections “in the shape of bespoke hats.”

But Andrew Bolton, the curatorial mastermind behind the blockbuster fashion exhibits at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, begs to differ. His newest show, to be launched by the starry Met Gala next month, seeks to provide a multi-sensory experience, engaging not just the eyes but the nose, the ears — and even the fingertips, a traditional no-no in a museum.

Open to the public beginning May 10, “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion” features 250 items that are being revived from years of slumber in the institute’s vast archive, with some in such a delicate state of demise that they can’t be draped on a mannequin or shown upright. These garments will lie in glass coffins — yes, like Sleeping Beauty herself.

As ever, celebrity guests at the May 6 gala, which this year is being hosted by Zendaya, Jennifer Lopez, Bad Bunny and Chris Hemsworth, will get the first look at the exhibit. With a dress code defined as “The Garden of Time,” one can expect lots of creative, garden-themed riffs. But will anyone go so far as to actually wear a living garden? As he began mounting the exhibit late last week, Bolton shared that there’s just such a garment in the show, a coat that has been planted with oat, rye and wheatgrass.

The garment, designed by Jonathan Anderson of the label LOEWE (a sponsor of the show), is currently “growing” right now in a tent at the museum, with its own irrigation system. It will be displayed in all its green glory for the first week, after which it will be replaced with a version, also grown for the show, that has dried out. As the museum puts it, the coat “will grow and die over the course of the exhibition.”

“Sleeping Beauties” will be organized around themes of earth, air and water — but also, Bolton says, around the various senses. The garden gallery where the coat will be displayed is one of four areas devoted to the sense of smell.

This means viewers will be able to sample scents connected to various garments. But it doesn’t mean that a floral gown, for example, will be accompanied by a floral scent. The reality is much more complex.

“What we’re really presenting is the olfactory history of the garment,” Bolton says. “And that’s the scent of the person who wore it, the natural body odors that they emitted, what they smoked, what they ate, where they lived.” For these galleries, the museum worked with Norwegian “smell artist” Sissel Tolaas, who took 57 “molecular readings” of garments, all to create scents that will waft through the rooms and enhance the visitor’s connection to the items on display.

But garments also create sound. Especially if the garment is embroidered, as is one famous gown by the late Alexander McQueen, with dried and bleached razor clams.

Because the original dress would be too fragile to now record the sounds it makes in movement, curators made a duplicate — with the same kind of razor clams that McQueen collected from a beach in Norfolk, England — and then isolated and recorded the sound in an echo-free chamber at Binghamton University. The effect, Bolton says, is “to capture the minutiae of movements.”

The same effect is achieved with a silk taffeta garment, featuring a sound called “scroop,” a combination of the words “scrape” and “whoop.“

“I know it sounds like a garage band,” quips Bolton, “but it’s a specific sound that silk makes.” It can be loud or soft, depending on the finishing of the silk. Taffeta has the loudest, so that’s what visitors will hear in one particular gallery.

And then there is touch.

“It’s one of the difficulties of museums, that you can’t touch things,” the curator says. The exhibit aims to change that, too. An example: an embroidered 17th-century Jacobean bodice. No, you can’t handle such a fragile thing. But with the help of 3D scanning, curators have recreated the embroidery on wallpaper. “The whole room will be covered with this wallpaper,” Bolton says. “You can use your hands to feel the shapes and the complexity of the embroidery.” The same technique will be used to experience the feel of a Dior dress.

Even with the plain old sense of sight, the exhibit aims to enhance the viewing experience with accompanying animations featuring details of the garment one cannot see with the naked eye — rather like looking through a microscope.

For what Bolton says is one of the most ambitious shows the Costume Institute has attempted, he went through the museum’s entire archive of 33,000 garments and accessories to choose the ultimate 250.

He hopes the various new technologies will became a norm, and that the institute will be able to build a database of the sounds and smells of some garments before they enter the collection — capturing them in living form, in their “last gasp” of life before they become museum pieces. Perhaps one day to lie in a glass coffin, like Sleeping Beauty.

“Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion” will run May 10-Sept. 2, 2024.

That’s not entirely the fault of the filmmakers, who do an earnest and thoughtful if less than totally absorbing job of telling Slahi’s story based on the best-selling memoir he wrote in prison, “Guantanamo Diary.”

It’s just that nothing can beat this intimate view of the real man, smiling and singing joyfully to Bob Dylan, no less. One wonders how he even managed to stay sane, let alone joyful, after 14 years at Guantanamo without being formally charged or tried. And in conditions that included a brutal stretch of torture: severe cold, sexual humiliation, sleep deprivation, a mock drowning, waterboarding, and threats to imprison his own mother at Guantanamo.

Luckily, “The Mauritanian,” directed by Kevin Macdonald, gets one thing very right: Tahar Rahim’s masterful central performance. The French actor achieves something his big-name costars — Jodie Foster, Benedict Cumberbatch and Shailene Woodley — do not, presenting a multi-layered, subtly shaded and deeply moving portrayal that proves hard to forget. Rahim deserves the awards buzz he’s getting; he also deserves more big roles, and soon.

Macdonald is known for documentaries (the Oscar-winning “One Day in September”) as well as features (“The Last King of Scotland”), and “The Mauritanian” has a quasi-documentary feel at times. Partly that’s because there’s a lot of dry information to get across here, namely the ins and outs of Slahi’s legal case. The film tries to achieve this by juxtaposing the stories of defense lawyer Nancy Hollander (Foster), who works to gain Slahi’s release based on lack of evidence, and U.S. military prosecutor Stuart Couch (Cumberbatch.)

Both Foster, in her brittle, crusty portrayal of Hollander, and Cumberbatch, sporting a southern drawl as a devoted military man with a conscience, are welcome presences in any movie. But the script here really doesn’t give them a lot to work with — we learn almost nothing about them as people outside the case. With actors of this caliber, that’s a shame.

Rahim, though, has plenty of room to shine. The actor finds a way to infuse almost every scene with humor and humanity. We first meet Slahi at a wedding celebration in Mauritania, two months after 9/11. The police show up to question him about ties to al-Qaida. “The Americans are going crazy,” they say. He assures his mother he’ll be back soon — and asks her to save him some food. It’s clear she fears she may never see him again (in fact, she didn’t.)

Four years later in Albuquerque, lawyer Hollander is approached to use her security clearance to help find Slahi, on behalf of his desperate family. She enlists a junior colleague, Teri Duncan, to help (Woodley, underused.) Meanwhile we meet Couch (Cumberbatch, also a producer here), who’s tapped by superiors to lead the prosecution. The film tracks these two as they pursue their cases, each stymied by government restrictions on information.

But the most accessible scenes feature Slahi himself, whether they involve the dreaded interrogations or the prisoner’s basic efforts at making a friend at Guantanamo, a French detainee he speaks to through a green mesh fence, and who dubs him “The Mauritanian.”

The film has the rhythm of a legal thriller heading toward a dramatic courtroom trial. The true climax is hardly that climactic: Slahi testifies by video at his habeas corpus hearing. He learns by mail that he’s won.

He whoops with joy. He’s going home.

And then, the closing credits tell us, he remains imprisoned at Guantanamo for seven more years.

“The Mauritanian” — 2.5 stars

MPAA rating: R (violence, including sexual assault, and language)

Running time: 2:09

Where to watch: In theaters.

What to eat. What to watch. What you need to live your best life … now. Sign up for our Eat. Watch. Do. newsletter here.

Atop that world, Anna Wintour remains a strikingly durable and influential presence. Her image never changes: the midi-length, brightly colored print dresses; the immaculate bobbed hair; the chunky necklaces; and of course the dark sunglasses, which make it harder for everyone to know what she’s thinking.

In her new online MasterClass on leadership, the Vogue editor in chief is revealing at least some of what she’s thinking.

She also describes her daily routine (she’s up by 5 a.m. and playing tennis before you’ve likely even smelled your morning coffee), opens a Vogue fashion meeting to the cameras (models were too young and thin in recent London shows, participants agree) and, in a segment sure to be catnip to many fashionistas, sits down with a Met Gala seating chart.

Wintour, who’s headed Vogue for more than three decades, also describes what she looks for in a job interview (she stresses that it’s not what you’re wearing), and in a meeting in her office (don’t “settle in” for a long chat, just saying).

Amid several weeks of nonstop fashion shows in New York and Europe, Wintour hopped on the phone from Paris this week to discuss the new online gig, her unabashed fandom for Broadway shows, her feelings about the latest trends on runways, and what advice she gives her 32-year-old daughter, Bee Shaffer (hint: it’s the other way around.)

This interview has been edited and condensed for length.

Q: You’re known as a fairly private person. What gave you the idea to do this MasterClass?

A: Well, they came to me. But over the years I’ve been asked so many times by young designers and students for advice and counsel. So it seemed a great opportunity to use a MasterClass to really talk about my own career and particularly my experience with the CFDA Vogue Fashion Fund, where we’ve mentored so many young designers, just trying to be helpful to young people thinking about getting into journalism or fashion.

Q: It seems fashion is always about finding the next new thing. At least twice a year, designers have to come up with a new idea.

A: Way more than that these days! You can go to a Fashion Week every week of the year. I just was on the phone being asked to go to Tokyo Fashion Week. It’s continuous today. It’s also an industry … in a state of reappraisal and structure. I think that’s why I’ve enjoyed it for so long, because it is always about change, and that’s very inspiring to me and very invigorating, whether it’s finding a new designer or understanding how we can talk to audiences in all these different ways.

Q: How have you yourself remained such a constant?

A: I think it’s super important to understand your own vision. If you want to make a comparison, look at a great designer: It’s very interesting to me to see Maria Grazia (Chiuri) at Dior, how she has re-established the codes of that house … the way Karl Lagerfeld when he was alive always did at Chanel. He would recast it every season but there was always the jacket, always the bag, always the little black dress. He would just reimagine it and modernize it every season. (Also) I see sometimes when people become successful they stay within a comfort zone … within quite a small world. What I’ve always tried to do is challenge myself by looking at art, going to the theater, traveling, walking in the streets, seeing what people are wearing and always bringing in young people to contradict me, tell me about new things and question my choices.

Q: What else has struck you at recent shows?

A: I do feel there’s a sense of optimism and joy coming through the strongest collections … The other thing I see happening which I think came across most strongly in in New York was that they’re very, very committed to diversity and inclusivity, and also re-examining what the fashion show is. It’ not just girls walking down on a runway. It’s more about individuality and personality and who the designer is themselves. It seems that the fashion show itself is being rethought.

Q: You give a lot of advice in this MasterClass. Is there any advice there that stems from some you’ve given to your own daughter?

A: On the contrary, she’s the one that gives me advice! She’s a very determined young lady who’s always had a very clear vision of who she is and what she wants to do. She’s loved theater since she was 8 years old and now she’s working there. But I think it’s very important to understand that you don’t have to make up your mind at 18 or 22. It’s important to try different paths if you’re not sure … it’s testing and trying lots of different things or working with different people and learning from different communities.

If you were speaking to high school seniors, what careers would you suggest they consider?

A: A career that can give you a voice, or (allow you) in some way to be to be helpful. I’ve been exceptionally lucky in that I find myself in a position where through what I do, I can have a voice and I can also be helpful to others.

En una denuncia separada en el mismo artículo publicado el sábado por el New York Times, Thurman dijo que el director de “Kill Bill” Quentin Tarantino la obligó a conducir un auto que ella creía que estaba defectuoso, resultando en lesiones que incluyen daños permanentes a su cuello y rodillas y una concusión cerebral. Un representante de Tarantino no respondió de inmediato una solicitud de comentarios.

Las denuncias de Thurman contra Weinstein, quien ha sido acusado de violación, acoso y conducta sexual inapropiada por montones de mujeres, eran muy esperadas porque la actriz indicó a finales del año pasado que tenía una historia que contar pero que quería esperar a estar menos molesta. Su historia llegó en una entrevista con la columnista del Times Maureen Dowd.

“Usé la palabra ‘ira’, pero me preocupaba más llorar, para ser honesta”, dijo Thurman, según el artículo. “Yo no era la pionera de una historia que sabía que era verdad. Así que lo que en realidad vieron era a una persona ganando tiempo”.

Thurman dijo que un encuentro con Weinstein en un cuarto de hotel en París en la década de 1990 terminó con él apareciéndose de pronto en bata de baño y guiándola a una sauna, pero que ella no se sintió entonces amenazada. Dijo que el primer “ataque” — la palabra aparece entre comillas en el artículo — ocurrió poco después en Londres.

“Me presionó“, dijo. “Trató de montarse encima mío. Trató de exponerse. Hizo toda clase de cosas desagradables. Pero de hecho no hizo mucho esfuerzo como para obligarme. Una trata de apartarse como un animal retorciéndose, como una lagartija”.

Más tarde, alegó, arregló una reunión con Weinstein y le advirtió: “Si le haces lo que me hiciste a mí a otras personas vas a perder tu carrera, tu reputación y tu familia, te lo prometo”.

El artículo del Times dice que los recuerdos de Thurman sobre ese encuentro terminan ahí, pero cita a una amiga que la estaba esperando abajo diciendo que Thurman salió del elevador desarreglada y temblando.

“Tenía los ojos locos, y estaba totalmente fuera de control”, dijo la amiga, Ilona Herman.

Cuando Thurman pudo volver a hablar, dijo Herman, la actriz reveló que Weinstein, que era uno de los hombres más poderosos en Hollywood, la amenazó con descarrilar su carrera.

Aunque el artículo no deja claro cómo terminó el encuentro en el hotel de Londres, Thurman dijo: “Harvey me agredió, pero eso no me mató“.

Una representante de Thurman, Leslie Sloane, respondió a una solicitud de detalles de la AP diciendo tan solo: “El artículo habla por sí mismo”.

Entretanto Ben Brafman, abogado de Weinstein, dijo que el productor estaba “estupefacto y triste” por las falsas acusaciones de Thurman. Enfatizó que Weinstein y Thurman habían trabajado juntos por más de dos décadas.

El abogado, en un comunicado, dijo que Weinstein reconoció haber hecho “un pase incómodo con la señorita Thurman hace 25 años que lamenta y por el cual se disculpó de inmediato”. Dijo que era un misterio por qué Thurman esperó tanto tiempo para pronunciarse o “adornar lo que realmente ocurrió para incluir acusaciones falsas de intento de abuso físico”.

Dijo que las declaraciones de Thurman al Times estaban siendo “examinadas e investigadas” antes de que Weinstein decida si es apropiado tomar acciones legales contra la actriz.

Thurman, una de las estrellas de “Pulp Fiction” de Tarantino, también dijo que justo antes de comenzar el rodaje de la película del director “Kill Bill: Vol. 1″, que se estrenó en 2003, le contó sobre lo ocurrido con Weinstein y que Tarantino confrontó al magnate, llevándolo a disculparse.

Pero también describió un episodio desgarrador durante el rodaje en México en el que Tarantino hizo caso omiso a sus temores de conducir un vehículo que alguien le había advertido que podía estar averiado.

Tarantino la convenció de que lo hiciera, dijo la actriz. “Alcanza las 40 millas por hora porque si no tu cabello no va a volar de la manera adecuada y te haré hacerlo de nuevo”, lo citó.

Un video que acompaña el artículo en internet — que Thurman dice que le tomó 15 años obtener — muestra a Thurman perdiendo el control del auto, estrellarse contra un árbol y luego ser sacada del vehículo.

“Eso en lo que yo estaba metida era una urna”, dijo Thurman, según el Times.

Ross, citing an unnamed confidant of Flynn, the former national security adviser, had reported Friday that during the presidential campaign, then-candidate Donald Trump had directed Flynn to make contact with the Russians. That would have been an explosive development in the ongoing Russia investigation, but hours later, Ross clarified that report on the evening news, saying that his source now said that Trump had done so as president-elect, after the election. At that point, he said, Trump had asked Flynn to contact the Russians about issues including working together to fight ISIS.

ABC was widely criticized for merely clarifying and not correcting the report. It issued a correction later in the evening.

“We deeply regret and apologize for the serious error we made yesterday,” the network said in a statement Saturday. “The reporting conveyed by Brian Ross during the special report had not been fully vetted through our editorial standards process. As a result of our continued reporting over the next several hours ultimately we determined the information was wrong and we corrected the mistake on air and online.

“It is vital we get the story right and retain the trust we have built with our audience — these are our core principles. We fell far short of that yesterday. Effective immediately, Brian Ross will be suspended for four weeks without pay.”

The news brought reaction from Trump, who tweeted: “Congratulations to @ABC News for suspending Brian Ross for his horrendously inaccurate and dishonest report on the Russia, Russia, Russia Witch Hunt. More Networks and “papers” should do the same with their Fake News!”

As for Ross, who is ABC’s chief investigative correspondent, he tweeted: “My job is to hold people accountable and that’s why I agree with being held accountable myself.”

Ross, 69, joined the network in 1994. He has won a slew of journalism awards, including, according to his ABC bio, six George Polk awards, six Peabody awards and two Emmys, among others.

He also, though, has drawn criticism for previous errors. In just one example, ABC had to apologize in 2012 when Ross reported on “Good Morning America” that James Holmes, the suspect in the movie theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado, might be connected to the tea party, based on a name listed on a web page. It turned out to be a different “Jim Holmes.” Ross was criticized for politicizing the story with the error.

Flynn pleaded guilty Friday to lying to the FBI about his contacts with the Russians.

“We have a pact with each other,” said Clayton, 57, who was receiving an award from MusiCares, the charity arm of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. “In our band, no one will be a casualty. We all come home, or none of us come home. No one will be left behind. Thank you for honoring that promise, and letting me be in your band.”

He ended by quoting lyrics that Bono, U2’s frontman, had written when the band was starting out: “If you walk away, walk away, I will follow.” At that, his bandmates came out to join him, performing “Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of,” ”Vertigo” and, fittingly, “I Will Follow.”

The evening at the PlayStation Theater in Times Square also featured performances by rapper Michael Franti, Jack Garratt, reggae singer Chronixx, Macy Gray, and The Lumineers, who are currently appearing with U2 on their “Joshua Tree” tour.

Clayton was introduced by British record producer Chris Blackwell as someone who “lived through addiction and came out the other side, and has been courageous enough to admit it.”

Taking the stage, the bassist quipped: “I’m not used to achieving anything on my own.”

Turning serious, he said: “I’m an alcoholic, addict, but in some ways that devastating disease is what drove me towards this wonderful life I now have. It’s just that I couldn’t take my friend alcohol. At some point I had to leave it behind and claim my full potential.”

He said part of the reason he had a hard time quitting drinking was that, “I didn’t think you could be in a band and not drink. It is so much a part of our culture.”

It was Eric Clapton, he said, who finally told him he needed help.

“He didn’t sugarcoat it. He told me that I needed to change my life and that I wouldn’t regret it,” Clayton said. He credited another friend, The Who’s Pete Townshend, for visiting him in rehab, where he “put steel on my back.”

As for his bandmates, Clayton said, “I was lucky because I had three friends who could see what was going on and who loved me enough to take up the slack of my failing. Bono, The Edge, and Larry (Mullen) truly supported me before and after I entered recovery, and I am unreservedly grateful for their friendship, understanding and support.”

Clayton received the Stevie Ray Vaughan Award for his support of the MusiCares MAP Fund, which offers musicians access to addiction recovery treatment.

Arriving at the theater earlier, he told reporters the fund was especially important given the current epidemic of opioid addiction. “MusiCares … really provides funding for a lot of people to look into those things and find help,” he said.

He added that his bandmates had been supporting him for 40 years.

“You know, I guess they loved me before I knew how to love myself,” he said. “So it’s really important that they share this with me.”

RELATED STORIES:

U2 at Soldier Field: Still searching for answers at ‘Joshua Tree’

U2 debuts new song at first stop of ‘Joshua Tree’ tour

Late-night TV hosts, U2 plead for love after Manchester bombing

Watch the latest movie trailers.

“Lone Star barbecue sauce,” he intones, in a deep, luxuriant drawl that sounds just like, well, Sam Elliott. “The perfect pardner for your chicken.”

You’d buy it in a second, even if you didn’t like barbecue sauce. Then again, Elliott — with his relaxed, confident presence and silvery, 72-year-old good looks — could pretty much sell us anything. And though in his long career he’s never really been a lead actor, a little Elliott goes a long way.

Take his cameo appearance in “Grandma” in 2015, playing just one scene as an old flame of Lily Tomlin’s character. The mood shifts alone in that scene, with two great actors each upping the ante, made it a master class in acting.

Now, in Brett Haley’s “The Hero,” Elliott finally has a film all his own, and he doesn’t squander the opportunity, giving an appealing, honest and nuanced portrayal of an aging actor facing a life crisis. If only the script were a match for Elliott’s performance. It ends up feeling more like an extended sketch than a full-blown film — and an oddly trite, formulaic one at that. Elliott may excel at playing a man of few words, but that doesn’t mean the script should be lacking in ideas.

We meet Lee as he’s facing a crossroads in life. Divorced, and distant from his adult daughter, he lives a solitary existence in Malibu, his only friend seemingly his fellow actor, Jeremy (Nick Offerman), who doubles as his drug dealer. It’s been decades — four, in fact — since he made a movie that he’s proud of, a Western of course. Sometimes, he dreams of wandering around that old movie set.

His agent calls, but he doesn’t have a job to offer. Seems Lee has been chosen for a lifetime achievement award from something called the Western Appreciation Guild.

This rather strange career milestone comes at a sticky time for Lee. He’s also received a call from his doctor, with frightening medical news. It’s all making him look back at his life, and wonder how much there is to actually appreciate.

Enter Charlotte (Laura Prepon, of “Orange is the New Black”), the appealing, wisecracking, poetry-loving younger woman he meets at Jeremy’s house as she pops in for an illicit purchase. Charlotte, a standup comic, takes an immediate shine to Lee, despite the obvious age gap. He’s attracted to her, but not sure about that age thing.

But Lee needs a date for the lifetime achievement dinner. When his daughter Lucy (Krysten Ritter) demurs, he turns to Charlotte. She’s game for pretty much anything, and to pep up the evening, she pops a little pill into Lee’s pre-dinner drink. He’s particularly loose when he shows up for the big event, and makes a grand gesture at the dinner that goes viral and launches him back onto the pop culture front burner.

But all is not hunky dory. An audition goes awry. And the budding relationship with Charlotte proves tricky.

It’s tempting to give more detail here, but that would be giving away too much, because, honestly, there’s not a whole lotta there there. This is no fault of Elliott, who remains genuine and absorbing throughout. The supporting performances — from the lovely Prepon, who has a few meaty scenes, to Ritter and Katharine Ross, Elliott’s real-life wife, who have much less to do — are right on target. But the actors deserve more to work with.

The irony of the title here, of course, is that Elliott has never really played the hero of his own movie. This one’s a start. Here’s hoping he’ll get some better material to pardner with.

“The Hero” — 2.5 stars

MPAA rating: R (for drug use, language and some sexual content)

Running time: 1:33

Opens: Friday

RELATED STORIES:

‘It Comes at Night’ review: Family fights to survive apocalypse, inner demons

A friendship and a cowboy story: Why director Brett Haley wrote ‘The Hero’ for Sam Elliott

Watch the latest movie trailers.

“Somebody kidnapped my son,” thought his father, Ron Suskind.

“I am just going to hold you SO tight and love you SO much,” thought his mother, Cornelia Kennedy, “that whatever is going on will just go away.”

But once we wipe away the tears from that devastating moment when doctors diagnose little Owen Suskind with “regressive autism” — and raise the real possibility that he’ll never speak again — we’re in for a fascinating, sometimes excruciating, uplifting and yes, even funny ride, thanks to director Roger Ross Williams and of course Owen’s devoted and determined family.

As you know if you read Ron Suskind’s best-selling 2014 book, it turned out that the answer to unlocking Owen’s mind lay in the magic of movies — animated Disney movies, that is. The family already knew that watching these films over and over gave Owen a sense of peace and comfort.

MOST READ ENTERTAINMENT NEWS THIS HOUR

But then one day, watching “The Little Mermaid,” the boy who hadn’t spoken in a year suddenly said, “Juice-er-vose.” His stunned parents thought he wanted juice, but he rejected it. Then they rewound the VHS tape. Owen was repeating a line from Ursula the sea witch: “It won’t cost you much. JUST YOUR VOICE.”

Ron Suskind recalls the moment with wonderment. “He’s still in there,” he remembers thinking. And from that moment on, the Suskinds were on a rescue mission, they say, “to get inside this prison of autism, and pull him out.”

The story goes on, in fits and starts, with amazing progress and terrible setbacks, too. After more years of disappointment, with Owen speaking mostly gibberish, he one day said to his parents about his older brother: “Walter doesn’t want to grow up, like Mowgli or Peter Pan.”

That unlocked another discovery: Owen was thinking complex thoughts. He just needed Disney characters to express them. His father began speaking to him as Iago, the parrot in “Aladdin” voiced by Gilbert Gottfried.

The film jumps back and forth in time, from Owen as a child to Owen as a 23-year-old, about to graduate from his special needs school (save some Kleenex for the graduation scene — don’t say we didn’t warn you!) and begin living on his own in an assisted-living apartment.

“How does it feel?” Ron asks Owen about the impending move. “A little nervous, a little exciting,” Owen says. Later, he describes what “independence” means to him: “Independence means great and fabulous!!”

A poignant subplot to the story involves Owen’s relationship with a fellow autistic student, Emily, and the tricky terrain of discovering love and sexuality. As brother Walt points out, romance in Disney animated films pretty much begins and ends with a chaste kiss, and that’s all his brother seems to understand.

” Full-on sex?” Walt says, in a very honest moment. “I have NO idea how to get at that.”

Owen’s relationship at one point causes him great pain, and one of the toughest moments of the film is when we realize how ill-prepared he seems to handle a sudden emotional blow. “Why is life so full of unfair pain and tragedy?” he wails.

But his parents also know that Owen has developed the tools to fall down and get up again. At one point, Owen is required to speak to an audience. It’s an impossibly tense moment as Owen approaches the podium, seemingly full of confidence, and then doesn’t speak for long seconds.

And then, we see signs of Owen’s durability. “I think he’ll be OK,” his mother says at one point. A simple thought, but it evokes more tears. Save some Kleenex for that, too.

“Life, Animated” — 3 stars

MPAA rating: PG (for for thematic elements, and language including a suggestive reference)

Running time: 1:29

Opens: Friday

RELATED STORIES:

‘Wiener-dog’ review: Todd Solondz tragicomedy is a canine tale in four acts

‘The Infiltrator’ review: Bryan Cranston entertains with dangerous spy game

‘Ghostbusters’ review: Feig conjures spirited reboot with Melissa McCarthy, et al

Watch the latest movie trailers.