Ryan Phillipe
The Times Magazine, April 2008
That he knows it isn't yet all about the acting is made clear when Ryan Phillippe tells me of the time Sir Elton John took him to afternoon tea at Elizabeth Taylor's. "He'd invited me to a luncheon. Not just with him and his husband but this whole bunch of powerful people. Anyway, during the course of it he ended up saying, 'What are you doing later, because if you're free and would like to ...'" At which point I can't help but interrupt with a question of my own: 'Why do you think he'd wanted to meet you in the first place?' "I don't know," the actor admits, colouring slightly. "I didn't ask. I think he'd seen a couple of films and hopefully he liked the work." There is a pause. "Or maybe he just thought that I was cute."
Doubtless Sir Elton admires the entire Phillippe oeuvre. Rightly so, for during the 2000s the increasingly accomplished actor, one of Hollywood's new golden boys, has delivered impressive performances for directors Robert Altman (in Gosford Park), Paul Haggis (the 2005 Best Film Oscar-winner Crash) and Clint Eastwood (the World War 11 drama Flags of our Fathers). But yes, there's also the cuteness thing. At 33, this father of two (he and ex-wife Reese Witherspoon have a daughter Ava, aged eight, and a son Deacon, four) is still as handsome as any Bruce Weber model and that seems to be hard for many people to get past. Accordingly, cuteness is what he remains best known for.
A young star objectified and undervalued as a result of their good looks? In the greater scheme of things, no, it is not one of the major injustices of the age. Nor is it remotely new or unheard of, even allowing for the fact that Phillippe is blonde and male, not blonde and female. But having seen him in the aforementioned movies, and most particularly having watched his impressive leading man turn in the forthcoming Iraq war feature Stop-Loss, I have to say that it is at least a pity and that critical reassessment is overdue. His all-American male beauty and that union with Witherspoon may have made him a gossip column staple, but here is a significant talent, one deserving of recognition.
And here is seriousness too. Phillippe's tabloid currency may shape expectations of the man forever pursued by paparazzi but undeservedly so, for his is very much an old head on athletic young shoulders. "God bless the USA and its constitution," he says when I mention this aspect of his fame, "but the First Amendment really does allow a lot of insane behaviour on behalf of the media here The fact that they can shoot into my kids' pre-school yard, or that if I take my daughter to an equestrian lesson they're able to take pics of her on horseback when I'm not even in the frame ..." He sighs heavily. "I've often thought of moving to London, which I love and where I have friends and where the rules are tighter."
For the foreseeable future though he must remain here in Los Angeles, not so much because it's where the work is but because it's where Witherspoon and the children are. The couple were introduced in 1997 at her 21st birthday party, she famously telling him, 'I think that you're my present.' They married in the summer of 1999 and stayed together for seven years, but are now divorced. Phillippe has never spoken publicly about the reasons for their break-up and these days he extends the same policy of polite but determined evasion to question about a rumoured close friendship with one of his Stop-Loss co-stars, Abbie Cornish (Witherspoon is currently linked with another actor, Jake Gyllenhaal).
He readily admits however to having been unprepared for the degree of attention a high-profile romance brings. "I definitely fooled myself into believing it would be easier than it was. To have people speculating constantly about the state of your relationship, casting aspersions and telling lies ... It took more of a toll than I was immediately aware of. That divisive element to the modern media, and in particular the internet, puts a strain on any couple in the public eye and when you factor in being separated so much because you're working in different places ... I thought I was more prepared for all of that than was the case. Not that I blame our no longer being together on that one thing. I take responsibility and she (Witherspoon) would also for the way we ended up going. But it certainly didn't help."
However, the attention has not abated since their parting, due largely to his own rising stock in Hollywood. Phillippe regrets this for his own sake, but much more so for that of his daughter. "She's aware and it creates in her a lot of anxiety, which is partly my fault. When Ava was very young, I was young too. And brash. I'd get ... I wouldn't like to say violent, but incredibly visibly angry at the paparazzi back then. She was my first child, there was all this stuff going on around us and my every instinct was to protect her. I remember one time that I'm not at all proud of, I was holding my daughter and handed her to Reece and ran off to chase this one guy down and hit him. I would never do that now.
"Back then I didn't have control over it though. And while it's not like she necessarily processed that event in her mind, I think the attitude I had at the time did create in her a lot the fearfulness she has today." Son Deacon is not affected in the same way, his father says. "Mainly because since his birth I've realised that you've got to make it seem like less of a big deal. Ava to this day though ... It breaks my heart to think about it. Having her say, 'My friends at school saw a picture of me in a magazine and they made fun 'cos I was carrying a blanket.' A little girl having to consider how she looks before leaving the house? I have a privileged life in lots of way and hate to complain yet there's something vile about that."
But with paparazzi attention remaining a fact of his daily life, Phillippe says he is now trying to turn it to some advantage. He has started printing up t-shirts bearing the online addresses of charities he supports (www.childrensdefence.org, for example, or www.africare.org) and wearing them out and about, "because these pictures go around the world and untold numbers of people get to see them. One organisation told me their web hits went up 2000 per cent overnight after one such image was syndicated." Which brings us back to Sir Elton and Miss Taylor and that invitation to tea. "I found them inspirational, it's true Just entertainers perhaps, but they've raised millions and have actually saved lives."
That he is now invited to keep such starry company is a measure of his appeal, of course, but also of how far he's come. When I remark to Phillippe that I have never been to his home state of Delaware and ask him to tell me a little about it, he chuckles. "You probably never will go. Not many outsiders do. But let's see ... It was the first state to ratify the Constitution. It's the second smallest state after Rhode Island, with a total population of just 840,000 or so. That's nothing if you think of Los Angeles or London. I suppose what's most interesting about it is its proximity to other places. I grew up 20 minutes from Philly and 40 from Baltimore. New York and DC were just two hours away by car.
"So while there's a lot going on all around, Delaware itself doesn't have much of an identity. And I'd draw a parallel there with myself in the regard that I can go off in different directions either as an actor or in my personal life but that I am, I think, essentially unremarkable. I'm kind of Delaware personified. That having now made some 30 movies I'm probably the most famous person ever to come from there tells you all you need to know." (His home community of New Castle, though technically a city, has fewer than 5,000 citizens.) "And I guess that's why I always had the drive to move on. Had I stayed, I think mine would have been a very restricted and predictable life."
Phillippe describes his father Richard, a chemist for Dupont, as "a cerebral man but with a natural artistic ability that due to work and us (the actor has three sisters, one older and two younger) he has rather ignored." His mother Susan used the family home as the base for a day centre for neighbourhood children aged from two up to 11. "I'd get up for school and already there'd be 10 or more kids around that weren't part of my own family." Did he resent that intrusion on his space? "God, no. I love kids. I loved it that even though I wasn't very old myself, I was helping younger ones to cope and learn. All of that served me incredibly well when I became a young father. So much was second nature to me."
When he tells me he is going back to visit his parents in just a few days' time, I remark that they must be immensely proud of all he has achieved. "Well, I think sometimes they feel it's removed me from their lives," Phillippe replies. "My kids and my work are here. And the life I live now is so different from theirs and from the way I grew up that it can be hard for us to relate. This is such a rarified existence in some ways and unless you've experienced it yourself you can't know what its stresses are, by which I mean the media, the paparazzi and the gossip. It can become a barrier. So while yes, they're incredibly proud, they also feel something's been lost along the way, and there's a truth to that."
Not that he was ever likely to stay close to home. Phillippe describes his boyhood self as having been an introverted and largely anti-social. "I just wasn't that interested in what was immediately around me. If you come from a little place and don't share the mentality it can be a bit stifling. I hope it doesn't sound bad to say I didn't want a small life. I wanted to experience something different. I aspired to that even without knowing how I'd achieve it." It was seeing Paul Newman in the classic Cool Hand Luke that first opened his eyes to acting. "I remember being fascinated and inspired by his performance. But the idea that I might be an actor too? We didn't have money or any connections. It just seemed so unrealistic."
Fate intervened when he was 15. "I was getting my hair cut one day and this lady in the shop said to my mother, 'A friend in Philadelphia has an agency and you might want to take your son to meet her.'" This because of how he looked? Phillippe laughs: "Yeah. I think it was that superficial." Within months he was getting cast in TV commercials. Then, following an audition in New York, there came the offer to play a gay teenager on the daytime soap One Life to Live. "Coming from where I do, just being on television was a huge deal. But in that role? It was really controversial in our little world. People in the church were appalled, I've heard, which seems funny now but really was high drama back in 1992."
When his character was written out after a year, Phillippe decided to move to Los Angeles, "because I knew there was the most opportunity here for actors of anywhere on the planet. But I was scared and out of my depth. For a start, I hadn't travelled much. I'd never even been on a plane. But off I went, and ended up living in someone's garage. I had no friends and no money. And because I couldn't afford a car, I'd either take the bus to auditions or go on my skateboard, meaning I'd turn up all sweaty and scuzzy. There were more than a few bleak nights where I'd be on the phone to my mom saying, 'No, everything's fine. I'm doing good.', all the while hiding the fact that I was close to tears."
His break was in getting cast as one of Jeff Bridges's young Adonis crew members in the at-sea drama White Squall in 199. And since then Phillippe has worked steadily, with the following year's I Know What You Did Last Summer and 1999's Cruel Intentions among his early box office hits. Thereafter, however, he found himself being offered only replica roles. "Insubstantial, youth-orientated material basically. I decided to hold out and not compromise. I can't say agents were always supportive. I think they'd've preferred bigger pay checks and a more obvious trajectory so I've had to switch representation here and there. But now I think people are starting to get what it is I want from my career."
Stop-Loss is director Kimberly Peirce's first feature since 1999's Boys Don't Cry (for which Hillary Swank won that year's Best Actress Oscar) and takes its title from a measure the US government has enforced in the cases of 80,000 servicemen and women, over-ruling the right to return to civilian life at the end of their agreed tour of Army duty and sending them back into conflict instead. Thus far, American audiences have been resistent to movies about the on-going conflict in Iraq, staying away not just from mediocre offerings such as Rendition and Lion for Lambs but also from Paul Haggis's excellent, profoundly moving In the Valley of Elah. Stop-Loss too is currently underperforming in its home market.
It is to be hoped British audiences will be more receptive, for beyond the flashy, video-generation photography and frenetic editing of the combat scenes is an intelligent and affecting story of patriotism, brotherhood and the often insurmountable difficulties soldiers face when trying to reintegrate into their former lives and relationships. The performances are, without exception, beautifully judged and executed. And if Phillippe (as a staff sergeant who is forced against all previous instincts to go AWOL) and chief supporting actors Channing Tatum and Joseph Gordon-Levitt look improbably handsome and Abercrombie & Fitch-like on first sighting, that reservation is soon forgotten.
He was not Peirce's first choice for the pivotal role. "But she met with me and I'm told what hit her hardest was this paternal thing I've had going on since childhood. I like to look out for those I care about and am responsible for. I'm not competitive in that sense. And a staff sergeant's role is akin to father-protector. In that sense, I think I started to make a lot of sense to her." What Peirce gave to Phillippe in return was the chance finally to come of age on film: having already proved himself amid ensemble casts, Stop-Loss marks his successful transition to leading man. He's not going to stop being handsome any time soon. But with luck and further good choices, it should at least be much more about the acting from now on.
Copyright © 20120 Alan Jackson