The future Mr. Reese Witherspoon (and Ex-Mr.Reese Witherspoon) discusses his latest high flying picture -- emphasis on the high.
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As one of the eight hunkson the high seas in Ridley Scott's White Squall, Ryan Phillippe was faced with the problem of distinguishing himself from so many other boys-becoming-men--which could easily serve as a metaphor for the dilemma of his whole Hollywood existence. The actor did have a bona-fide memorable moment in Squall--he's the kid who's so scared of heights he whizzes all over the rigging below when skipper Jeff Bridges bellows at him to climb the ropes--so perhaps that bodes well.
Since Squall, the 23-year-old Phillippe has kept busier than many of his shipmates. He appeared in Gregg Araki's seedy 1997 indie Nowhere, and has three movies on the way: this fall's I Know What You Did Last Summer, a thriller that pits four teenagers who conspire to cover up a fatal hit-and-run against a mysterious stalker bent on revenge; this winter's comedy Homegrown; and the upcoming Little Boy Blue with Nastassja Kinski. Phillippe is pleasantly self-effacing about his onscreen endeavors.
Of I Know What You Did Last Summer, he says, "Ultimately it's someone chasing a bunch of kids and, y'know, wanting to dismember them. You can't be too serious about it." He seems to regard his personal life with equal modesty. "That's my truck right there," he says, pointing to a shabby, light-blue '60s pickup, "and my apartment's the size of most people's bathrooms."
Hollywood's obviously seen something behind Phillippe's low-key presentation, since he was cast with flavor-of-the-season Billy Bob Thornton in Homegrown, in which he plays a dope-smoking rube left in charge of a pot plantation. Phillippe insists that he never set foot on a real marijuana farm during the making of the film, and that the stuff he and Thornton smoke is not anything that'd get you high: "The joints were made of some herbal blend that tasted like hell and made your throat numb." Even the plants in the fields of the "plantation" were fake. "They made up these silk plants that were so real-looking, these kids, junior rangers at the forest where we filmed in Santa Cruz, waited till we wrapped for the evening and stole, like, five of them," Phillippe smiles. "But they got caught."
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Stacie Hougland