Jon Bon Jovi: Music to the Eyes

Jon Bon Jovi was a rock god in the '80s. Will he be a screen god in the '90s?

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I have a confession to make. I've never listened to Bon Jovi. I know that they were a band of the '80s and they racked up a serious roster of number-one hits. I know that lead singer Jon Bon Jovi is married to this day to his high-school sweetheart, Dorothea. But that's the extent of my knowledge of the rocker as rocker. Jon Bon Jovi the actor I actually know a little bit more about. For example, I know that he practically stole Moonlight and Valentino from his costars, Elizabeth Perkins and Whoopi Goldberg, back in 1995. And I know that since then he's taken a two-year break from music to pursue acting, and that he's managed to crank out four films, all of which will be coming out in the next few months, which is why I'm talking to him. And I know he just signed to do another movie, for producer Jerry Bruckheimer.

In person, Jon Bon Jovi is simply breathtaking. His features are chiseled, his eyes are searing blue, his skin is smooth and flawless. In tight jeans, a T-shirt and suede boots, he could pass for a college student, even though he's 35.

His New York City apartment is equally attractive. Floor to ceiling windows. Walls painted a soothing shade of gold. Comfortable furniture. Everything is done with style. No leopard prints here. Pictures of his two children (daughter Stephanie, four, and son Jesse James, three) line the long hallway.

"It's really like a great hotel room," Bon Jovi says as I look around. "I still can't believe it--the doorman will go out to buy you a pack of cigarettes. It took me months to get up the nerve to ask him to do it for me."

It's hard to imagine that a famous musician who's been on tour for the past decade and a half isn't used to snapping orders. But it's part of Bon Jovi's charm that he projects that aw-shucks, I'm-still-just-a-New-Jersey-boy-at-heart attitude.

We sit down at the dining room table, where Bon Jovi pours a few packages of sugar into his takeout coffee and stirs it with his fingers, then politely licks them clean.

"Are you wearing makeup?" I ask.

"What?" he gulps, totally perplexed.

"On your face? Are you wearing makeup?"

He takes my hand and rubs it across his cheekbones. "Of course not," he says indignantly.

I continue to touch his face, running my hands around his jaw, his eyes, his pouty lips. "It's just that I've never seen skin quite like yours. It has no pores."

He finally starts to laugh as I remove my hand, but doesn't say anything.

"I should let you know right off I don't think actors should be rock 'n' rollers and I don't think rockers should be actors," I say.

He smiles. "I know, I feel the same way. I mean, would De Niro make a record if he didn't do it perfectly? But I think there are rockers who have acted--"

"Please," I say, waving the whole notion away.

"So why are you here?" he asks. We both start to laugh.

"Because you were really good in Moonlight and Valentino," I say. "You were sexy and sweet and funny. And you seemed like a man, instead of a boy, which is really unusual in Hollywood movies these days. Maybe you'll be an exception to the rocker-in-movies rule. It helps that I don't know you at all as a musician. I've never heard Bon Jovi."

"Oh yes you have," Bon Jovi says without the slightest attitude. "Bon Jovi is so much a part of the culture that you may not even know that you've heard us, but I bet you have. Songs like 'Always,' 'You Give Love a Bad Name,' 'Runaway.' Trust me on this, you've heard us somewhere, somehow."

"I know young actors in L.A. who go nuts when your name is mentioned," I tell him. "They feel they shouldn't have to compete with you for roles, that you should be happy with your music success and leave the acting to actors."

Bon Jovi takes a deep breath. "I've already conquered the world I'm in. I know how to write a hit song. I know how to put on one hell of a concert. I know how to make fans happy. I needed something else. The band made a decision to take off two years and do the things we never had time for. So I started studying acting with a great coach, Harold Guskin. And I found that I really liked it. I did that small role in Moonlight and Valentino, and I went back to study with him again. The next thing I did was a small indie movie called The Leading Man. It was an unbelievable experience and I think the film, which was made a couple of years ago but only found a distributor recently, came out pretty well. I thought I'd be better off playing my first lead in a small film, so if I sucked, not too many people would know."

Bon Jovi flashes a killer smile. He's right--taking The Leading Man was a good idea. I've seen it, and he doesn't, in fact, suck. His character is a Brad Pitt-ish actor who goes to London to do a play, but winds up seducing everyone in the company, which then helps advance his career. He comes off as conniving, charming, funny and just enough of a prick to make you drool.

"There's a great sex scene in The Leading Man," I say, "where you and Thandie Newton are in bed and you try to get your hands in her panties. It's really charged, even though it's so short."

"This is the way I look at sex scenes," he says. "I have basically been doing them for a living for years. Trying to seduce an audience is the basis of rock 'n' roll. And if I may say so, I'm pretty good at it. So it wasn't much of a stretch. The interesting part was that the director, John Duigan Sirens, was going out with Thandie, and he was encouraging us to be really wild. It was like voyeurism at its best--with the proper lighting, no less! And Thandie, God bless her, was up for making it as hot as we could."

I'm blushing. Bon Jovi is not.

"I don't have any problems with any of that," he says with a shrug. "Plus, being married and monogamous, it's the closest thing I can do to having sex without getting in trouble for it."

As I ponder the notion of a rocker who's a faithful husband, Bon Jovi continues, "The only thing I like more than my wife is my money. And I'm not about to lose that to her and her lawyers, that's for damn sure. And you can quote me on that."

"Don't worry," I assure him "I'm going to."

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