Balthazar Getty

At 25, Balthazar Getty is already a Hollywood survivor.

______________________________________

Having made his film debut at 14 in 1990's Lord of the Flies, the great-grandson of oil baron J. Paul Getty spent the rest of that decade as the ringleader of his own hip, pre-Leo nightlife posse, occasionally popping up in a movie role (Young Guns II, Natural Born Killers, White Squall) or ad campaign (Klein, Lauren, Versace). "Sure, I've been through a lot of shit in my life," says Getty. "I mean, I did that whole scene before Puffy, before anybody. Fifteen years old and I could get into clubs. I was all over it, I wouldn't change it for anything, but I'm done with that. There's not much worse than being in some club at 2:05 a.m. when the lights come on, there's a couple of balloons on the floor and they're playing that fucking 'Ain't No Sunshine When She's Gone.'"

Did his wild-child behavior give a downward curve to his career trajectory? "They don't tell me that, but I get called in any time there's a role for a gas station attendant, a drug addict or a quiet, blue-collar bad guy," Which seems particularly ironic, given Getty's blue-blood heritage and the fact that his famous great-grandfather's holdings included a chain of gas stations. The young Getty's holdings include a company called 5150 Productions--named for the code that permits the authorities to put a 72-hour psychiatric hold on someone--For which he coproduced and stars in a movie called Shadow Hours. "I play--guess what?--a gas station worker on the graveyard shift who meets this thriller writer," he says. 'Together, they descend deep into the realm of the unwell. It was a big story that deserved more money and time, but it still turned out pretty damn good." Good enough, apparently, to get him cast in director Wayne Wang's upcoming film Center of the World, from a Paul Auster script, as well as the gangster opus Deuces Wild. As for the future, Getty has some quite specific ideas about what he'd find creatively challenging. "I'd love to do a cool, commercial movie like The Matrix or something by David Fincher, But," he adds, smiling, "not I Know What You Did Last Christmas. I want to get in a position in the next couple of years to do what I want--to direct, to write, to take a sick fucking script to the director of Run Lola Run and say, 'Let's work together.' When I'm 40, I want to be someone like Sean Penn, someone who hasn't compromised himself, someone who is undeniably good and makes amazing choices."

______________________________________

Stephen Rebello