Stephan Jenkins is the lead singer of Third Eye Blind, a band whose debut album went platinum an astonishing four times, so playing a raucous rocker--opposite Mark Wahlberg and Jennifer Aniston--in a movie titled Rock Star shouldn't be much of a stretch. Coproduced by George Clooney and based on a true story about Judas Priest in a New York Times article, Rock Star is the tale of an ordinary salesman (Wahlberg) who plays in a tribute band when suddenly he's asked to become the lead vocalist of the real band; Jenkins is the leader of a rival cover band. While Rock Star will be his big-screen debut, Hollywood itself is familiar terrain for Jenkins, thanks to his publicly tumultuous, on-again/off-again relationship with Charlize Theron (which, on the day we speak, appears off).
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Q: How did you end up in Rock Star?
A: Mark is really why I'm in the movie. He and I became friends, and he told me he was doing this movie and he wanted me to costar. I hadn't done a movie before, but just seeing me play live--I think people are either actors or they're not.
Q: Are you an actor?
A: I think so. In the sense that I'm always animated in situations I'm in and I have a sense of theater in me. Animating situations in order to communicate with people is something you do when you're five or six--and I've always done it.
Q: Do you live the glamorous life?
A: Yes. But how are you defining it?
Q: You're in magazines and on TV and you can get into any party you want.
A: I don't live there. I'm really comfortable being a rock star, but I'm also comfortable not being a rock star. I think it's very important to be grounded.
Q: Are you and Charlize Still a Couple?
A: [No response]
Q: Well...are you?
A: [No response]
Q: Hmmm. I guess that covers Charlize. So, which actors in Hollywood do you admire?
A: Malkovich, De Niro, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Cate Blanchett. Also that Charlize Theron. I hear good things about her. I think she's really talented.
Q: Will you pursue the profession beyond this?
A: I just wouldn't have the audacity to tell you I would really deeply want to act and that I want to do things that people have never seen before. And I want to make the grandest gestures and smallest nuances. I would never tell you that there's pain and hope and ache in my life that I wanna funnel through characters. I would never admit to that, if you know what I'm saying. That would be too much.
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Dominic Griffin