US Magazine


HE DROVE OUT FROM DELAWARE WITH BIG DREAMS, LITTLE EXPERIENCE AND A BEAT-UP '86 CHEVY.  NOW,  [Ryan Phillippe] HAS HIMSELF A MOVIE-STAR GIRLFRIEND AND A MEATY ROLE IN '54.'
You show up at the West Hollywood mini-mall expecting the usual actorly evasions, but Ryan Phillippe is too young, too ardent, too smitten to play that game.  Fidgeting as he runs a hand through blond curls that have been dyed into dull blue spikes, he can't wait to tell you about the screening he just saw of the upcoming teen comedy, 'Election.'  "It's masterful, so nuanced, and very smart," says Phillippe.  Not incidentally, it also starts his girlfriend, Reese Witherspoon.  "Have you heard of her?" he asks.
We have.  She's the 22-year-old actress from Fear, Return to Lonesome Dove and the soon--to-be-released drama Cruel Inventions, in which she co-stars with the 23-year-old Phillippe.  We're starting to hear a lot about him too, especially since he played the loutish, doomed jock in 1997's surprise hit I Know What You Did Last Summer.  This month, he plays a bartender and resident object of desire in 54, a film about the glory days and downfall of Manhattan's hedonistic late-70's nightspot Studio 54.
The cast of 54 may include some more-stellar names (Mike Myers, Neve Campbell, Salma Hayek), but Phillippe has the lead role - and these days, the heat.  "He has a really appealing, sympathetic quality to him, in addition to looking like he does," says 54's writer and director, Mark Christopher, who cast Phillippe after seeing several hundred other actors.  "He really looks like a Studio 54 bartender, and they were the hottest men in New York.  But he also seems very vulnerable.  He definitely has the qualities of a movie star."
This afternoon, sitting at one of the mall's courtyard tables and polishing off and iced tea and a blueberry muffin, Phillippe looks more like a mall rat than a movie star.  Later he'll be heading for the parking garage downstairs, where he'll shoot scenes for Dancing About Architecture, an ensemble comedy in which he co-stars with the formidable likes of Sean Connery, Gena Rowlands and Dennis Quaid.  Phillippe plays a kid hooked on techno music, which would explain his dyed hair.  His own closet supplied his chic wardrobe: black boots, gray wool slacks, blue windbreaker and deep red dress shirt unbuttoned to show a pale, hairless chest.  He looks like a young Adonis onscreen, but in person he's striking without being imposing.  "He's a real sweetheart," says Paul Feldsher, the executive producer of Dancing About Architecture.  "I thought he was going to be one of those kids who just uses his looks, but it hasn't been that way at all."
Maybe that's because, at heart, Phillippe isn't really Hollywood.  He hails, in fact, from New Castle, Del. - a town, he says, "about as far removed from this business as possible."  Phillippe grew up with his three sisters - Kirsten, 29; Lindsey, 21; and Katelyn, 19 - in a stable family that's still together, still close.  His father, Richard, is a chemist for Du Pont; his mother, Susan, works in pre-and postnatal care for the government agency AmeriCorps.  They are, says Phillippe, "good, real, normal people with very real problems."
Partly in response to his own problems, Phillippe, in his early teens, developed an interest in acting.  "I didn't find myself that interesting," he says.  "And I wasn't the most outgoing person.  Acting, for me, in a lot of ways is really cathartic."
In high school, Phillippe was, he says, a kind of outsider who acquired and abiding distance for the most popular students, "kids who pull up at school in a brand-new car with a swager."  His portrayal of the smug quarterback in I Know What You Did Last Summer was, he says, "a way to have those people realize how ridiculous they are."  His high school didn't offer drama classes or school plays, but through a friend he got an agent and moved to New York after graduating in 1992.  A month later, he landed a part as a gay teen on One Life to Live.  When the character was written out of the show in early 1993, Phillippe moved to Los Angeles.  He got a few jobs - a failed pilot here, a TV movie about killer bees there - but felt that he wasn't in control of his career.
Phillippe's family supported his decision to pursue acting, for reasons, he says, "I still don't understand."  And from his tiny Los Angeles apartment he'd send back happy reports: "I would tell them how great it was, and then hang up the phone and cry because I had no friends and no money."  For the first couple of years, Phillippe says, he hated L.A.  Then he got a few more movies under his belt (1996's White Squall, with Jeff Bridges, being the crucial one) and decided the town wasn't so bad after all.  "It wastes too much energy to hate the place you live," he says.
Making friends was a key to the transition.  "We had our share of problems to get through, but we supported each other," says the actor Breckin Meyer (Clueless, The Craft), who four years ago gave Phillippe a ride home after an audition and became one of his closest pals.  "We're goofy as hell - I mean, we still go out on Halloween dressed as Power Rangers.  But we take our work incredibly seriously."  Meyer also appears in 54, and enjoys his first on-screen kiss - with Phillippe.  Both men clain to be blase about the lip lock.  "He's good," says Meyer, evaluating his buddy's technique.  "Not as good as my girlfriend is, though."
Phillippe would no doubt issue a similar disclaimer - especially since March 22, 1997 ("a pretty fortunate day in the history of my life"), when a mutual friend invited him to Witherspoon's 21st-birthday party.  "I don't think there was any intent to my invite," say Phillippe, who nevertheless spent the entire evening talking to Witherspoon.  The next day, he left for North Carolina to shoot I Know What You Did Last Summer, but he kept in touch with Witherspoon over the phone.  When he returned to L.A. a few months later, they began seeing each other.  Earlier this year, they moved into a house in the Hollywood Hills with their two dogs (his bulldog named Frankie, hers a Chihuahua called Cheech).  Now, he says, "we definitely do our share of talking" about marriage.  There's only one aspect of his old life that Phillippe seems to miss: his battered, baby blue '68 Chevy pickup truck with malfunctioning locks that would routinely trap valet-parking attendents inside.  "My truck had the most character of any vehicle on the road," says Phillippe, who recently bought a Volvo.
So, now he has a good (if somewhat overly sensible) car, a beautiful girlfriend, a flourishing career - and at this particular moment, an appointment with a hairdresser to retouch his blue spikes.  "My girlfriend is convinced that people think she's always with a different guy," he says with a laugh.  "I have this propensity to make myself look different.  It does something to my personality, and I hope it does something for the characters I play."

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