Actors/Actresses: July 2008 Archives

What I really liked about Ben Shenkman - besides the fact that he's such a terrific actor - is that when I met him on the opening night of Outfest last month, he was absolutely the first celebrity to arrive.

That meant we could have a nice conversation on the red carpet without my eyes darting around every so often to make sure I'm not missing anyone else!

Ben's first leading role was in the romantic comedy "30 Days" in 1999 and he went on to appear in the features "Chasing Sleep," "Requiem for a Dream," and "Americanese." But his biggest role was his role in HBO's adaptation of Tony Kushner's hit play "Angels in America." On television, Ben had recurring roles on "Law & Order," "Canterbury's Law" and "Love Monkey."

Now Ben is one-half of a gay couple in "Breakfast With Scot" who take in a relative's orphaned and very free-spirited young son. Tom Cavanaugh plays Ben's partner, a former NHL star who is now a publicly closeted sportscaster. The film marked the first time major Canadian hockey teams had allowed a gay film to be made at their facilities. "Breakfast" was the opening night film at Outfest.

"This one has really thrived on the (film festival) circuit in a way that I haven't seen before in my own experience with little movies," Ben said. "They at a certain point thought it would probably go straight to DVD in the U.S. but it just kept playing really well in the festival circuit. It's so nice, it;s what's supposed to happen in a way - a film that connects with audiences has a chance to get out there."
I asked Ben about the amazing Noah Bernett who plays the young boy who changes the couple's lives.

"The whole thing wouldn't have worked if they hadn't found him," Ben said of Noah. "It can have no trace of a self-conscious performance about it otherwise you're not worried for him. And all the comedy comes out of being worried for him and all the pathos comes out of being worried for him. They were just very lucky to find that kid."

On working with Tom Cavanaugh: "He's great. I'm in the movie more or less because of him because I had worked on both of his TV shows ("Ed" and "Love Monkey") and gotten to know him there so when they were putting this together, he called up and said, 'If you;re free, this would be a good part.' He was intimately involved at that point in getting the script together, he had a lot of input."

On the NHL's cooperation: "It created a little bit of news because there were people who got angry at the NHL. And the NHL, so admirably, was just like this is such a non-issue. They didn't see themselves as endorsing anything. They weren't trying to be progessive, they just didn't give a (expletive) in the nicest possible way."

Ben is also in the terrific little film "Then She Found Me" which also premiered at the Palm Springs Film Festival and marked the directorial debut of Helen Hunt. Ben played her brother in the film. The film enjoyed a surprisingly strong run in limited release and comes out on DVD in September. It also starts Bette Midler, Matthew Broderick and Colin Firth.

Be sure to catch both films this fall!

Wilson Cruz is an actor who I've written about many times on this blog and in my newspaper column who I greatly admire and who is a really special guy. I've seen him several times in the past month or so at events so this interview that we did at the GLAAD Awards in late April is just a little dated but still worth posting.

Here is our little chat:

Q. Hey you! What's new with you?
A. I'm recurring on a new series for Steven Bochco called 'Raising the Bar." I just completed the first episode of what I hope will be many. At least two ], probably more. It's got Mark-Paul Gosselaar and Jane Kaczmarek. I play Rafael de la Cruz, this very flamoyant character that becomes a love interest for one of the main characters - Jonathan Scarfe.

Q. Great! Too bad you can't be Mark-Paul's love interest too! Okay, what else you got going on?
A. We're doing the second season of "Rick and Steve (The Happiest Gay Couple In the World)" at the moment and "He's Just Not That Into You" coming out in October.

Q. Here we are at the GLAAD Awards. I'll bet you;ve been to a lot of these.
A. It gets bigger and better every year. This year was especially special for me because of the award (in Miami) I got a couple of weeks ago. It was an overwhelming night. I felt completely honored and cried halfway through my speech.

Q. How did it feel to get that kind of recognition? You've been out since you were 19 (in 1994) and you didn't get a lot of attention in the same way as TR Knight or Neil Patrick Harris. How did it feel to know that people really do know what you went through?
A. It's overwhelming. I feel incrediboly supported by this industry. I've been allowed to be who I am and live my life and do great work. I'm incredibly proud. I continue to be amazed by the opportunities that continue to come my way. I knock on wood that they keep coming."

What's really interesting about Matthew Montgomery's film career so far is that while his most significant leading roles have been gay men, they have been in various genres ranging from romantic comedy to drama to sci-fi. We talked about some of his best films in part two of our interview. Click HERE to read part one. But first, Matthew tells me about his inspiration for gay roles: Not long after "Gone But Not Forgotten was released, he started getting fan mail: "I got this letter from this kid one that that said that he really liked the movie and that it made him confident and gave him the courage to come out to his family and accept who he was. Man, are like you kidding? To have that kind of effect on somebody, It was when I got that first email - and subsequently I've gotten many, I have a purpose now. It's more than about me and how many movies I can do what character I can play. It's also about having a voice and standing up for something important and being a part of helping us move forward and integrating us into society... The younger gay generation looks us to up with respect and see that they can be open about who they are and that they can have aspirations and dreams and not have to mask who they are in order to succeed in the world."

Long-Term Relationship: "I loved it and thought it was very funny, the characters very rich. I felt very strongly about the script." The film also marked Matthew's debut as a producer with Guest House Films: "I don't claim to be an expert in the industry but as an actor, when you're on enough sets, you pick up on things and you do know how to run the show and you do know how to put the pieces together. It's all up there in your head. You just have to access it and that's what happened. ... It aso helps me to be very realistic about how it happens. I don't have any illusion of the glamour, I get my hands dirty getting in it and making it work, making it happen. It's a lot of hard work but it's well worth it."

"Gone, But Not Forgotten" "It's about this guy with amnesia who is found in the woods sort of wandering around when he's rescued by a ranger in the area. He has no recollection of his past. The movie is about him trying to recapture whatever his history is. At the start of the movie he doesn't even know what his name is. It's about him rediscovering who he is, where he came from and what that means. And in the meantime he stays with this ranger and, of course they fall in love. For as low budget and low production values as it is, it's surprisingly stayed as one of the top 10 gay movies of all time which is shocking to me."

"Back Soon" "Both characters are supposedly straight and I took it with that approach anyway, I thought it was more interesting. They had never had wanted to have that kind of experience before with another guy. In the end, it's because you realize - and this is a spoiler - it's because my character is being possessed, so to speak, by the character of his dead wife."

Socket: I jumped in head first. I love sci-fi so the idea to combine the two genres of science fiction and gay was, I thought, a great opportunity. The thing I liked about "Socket" is I don't feel that it tries to be more than it really is. You can look at it and sort of interpret it as sort of these underlying elements of drug addiction in the gay world or addiction with relationships. But really on the surface it's just a really cool, creepy, cringe-worthy science fiction movie with gay elements that's a lot of fun. I really loved that we are sort of moving past the typical gay story of coming out. There's still definitely a place for that and I hope those stories continue to be told but it was nice to be a part of something different that was part of a very specific genre.

Pornography: A Thriller: (The film is in post-production and will most likely be released in the first quarter next year.) "This one's really trippy on a psychological basis. It's very non-linear. It;s based on this fictional legend of this former gay porn star who supposedly died in a snuff film. The character that I play is a writer who reviews gay pornography and he comes across footage that could potentially be the actual snuff film that this guy died in. It's really sort of (expletive) with your mind and makes you question what's real and what isn't and who's real and who isn't. I don't think there's anything out there that's ever been done like this. "

On nude scenes: "I'm still not comfortable with it. I'm very sefl conscious about my body so it's very strange to me. the thing thast I;ve been lucky with ius where every movie that I've done where they've asked me to be nude and I've agreed to it, the direvtor and actors i;ve wolrked with have been so considerate and sensitive., always checking my pulse to make sure that I'm ok. there;s been a lkot of talking and pre-planning before we get onto the set so that we do know what we're duty. It's not as sexy as people think. It's very robotic and mechanical. Move here, turn your butt cheek there. It's the very opppsite of romantic or hot - for us anyway. I've done so much nudity is my moveis that when I don't, sometimes I get letters from people who say, 'Why didn't you take your clothes off. I'm like, Are you kidding me? I just don't even respond to those kinds of emails. I didn't really think much about the nudity at the beginning.l If it was there, it was there. Now I think about it a lot more."

The future: Matthew has written his first screenplay about "Stick Figures" about a self-absorbed gay man who is battling through alcoholism who gioes back to his hometown and fins out he has inherited a little girl - his daughter. It's about someone learning how to be a parent."

To learn even more about Matthew, click HERE to get to his web site.

Alfre Woodard is set to play a very different kind of character - for her - on the new NBC series "My Own Worst Enemy" set to debut in October.

She plays the handler of a man played by Christian Slater who has two personalities: a mild-mannered family man and a cold blooded secret agent. The twist is that the family man doesn't know the other personality exists.

This is how Alfre described it as she slipped into character at last week's Television Critics Associaton Summer Press Tour sesson: "What we actually do is we manifest a divergent identity dormant in a sealed-off portion of the medial temporal lobe."

Fortunately, when we spoke earlier, the conversation was a lot easier to follow!

"It's said of me that I'm the lady decides who lives and dies," she said of her character, Mavis Heller. "I've obviously been an agent in the field before and I got promoted to this position and I am Christian's boss."

The last time Alfre appeared as a regular on a television series, she was the mysterious new neighbor on "Desperate Housewives." But Betty Applewhite had too many secrets to really connect with the other women of Wisteria Lane and Alfre left after one season and an Emmy nomination.

She didn't hesitate to try series TV again.

"I'm not picky, I just make decisions," she explained. "If this had come as a stage play or a miniseries or a movie I would have done it. It happened to be a series. I follow the material."

And there has been some mighty good material over the years including her Oscar-nominated role in "Cross Creek" and the features "Passion Fish" and "Down in the Delta."

She's also earned an astounding 15 Emmy nominations - including four wins - for such films as "Mrs. Evers Boys," "The Piano Lesson," "Gulliver's Travels" and "The Water is Wide." She was nominated again earlier this month for her performance in "Pictures of Hollis Woods."

With such a stellar resume, I wondered if the 55-year-old Alfre is constantly flooded with scripts after all these years.

"I sort of got into this intending to go the long haul So I've always made my decisions based on not only what interests me, but with an eye out for longevity," she said. "So I've never been flooded but I've always consistently had offers."
So what makes her say "yes" to a project?

"I've always said I wouldn't do anything that I wouldn't go to see so that kind of knocks out a lot," she said. "Work is hard and you leave your family for it sometimes. So when I look something and I feel like it's something I can do and I thought of something that probably no one's going to think of to bring to that, then I'll go to work."

Alfre can disappear into a role but she also cuts a very glamorous figure on red carpets. But as someone who still considers herself more of a working actress than a star, she doesn't take that part very seriously.

"Any time you're not at work, it's sort of make-believe," she said. "Work is real, even though you're pretending to be a person. All the rest is frivolity and frivolity is always fun but at the end of the day, I don't feel that anything I do outside of my set is going to make a difference in the world. So I take it like fun. When it's not fun, you go home."

Matthew Montgomery kept unexpectedly coming back into my life long before I even met him.

More than a year ago, I watched a screener of the drama "Back Soon" as part of my Outfest preparation. Then a few months back, I rented a bunch of movies one night and two of them - coincidentally - happened to star Matthew: "Long-Term Relationship" and "Socket."

So when the opportunity arose recently to interview Matthew, I jumped at the chance. We met at Insomnia Cafe in LA for a morning chat. At 30, he is one of the more thoughtful, articulate and prolific gay actors in the movie business - and one of the most talented. Our conversation was so rich that I am presenting this profile in two parts with the second part to run Sunday.

Matthew looked awfully cute as he ate a giant chocolate muffin during the first part of our intervew. As he licked the chocolate off his fingers, I wondered if this had always been his plan to focus on gay roles in film.

"It was totally by accident," he said. "I came to Los Angeles wanting to be the next big thing, hit some big Hoillywood movie. But I wasn't working. There's a lot of actors here and it's tough to get work in this town, The first film I was cast in was a gay independent film called "Gone But Not Forgotten." It was a gay character so obviously there was something about that that was very personal to me and meant something to me on a deeper level. So I took it. Then, what I found out was I could build a career in this smaller industry and sort of get my footing there, And now, here I am. I've just sort of been working one movie after the other."

Matthew has completed a trio films that are in the post-production stage: "Pornography: A Thriller," "The Dark Side of Love" and "Redwoods."

He knows that by playing mostly gay parts, he is taking a road less traveled than most actors.

"A lot of actors come into this industry and they do a gay film here or there and either they themselves or through the advice of other people, decide that they don't want to continue playing other gay characters because they're afraid of being typecast. I felt the complete opposite," he said. "I felt a huge sense of loyalty to these filmmakers and to the viewers watching these movies. If I spent the rest of my life only doing movies in the independent film industry, at least it's part of something that's progressive and part of something that's at the frontier of movement and change."

"It was never my plan to stay in or leave the gay independent film industry," he added. "It was just omething that kind of happened. But I kept working and what started to happen is it started to open other doors for me in general."

Born in Houston and raised Corpus Christi, Matthew thought his television was filled with tiny people and he wpndered how he could get into the set. It was then that his artist father explained to him what acting was.

"I never wanted to do anything else," he said. "I've always known I would move either here or to New York and pursue that. I auditioned for Julliard when I was 18 and didn't get in so I moved here.'
After high school where had one of the leads in "Annie Get Your Gun." he went to study theatre at USC and landed roles in many mainstage productions. He left after a few years "to find myself" then went on to study on a scholarship at Point Park Conservatory in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania and was cast in his first short film.

He then returned to Los Angeles, this time, to pursue acting full time - but not necessarily as an out actor.

"I have to confess, in the very beginning, I had no intention of being an out actor, no intention of being open about that," he said. "I figured I'd spend my whole life not talking about it or keeping it hidden."

I interject and remark: "You were going to be like Raymond Burr weren't you?" (Burr was the famously closeted star of TV's "Perry Mason" franchise).

Matthew chuckled then asked, "Who?"

We laugh. I feel old and ask him to continue.

"That was my intention. That was sort of what was expected. If you came out of the closet you didn't have a career. But things have changed and things have moved forward and we've progressed. We're growing as a society and we're integrating. and I think that's a very important. The only way that that's happened us because people have the coiurage to say who they are and to stand up for what they believe in. I decided early on that I wanted to be one of those people that was at the forefront of this change. I wanted to be one of those people that stood up for that."

Coming In part 2 on Sunday: Matthew talks about his films, about producing and about doing nude scenes.
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Here are some highlights of Matthew's work:

To learn even more about Matthew, click HERE to get to his web site.

We all know Gale Harold as sexy and slutty Brian Kinney from the much-beloved "Queer as Folk" series. Of that amazing cast, he has found the most work on television including the lead in the short-lived Fox series "Vanished," a role on HBO's "Deadwood," and a stunning two-part guest spot on "Grey's Anatomy" as a paramedic who is a closet white supremicist. Now he has landed a role as a regular on "Desperate Housewives" which begins its fifth season this fall with the show jumping ahead five years.
Here is part of our conversation last night at the ABC party which was the culmination of the network's day on the Television Critics Association Press Tour.

Q. That is a very dramatic opening scene you had on the season finale of "Desperate Housewives." It was such a shock because Susan (Teri Hatcher) came home to you and not to Mike (James Denton). How have things been going so far?
A. I've worked about four days and it's been very nice, a very easy transition to go from being a complete stranger to all these people to just going to work and doing the work. (Teri) has a very ready grasp of what she needs to bring to the scene, she's a very fluid actress and it's been great to work with her."
Q. Do you feel like you've finally left Brian behind?
A. Brian behind? Is that a joke?
Q. it was such a great role. And you're doing such different stuff now and I'm starting to look at you in a different way.
A. I'm glad that you say that. That's kind of a baseline obstacle for an actor who comes from a place of obsurity then gets a big job and then they get associated with whatever that big job is. And when the job is really somewhat extreme then you worry. Everyone decides to get freaked out about typecasting at some point in their lives. But I really wasn't.... If I was never anything other than what I did on that show then maybe I would be typecast but I think I have the ability to consider the world at large and approach it.""

At this point, some other "journalist" crashes our little chat and remarks that Brian Kinney "could have been straight or gay." I love Gale's response: "No, I think he could never have been straight. I mean, the guy was absolutely homosexual. It was part of what was interesting about playing him. He was what he was. He was, essentially, an absolutely-realized gay man living with no boundaries."

This same "journalist" who doesn'rt even let people finish their answers then asks Gale about his "Desperate Housewives" character which he has already covered. So, he jokes: "He's a self-possessed gay man, out and proud."

I wrestle control of the interview back and ask him about his fellow "Queer as Folk" castmates. Are they in touch?

"By the way, congratulations to Sharon Gless who was nominated for an Emmy today. That should be the lead, don't bury it, please. I had lunch with Scott Lowell (last) Saturday and I emailed Peter Paige this afternoon. Randy (Harrison) was in Paris and we talked a day after he got back about three weeks ago."

I wrap up my part of the interview when the other "journalist" starts asking questions like "Are you a nightlife guy?" "Are you an outdoors guy?"

I didn't stick around long enough to hear the answers to those STELLAR questions...

Talked to Katey Sagal at the Television Critics Association Press Tour yesterday and wanted to share that with you. On her new show, she plays Charlie Hunnam;s mom! Will post through the day with TCA-related items and general items whenever I get the chance.

Katey Sagal knows she can get laughs, but that's not what she'll be looking for in her latest TV gig.

The star of the sitcoms "Married With Children and "8 Simple Rules" has stepped into the role of the fierce matriarch of a notorious outlaw motorcycle gang on the new FX series "Sons of Anarchy."

"She's lived in this motorcycle world for 30 years and was married to the guy who started the original club," Katey said if her character, Gemma. "I've been wanting to do a drama, I've been wanting to do something different. This is really something I was looking for and I'm really happy to be here."

Gemma could not be further from Peg Bundy and that was the appeal for the actress who started in showbiz as a background singer for Bette Midler.

"I feel like I've been in the sitcom comedy world so much - which I'm so grateful for - and I sort of feel like there wasn't a lot more to explore," she added. "I feel like I really did a good job in that world."

The show, which will air on Wednesday nights beginning Sept. 3, has Katey working with her husband, Kurt Sutter, who created the show and is one of the writers and executive producers.

They had previously worked together on a few episodes of "The Shield" and so far, things have been pretty smooth.

"He's in the writer's room and producing and I'm actually on the set so during the day we don't seem to run into each other quite as much but we're all on the same lot so we can sneak off for lunch," she said.

"We never have done this and it's working out great. I have enormous respect for my husband as an artist. It's great to leave the husband and wife cap at home and I have no problem with him being the boss which I think is his favorite part (laughs)."

Would her character ever ride a motorcyle? Katey said no but quickly added: "She might ride on the back."

I don't know about you, but I think Val Kilmer is the sexiest Batman of all time. When he had on the Batman mask, those lips had me transfixed! I was already smitten with him from the days of "Top Gun" and always find his performances interesting. I've met Val at a few premieres but had never interviewed him until this week. He is the subject of my Sunday column in the LA Daily News and I am giving you all an advance look:

Val Kilmer is quick to note the irony that his latest film, the gritty prison drama "Felon," is being released on Friday - the same day as the latest Batman movie "The Dark Knight."

Christian Bale plays the caped crusader for the second time, a role Val played in 1995's "Batman Forever." He succeeded Michael Keaton in the original set of films and preceded George Clooney.

"I really liked it, the last one," he said of 2006's "Batman Begins." "I wanted it to be me and Clooney and Michael Keaton to be in the next Batman movie together. We can be the bad guys."

There were couple of misconceptions that Val, 48, wanted to clear up when we talked last week: he has no plans to play David Lee Roth in a film ("Why? Why? Why would do that?") and he gained all that weight that resulted in a run of tabloid photos for "Felon."
"I'm determined to stalk the paparazzi in Malibu and show my torso," he joked. "I got a lot of (overweight) pictures out there. You can't chase after these guys and say: 'It's for a movie!'"

In "Felon," Val plays a prison legend at Corcoran State Prison named John Smith who basically has nothing left to lose and acts accordingly.With the extra weight, a heavy mustache and countless tattoos, the handsome actor is barely recognizable.

"The old-time lifers have the big heavy mustache and one of the reasons they have it is because (inmates) read lips," he explained.

Val is "really pleased and satisfied" with the film and its authentic recreation of prison life. But he almost wasn't in the movie at all.

"I actually turned the studio down because I wanted to be in a nice, light-hearted comedy. But the research (by director Ric Roman Waugh) was so compelling. It feels like you must imagine it's like in prison. I think it's easy to say you don't want to go to prison."
Val made his splash in the mid-80s with the films "Real Genius" and "Top Gun," was a sensation as rock star Jim Morrison in "The Doors" and starred in "Willow," "True Romance" and "Tombstone" before he was tapped to play Batman.

The movie was a huge box office hit but Val walked away from the franchise to star in an eclectic mix of films including "The Saint," "Heat," "The Ghost and the Darkness," "The Island of Dr. Moreau," "Red Planet," "The Salton Sea," and "Alexander."

Despite his leading man looks, he has always considered himself a character actor.

"I think of Jim Morrison as a character role - he was an extreme character. Even my first movies, I'm nothing like those guys. So I don't really feel like I'm becoming a character actor, it's really just acting. But it is more fun for me now because I know how to do it better."

Proof that was Val has never been better came in the criminally overlooked "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" which he starred in with Robert Downey Jr.
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"I wish we had gotten better distribution," he lamented.

\But he is glad there are still good roles like that out there and plenty of directors he'd like to work with.

"When I was younger, I was pretty interested in challenging myself tom explore acting so I did whatever I was interested in - that's why I think I have such an eclectic group of movies," he said. "Now, I think more about the director. It's a director's medium and I understand now that I'm older that you don't turn down great directors."

I first took note of Stephen Dorff when he did a TV movie back in 1990 called "Always Remember I Love You" with Patty Duke. I'll never forget it, mostly because at the end of it, I bawled my eyes out. Then four years later, he really blew me away with his performance as Stuart Sutcliff in "Backbeat," one of my favorite movies of all time. So I was really excited to talk to him today for an interview that appears in my newspaper column tomorrow.

Here it is, a day early for the readers of Out In Hollywood:

To prepare for an interview I did with Stephen Dorff on Tuesday, I watched his latest film "Felon" and felt like I was in the middle of a nightmare.

It's a raw and riveting movie that has the 34-year-old star of such films as "Backbeat," "Blade," and "World Trade Center" playing a good guy who gets sent to prison for killing an intruder who was robbing his house.

"What comes through in the film is how in one moment, it all changes," Stephen said. "He didn't know to stay inside the house after a guy comes out of nowhere and is in his kid's room. You want to know who was in your house. He hits him (after chasing him outside) but doesn't want to kill him."

Once he gets to prison, he has to navigate brutal inmates and deadly guards in a movie based on actual events and the atrocities that had taken place at California's Corcoran State Prison.

"It was a great script when I read it and I wanted to do it. A lot of people wanted to do this part, it was a pretty hot script around town. (Writer-director Ric Roman Waugh) said he wanted me."

Stephen was impressed with the level of painstaking research Ric had done to ensure authenticity in "Felon" which hits theaters July 18.

"Rick wanted the vibe real and that's how he approached the whole movie," he said. "A lot of the (extras) were parolees who had done time in Corcoran. Some of them were still on parole. It was the real deal."

Val Kilmer plays a prison "lifer" who forms an unlikely bond with Stephen's character.

"Val was great," he said. "I didn't know where he was going with the character. He showed up in the goatee, the tatoos. He was this hulking presence yet this sensitive poet meditative guru. He had so much (expletive) going on. I was blown away by his performance."

At 34, Stephen feels like he is doing some of the best work of a career that dates back to 1985 when as a child actor, he appeared in various television movies and in such sitcoms as "Roseanne" and "Different Strokes."

"In the last few years, there's all these movies coming out and working with so many of these greart directors. In the beginning, I did all these great movies then did a few I shouldn't have done. The 'Fear.com' and other genre movies that were big pay days but not at the same level of quality."

In addition to "Felon," he also recently completed the period epic "Public Enemies" opposite Johnny Depp, Christian Bale and Channing Tatum and directed by Michael Mann.

"I don't know how it works. There's been times when I've wondered, 'Why the (expletive) am I not getting that movie? There's so much to this game like who's hot and all that. If you stay true and work with great directors, that's all I can hope for. Right now, I feel the most solid and my work is the best it's ever been. I feel fortunate."