Two years ago, just before the release of the disco flick 54, Ryan Phillippe (pronounced Fil-i-pee) was Hollywood's "it" boy. The star of Cruel Intentions and I Know What You Did Last Summer, he had solid acting chops and positively sizzled with young female moviegoers.
But when 54 was eighty-sixed by the public and the critics, Ryan's hope was dashed, reported Hollywood Gossip online.
He was relegated to the B-list, which currently nets him about $1 million a movie (to Leo's $20 million). He opens Friday in The Way of the Gun, a scale-budgeted shoot-em-up from Artisan Entertainment, the Blair Witch people.
"There are a lot of dangers in that rapid ascent thing," Phillippe, 26, tells The Post in an interview at his hotel suite in Beverly Hills. "Who wants that? For me, having it be more gradual and even-keeled, I feel like I've been able to stay on top of it a little bit better."
It's not that Phillippe hasn't tried for blockbuster success. He was passed over for the roles of Mel Gibson's son in "The Patriot" and Anakin Sywalker in Star Wars: Episode II, said Hollywood Gossip.
"They didn't want me," Phillippe says, turning his blue peepers downward for a moment. "But things work out for a reason. I'm glad I did this movie, that's what really matters."
Shot for under $10 million by first-time director Christopher McQuarrie, The Way of the Gun stars Phillippe and Benecio Del Toro as barely likable thugs who kidnap a very pregnant Juliette Lewis.
While Gun is not the movie to make Phillippe a household name, it shows he can do more than just teen-heartthrob.
"I was dead set against Ryan from the outset," says McQuarrie. "I thought he was a good actor, but I wanted someone who was a brawler." Then an associate reminded the writer of another objection he once raised, to Oscar-winning Kevin Spacey in The Usual Suspects.
"I thought, ‘Maybe I'm wrong here too,'" McQuarrie says, "and that was proven to be the case." In two months, Phillippe packed on 30 muscular pounds and sprouted the wispy beard still with him today.
While Phillippe got into the role of a kidnapper who manhandles pregnant women, his own wife - actress Reese Witherspoon - was hundreds of miles away from the Utah shoot, about to give birth to the couple's first child in LA
"There was a perverse irony to the whole situation," Phillippe says. "But I did this movie conditional to making sure I could be there for the baby's birth."
Ava Elizabeth Phillippe was born on the very last day of shooting (which, numerologists may want to note, was 9/9/99).
"Every day is like a gift with this child, especially right now because she's learning so rapidly," Phillippe says. "It's changed everything; the way I see the world, the decisions I make."
One of those decisions was to take a few months off to look after Ava at the family's Hollywood Hills home, while Witherspoon goes back to work.
Fatherhood is a role the Delaware native says he was fully prepared to tackle.
"I was ready a couple of years ago," Phillippe says. "My parents were married at 17, my mother had a day-care center. It was just natural to me, it made sense to start a family”-Albawaba.com.
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
