Ryan Phillippe
Ryan Phillippe
Matthew Ryan Phillippe is an American actor, director, and writer. After appearing on the soap opera One Life to Live, he came to fame in the late 1990s with starring roles in a string of films, including I Know What You Did Last Summer, Cruel Intentions, and 54. In the 2000s, he appeared in several films, including Gosford Park, Crash, and war drama Flags of Our Fathers, Breach, and Stop-Loss. In 2010, Phillippe starred as Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Greg Marinovich...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMovie Actor
Date of Birth10 September 1974
CityNew Castle, DE
CountryUnited States of America
I've been in this business for a long time at my age, I've just turned 30, and I feel like my wife's career is going incredibly well, my kids are happy and healthy in schools, we've both been able to buy a house for our parents, respectively, in the places they live.
I only want to make movies I want to see. That may mean my career is somewhat limited, but that is my version of integrity. No matter how it performs or how it's received, I can be okay with it.
In my career, I've often played the protagonist or the hero of the movie, and there are so many rules inherent to that role. The audience needs to stay with you, identify with you and like you. When you play the bad guy, those rules go out the window. There's so much freedom there.
A lot of producers cookie cut movies one after another, but I'll be a little more careful, and have the opportunity to be, because I have the acting career to subsidize the producing.
There's always difficulties and challenges in every life, I don't care how much money you make, where you live... and that's something this film speaks to.
We have a great job where you get to put out something positive like this that might make people think, that might make people feel.
I still have sadness and complicated feelings about my divorce. But how beneficial is it to keep hanging onto those feelings? If someone lives through an accident, his aim is to become better and healthy. My aim is always to progress - to make better decisions and be a better father, a better boyfriend, a better husband if it happens again.
Well actually, some weeks they'll write that I'm jealous of living in her shadow. Then other weeks, they'll write that all I want to do is loaf around on her money! It's ridiculous!
What's more ludicrous is the whole idea of me being jealous and competitive.
LA can be a very open and accepting creative environment. But it is important, because there is this odd separation here, it is important to make your kids mindful of other people and other people's plight.
I would show up for work and look at the pairs of tight, shiny shorts or jeans that made up our 54 wardrobe and wonder if we were making Showgirls...
People often say that even if you're playing a character who's not redemptive, you have to like the character, which I disagree.
Look at music: I've always loved hiphop and rap, and now there's this whole progressive movement, with De La Soul and Mos Def, Common. It's some of the best stuff around.
The film is set in 1979, which isn't that long ago, but it's a complete period piece. Things have changed so drastically socially since then.