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Cruel Intentions’ diabolical duo: Sarah Michelle Gellar
and Ryan Phillippe
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"I hate these because the only place to sign is on my boobs," says Sarah Michelle Gellar, laughing as she puts her pen to a poster for the benefit of a grinning fan.
Newly bronzed from a recent vacation in Mexico, Gellar takes a seat in a Los Angeles hotel ready to talk about her place in the new young Hollywood. She has a hit television show in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and had supporting film roles in I Know What You Did Last Summer and Scream 2, but her leap to the big screen as a leading lady occurred only recently, with the fantasy Simply Irresistible and her latest film, Cruel Intentions, a contemporary Dangerous Liaisons remake.
Indeed, the cast reads like a roll call for Hollywood's next wave of young stars. They're on the brink of becoming household names -- Gellar, Ryan Phillippe (54, Playing by Heart) and Reese Witherspoon (Pleasantville, Freeway). After witnessing the breakout of rising stars such as Neve Campbell, Alicia Silverstone and Skeet Ulrich a few years ago, it seems that Hollywood's next generation has already arrived.
Gellar seems to know, however, that you pay as large a price for success as you do for failure. And she admits that her intimate association with teen fare might limit her options in choosing roles.
"I do worry about it a little bit," she says. "Hopefully, Cruel Intentions will bridge the gap a little bit. Maybe people will see me as a little older instead of the teen that Buffy is. For me, it was an amazing opportunity to prove I could do something different. If audiences don't take to it, then I didn't do my job."
Much has been said about how young Hollywood actors, like American teens in general, are more sophisticated than generations past; that they're less apt to sell their souls and more willing to take a more active role in productions while taking on challenging and sometimes controversial parts.
For Gellar, the first such incarnation comes in the form of Cruel Intentions' feisty fatale Kathryn Merteuil, a young woman who, between lines of cocaine, uses her sexuality to bend others to her whims. But the trend has a downside. Conservative watchdogs, and sometimes the fans themselves, take issue with how some young stars come across in the movies. Like Winona Ryder, who responded vociferously to criticism that she glorified cigarette smoking in her films, Gellar resents the notion that she must please the public before pleasing herself.
"I'm an actress," she says. "It's my job to choose roles that I enjoy. It's the parents' job to monitor what their child is doing. Cruel Intentions is R-rated, and I can tell you I would've been ready to see this movie at 16. Let parents see this film with their kids. Let them tell their kids that what Kathryn does is not OK."
Still, despite all the film's controversial forecasting, Cruel Intentions' cast sees little that's risqué.
"The sexuality is mostly implied," says Witherspoon in an interview at the same hotel. "There's not a lot of gratuitous sex and nudity. It's very tastefully done, and everything else is a bunch of talk."
But more than anything, it's the casting that is most likely to sell this movie. One of the key products is sure to be Phillippe.
Supremely confident, with shortly cropped blonde hair and a tinge of rebellious arrogance, he seems to be the James Dean of the new age. Before breaking into the movie business, he worked such typical day jobs as waiting tables and renting videos.
"The weirdest thing about a video store is that guys will come in to rent a porn and bring it back in an hour," Phillippe says. "The tape will still be warm from the VCR. It gives you quite the mental image. I have a real dark sense of humor, which is probably why I enjoyed the Valmont role so much. Meanness makes me laugh. I can't tell you the most diabolical thing I've ever done, because I'd probably go to prison."
Indeed, when he first moved to L.A., he related a story of how he and a few buddies broke into a shopping mall and spent the whole night vandalizing holiday decorations, including a photographic session of them having simulated sex with the Easter bunny.
But the passage of time has allowed him to channel his kinetic energy into his work. No stranger to playing sexually charged roles, he was a bartender who dabbled in the erotic arts in 54 and a HIV-infected teen in Playing by Heart. His first major gig came when he was 17, playing a gay man on a soap opera.
"It was 1992," he says. "It was out there but not completely OK. The show was funded by a lot of Midwestern companies like Procter & Gamble by virtue of commercials. Everyone was kind of hesitant, but it taught me a lot. I got the most amazing fan letters. I would hear from fathers who'd reconciled with their sons because their dilemma was similar to what my character was enduring on the show. I'm not afraid of certain things. Sexuality has never really scared me."
But now it's seven years later and, despite being on the rise in Hollywood, Phillippe remains aloof to the pressures associated with being a young star.
"I haven't found much to be too difficult," he says. "I think Hollywood is only tough if you're a shithead. And if you're not, it's easy. There's so many things that I don't buy into and so many things that don't interest me. I just got a cool job, and my personal life is great."
Phillippe isn't wary of falling into the heartthrob trap, where people pay more attention to looks than performance.
"It's hard for me to think of myself in those terms," he says. "When you see things written about you, it's like an out-of-body experience. I'm a very insecure person. I'm not comfortable with the idea."
Younger actors are also increasingly aware that Hollywood careers are fleeting. They see the box-office fluctuations and subsequently acquire a career consciousness, dictating that the attributes of a given project are just as important as the paycheck.
"You never know what this business is going to do," Witherspoon says. "I've flirted with the idea of quitting and going back to school. But as long as there's great parts to play, I'll stay around. Managers and agents have called me with scripts and I've turned them down, and they've said, 'Why not? It's the biggest director in town.' And I'd just be like, 'There's nothing I can do here. I'm not the right actress for this role.' "
One thing the younger actors have in common is a certain indifference to the nuances of Hollywood. They're modestly appreciative of their situation. They count themselves lucky but don't bubble with enthusiasm either. They attempt as much as possible to come across like regular people. They make self-deprecating remarks to illustrate that they're not arrogant. They all claim they were "nerds" in high school, and they're particularly shy about how they got started in acting. Few actors admit how difficult it really is to break into show business.
"I feel this business chose me," says Witherspoon. "That's why it's been easy for me. I certainly wouldn't be in it if I had to move to L.A. and sleep in my car. I wouldn't make those kinds of sacrifices."
Younger actors are also aware of social issues that have wormed their way into the film industry, things like racism and ageism. And they have a pragmatic attitude toward their situation.
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Sarah Michelle Gellar and Selma Blair
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"Age is such an attack in Hollywood," says Selma Blair, who plays Cecile, one of the wealthy young targets of Gellar and Phillippe in Cruel Intentions. "If you're over 20, people scream if you portray a teen-ager. And there's people around me who want to tell me what to eat. You have to learn not to care or you'll drive yourself crazy."
Sean Patrick Thomas plays Ronald Clifford, a young black music teacher who falls in love with Blair's character. But unlike the Keanu Reeves role -- Thomas' parallel identity in the 1988 version of Dangerous Liaisons -- who was rejected as a suitor on account of his social position, Blair's mother spurns Ronald because of his color. In real life, since becoming an actor, Thomas has worked hard to increase opportunities for black people in Hollywood.
"I'd like to see more intelligent black characters in films," he says. "I've done plenty of auditions for hoodlums and gangsters, which is fine every once in a while. But I've done a lot of Shakespeare. I'd like to participate in some of the upcoming Hollywood productions, but they're not casting black characters."
Gender politics are on the social forefront as well. For instance, Blair is aware of the commodification of sexuality in Hollywood.
"I don't have a problem with doing nudity," she says. "I wouldn't be comfortable with gratuitous stuff, but luckily I don't have to worry about that because I'm not the right body type. People usually want a more voluptuous build."
Some members of the media have predicted Cruel Intentions to be a guilty pleasure. That's understandable after listening to a teasing blip of its sexed-up dialogue.
But who knows what sort of impact it will have? It could launch its young cast into super-stardom, or it could fizzle and die without a whimper. Speculation is sometimes bigger than the actual results. ©
