Chris O'Donnell

Birth Name:	Christopher Eugene O'Donnell
Birthdate:	June 26, 1970
Birthplace:	Winnetka, Illinois
Occupations:	Actor, Model

Claim to Fame: O'Donnell held his own opposite Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman (1992)

Significant Other(s):
Wife: Caroline Fentress, teacher; sister of O'Donnell's college roommate; together since 1993; married April 19, 1997

Family:
Father: William O'Donnell, radio manager
Mother: Julie O'Donnell, realtor
Sisters: Four older
Brothers: Two older
Daughter: Lily Anne; born September 3, 1999, Christchurch, New Zealand
Son: Christopher Eugene Jr.; born October 2000

Awards:
1992: Chicago Film Critics Association: Most Promising Actor, Scent of a Woman and School Ties

Factoids:
Formed production company, George Street Pictures; entered into producing agreement with Warner Brothers (1997)

Education:
Loyola Academy, Chicago, Illinois
University of California, Los Angeles
Boston College, Boston, Massachusetts; B.A., Marketing, 1995

HOLLYWOOD -- Hollywood actor Chris O'Donnell found out that it was delightfully different down under in the land of kiwis, sheep and rugged back country, where his new movie Vertical Limit was shot.

After spending eight months on the nine-month shoot on New Zealand's South Island, O'Donnell was ready to head home to the U.S. from the more cosmopolitan but still folksy city of Auckland, on the North Island.

O'Donnell and his wife Caroline Fentress were in the back of a taxicab discussing where to go for dinner. But the posh restaurant they had in mind, a treat after the country food they had eaten for months on location, might not be the best place to go with their infant daughter Lily, who was born in New Zealand during filming.

"My wife will watch your baby!" the cabbie, named Mac, offered. A quick call on the cellphone confirmed it. "So we go drop off our baby at this guy's house -- this taxi driver's house in New Zealand -- and we go for our dinner," O'Donnell recalls now, still amazed at their decision to leave the tiny girl with total strangers.

Knitted baby blanket

"By the time we got back, she (the cabbie's wife) has now knitted my daughter a blanket. She gave her a little stuffed animal. It was unbelievable."

The trust? "After being there for eight months," O'Donnell says happily, "you just realize the culture there."

At 30, O'Donnell feels he is in the prime of his life. His 1997 fairytale wedding to Fentress, a former kindergarten teacher from Washington, D.C., has resulted in a glorious marriage that now boasts two children. Their son, still unnamed and referred to, for the time being, as either "Junior" or "The Big Dog," was born three weeks ago. He also owes something to New Zealand, just like his sister Lily, dad says.

"One born there, one conceived there I guess you'd say," O'Donnell offers with a sly grin.

Meanwhile, his career has survived the ignominy of The Bachelor. Executives at Sony's Columbia Pictures are expecting Vertical Limit to hit big this holiday season, fuelled by trailers and TV ads that show some amazing if totally unbelievable stunts, one of them involving O'Donnell.

Director Martin Campbell's movie focuses on a rescue mission. When the O'Donnell character's sister (Robin Tunney) is trapped on top of the notoriously difficult K2 peak in the Himalayas, O'Donnell is forced to lead a team of climbers back up to save her and any other survivors from the rest of the original party. Thrills, chills, tragedy and triumph ensue.

O'Donnell attended the mountaineering boot camp of Alberta climber and guide Barry Blanchard in New Zealand, a month-long lesson in rock and ice climbing. In the past, O'Donnell has done rigorous training for other movies, such as the horseback-riding and fencing lessons he took for the role of

D'Artagnan in The Three Musketeers, and the trapeze work he did to play Robin in two Batman movies.

"It's the thing about this industry," O'Donnell observes, "you pick up the most random talents."

Some of those talents, like skill on the trapeze, seemed as unlikely to learn as going to the moon. "Other than my career really being in the s--ts and me doing Circus Of The Stars, I didn't think I was ever going to have the opportunity to do that -- and I did it," O'Donnell says, laughing.

Ditto for the mountain climbing. Especially for the realism.

"Obviously, in a month, they weren't going to teach us to be real climbers, but they were going to make us comfortable enough with what we were doing. And they were going to make us trust the equipment and learn how to use the equipment so we could pass for climbers in the film.

One scary incident

"Barry and those guys really did a good job taking care of us. And Martin Campbell, he is so organized and prepared that you really trust the guy."

During the shoot, there was only one really harrowing incident, when a storm moved in and rugged Mt. Cook, where the crew was shooting that day, was fogged in. The helicopters could not fly. The cast and crew had to be led down the mountain on foot by Blanchard and co.

But O'Donnell was not on set at the time. So he is now annoyed, in jest, because he missed out on anecdotal material for publicity purposes.

"I'm still considering making up a story for The Tonight Show," he says teasingly, preparing for a session with Jay Leno. "I may tell Jay, 'Hey, I'm on a mountain and a storm blows in and we bring out the emergency gear and ...' "

Better yet, O'Donnell should just tell the baby Lily story, complete with the taxicab driver, his wife, the blankie and the little stuffed animal. That incident really would have been scary -- if it had not turned out so well.

Friday, November 5, 1999

Making Marry

Bachelor star O'Donnell has a way of making folks say 'I do'

By DARRYL STERDAN
Winnipeg Sun

HOLLYWOOD -- For the star of a movie called The Bachelor, Chris O'Donnell sure seems to spend a lot of time trying to get people to say 'I do.'

In the past few years, the former Boy Wonder has persuaded Jerry Maguire's gal to become his onscreen love interest, talked a major studio into putting up millions of dollars to finance his first film as a producer and -- most importantly -- convinced his girlfriend Caroline to become his wife.

"Up until that point in my life, getting engaged was the biggest thing I had ever done," says the affable, boyish 28-year-old husband and father of a two-month-old girl. "I was so tongue-tied.

"All in one day I picked up the ring, found my future father-in-law and talked to him, and then got my wife, picked her up at work and as soon as we got home, I just gave her the ring," he laughs. "I was going to try and plan something. I was going to buy a bottle of champagne. But I just couldn't hold out. I was so nervous and so excited. There was no smooth talking or planning. I was just trying to get the words out."

So, when he read the script for The Bachelor -- about a man who breaks up with his fiancee, then has to find a bride in 24 hours or lose a $100 million inheritance -- he could relate.

Knew who he wanted

And once he convinced the studio to buy the script for his production company, he knew just who he wanted to relate to in the film: Renee Zellweger.

"I always put someone in my mind when I'm reading a script because it helps me with the characters," explains O'Donnell, "and I always read it with her in mind.

"I loved her in Jerry Maguire. It's one of my favourite movies and my wife's favourite movie."

O'Donnell approached Zellweger like any prospective suitor would -- he asked her out.

"We went out for coffee, and he was so nice and funny and charming," remembers Zellweger. "I thought, 'Sure, I could go spend a couple of weeks in San Francisco with this guy.' "

Professionally speaking, of course. Equally appealing to her, she says, was The Bachelor's script -- adapted from an old Buster Keaton silent film -- which presented her with the opportunity to return to lighter fare after a string of dour roles.

"It really fit for my life at the time," she says. "I really wanted to do something that didn't have emotional subtext and required research and that I would have to dive into for six months and become.

"One True Thing, A Price Above Rubies and Deceiver were all very dark, emotionally challenging parts and they were lovely. But I felt it was time to go to work and laugh and not do case studies every day. I just wanted to hang around on the set and drink coffee and put on some pretty clothes, you know?"

She and 999 others -- the film's most complex sequence has O'Donnell being chased up and down the hills of San Francisco by 1,000 would-be brides all decked out in full gowns. From the way O'Donnell describes it, a Kennedy wedding takes less work.

"They showed up every day for 12 days at five in the morning down at the docks where we had tents set up," he says. "It was like an assembly line. They'd go through hair and makeup and then go through the dresses."

Which begs the question, where does one get 1,000 bridal gowns, anyway?

"We got 500 from this one woman in Connecticut. She had all these gowns that nobody was going to buy because they were so out of style. They were from the '70s and stuff. It really was a sight to see."

But it was a sight that scared the hell out of co-star Artie Lange.

"That just makes me want to go into a bar and see if there's football on," quips the former MAD-TV trouper, who now co-stars on Norm Macdonald's self-titled sitcom.

With no disrespect to Norm, Lange's comedic foils in The Bachelor are somewhat sharper -- Ed Asner, James Cromwell, Hal Holbrook and Peter Ustinov top the film's high-powered supporting cast.

"They were really great to work with -- but really vulgar, though," says Lange. "They offended me. And you can imagine how tough that is."

Tuesday, November 2, 1999

Family man

Chris O'Donnell loves married life, but he's a lot funnier as a bachelor

By LOUIS B. HOBSON -- Calgary Sun

HOLLYWOOD -- Chris O'Donnell is eager to talk about his two new children.

There's daughter Lily O'Donnell, who was born in New Zealand earlier this year.

There's also The Bachelor, the romantic comedy opening Friday which he produced and stars in.

It's little Lily who dominates the first half of the interview because O'Donnell is one proud papa.

"I thought getting married was phenomenal, but it can't compare to having a child," says O'Donnell, who married his college sweetheart, kindergarten teacher Caroline Fentress, in April of 1997.

"I had a computer video camera hooked up in Caroline's hospital room so I could download pictures of her and Lily back to our families in Chicago as soon as they were out of the delivery room."

O'Donnell's daughter was born in New Zealand because he's been there filming the action-thriller The Vertical Limit, about a mountain-climbing accident and subsequent rescue.

"The Vertical Limit is sort of like Twister on the side of a mountain," he says. "This is the best shape I've been in for years. I trained extensively for five weeks before filming began and we've been shooting for about four months already.

"Between films I play golf and drink a lot of beer, so I balloon up a bit. Films get me back in shape, especially if they require a lot of physical action."

This was certainly the case with his two Batman movies and such films as The Three Musketeers, Scent of a Woman and In Love and War.

For The Bachelor, O'Donnell did his share of running up and down the famous hills of San Francisco. In this comedy, he plays Jimmie Shannon, a young man who has to get married in 24 hours or lose a $100-million inheritance.

The problem is Jimmie botched his proposal to his longtime girlfriend (Renee Zellweger) so badly that she has left town.

A friend puts an ad in the morning paper and suddenly 1,000 eager candidates arrive fully dressed for the occasion and the pursuit is on.

"I read The Bachelor as a spec script right after I got married. I was involved in rewrites, casting and shooting for two years.

"I fully understand the dilemma of the marriage proposal. I wanted mine to be so smooth and I ended up being completely tongue-tied."

O'Donnell recalls he and Fentress knew for a couple of years they were going to get married. She just didn't know when he was going to ask formally.

"Any potential for a romantic setting and I could see that Caroline was ready, but I was determined to surprise her."

Fentress had dropped enough hints about which ring she wanted, from pointing out her choice in store windows to circling it in wedding books.

"I picked her up from her school one day and drove home. She asked if I wanted to go for a run, but I said I'd rather just sit on the couch.

"We sat for a while and she started thumbing through one of the many women's magazines on the coffee table. When she got to a ring she liked, she asked what I thought.

"It was my cue. I whipped out the ring I'd been carrying around for months and said I thought mine was much nicer than the one in the picture."

Before the big bride chase sequence, Jimmie Shannon tries proposing to 10 of his former girlfriends.

"We always wanted several celebrity guest-stars to play these women. When word got out we were casting, I got calls from so many agents pitching their clients.

Brooke Shields, Mariah Carey and Jennifer Esposito are among the actresses who play Jimmie's former spurned girlfriends.

O'Donnell says there was never a second choice for an actress to play Jimmie's true love.

"Jerry Maguire is my wife's favourite movie. We've watched it dozens of times. Every time we did, Caroline would say I should do a movie with Renee.

"Renee and I met over lunch. I told her my wife wanted to see me fall in love with her on screen. She laughed and said OK.

"Now that was an easy proposal."

Chris O'Donnell no mountain man

By LOUIS B. HOBSON
Calgary Sun

When Chris O'Donnell says he's been hanging around New Zealand, he literally means he's been hanging around.

O'Donnell is in New Zealand filming the Martin Campbell action drama The Vertical Limit.

It's the story of mountain rescue squads.

"Every morning, helicopters fly the 50 cast and crew members up to the ledge we'll be working on. There are days I honestly don't believe I'll be getting home. There are these storms that move in and out without warning," explains O'Donnell.

He says his wife doesn't obsess about his being strapped to a mountain for 12 hours a day.

"I complain about how intense climbing is, but she says that what we're doing doesn't even amount to country club climbing.

"Golf is still my speed. I'm not going to be one of those actors who suddenly takes up a dangerous sport just because he's made a film about it."

April 15, 1999

Chris gets a life

O'Donnell needed a break from moviemaking

By LOUIS B. HOBSON
Calgary Sun

HOLLYWOOD --Lady fortune has certainly smiled on Chris O'Donnell.

O'Donnell was a 17-year-old high school student with only a fast-food commercial on his acting resume when he was cast as Jessica Lange's son in the drama Men Don't Leave.

He didn't even intend to pursue an acting career, but Lange asked him to play her son again in Blue Sky.

His first really big break came when he played the college student in Scent of a Woman, who is hired to guide a blind man (Al Pacino) on a fateful visit to New York.

O'Donnell's squeaky clean, all-American good looks triumphed in winning him the coveted role of Robin opposite Val Kilmer's caped crusader in 1995's Batman Forever, a role he reprised two years later in Batman and Robin.

The Boy Wonder who has been conspicuously absent from the limelight and the big screen for the past two years stars tomorrow as Liv Tyler's lover in Robert Altman's gothic comedy Cookie's Fortune.

O'Donnell plays a young deputy sheriff who is smitten with the granddaughter of the town's eccentric matriarch Jewel Cookie Orcutt, who is found dead in her mansion.

"I gave myself a life for a couple of years. I really haven't had one for most of this decade," explains O'Donnell.

He married his college sweetheart Caroline Fentress in April of 1997 and the couple moved house from Chicago to L.A. last year.

"Caroline likes the weather better in L.A. We use our place in Chicago as a summer home," he says.

O'Donnell and Fentress are expecting their first child this fall.

"I lived for so many years going from one hotel suite to another. I longed for the normal routine my friends enjoy so that's what I did.

"I'd get up, read the papers, work out and play golf. In the back of my mind, I knew I'd have to get back to work and when Robert Altman called, I knew I'd found my motivation. He's one of the most respected directors in the business.

"You don't work for Altman to make money. You work for him to make a movie," adds O'Donnell, whose Batman movies pushed his asking price to $5 million US a picture.

O'Donnell is convinced there will be a fifth Batman film but he's also pretty certain he won't be part of it.

"My feeling is that Warner Bros. is going to completely reinvent the Batman franchise and that'll mean new characters and actors.

"If they wanted me to play Robin, I'd go back in a heartbeat but I doubt the offer will come."

O'Donnell spent six months promoting Batman & Robin around the world and it wasn't a rewarding assignment.

"It was difficult to do interviews for this last one because you sensed people didn't like it. Back in 1995, the press tour was a blast because people were so into that movie.

"I'd be lying big time if I pretended I wished that Batman had never happened for me. The plus side of celebrity far outweighs the minus side. I don't mind the paparazzi. I know most of them. I always give them a few minutes and they leave me alone."

January 29, 1997

Chris O'Donnell still Mr. Nice Guy

By BRUCE KIRKLAND
Toronto Sun HOLLYWOOD -- Chris O'Donnell is the brash young Hollywood star playing the brash young teenaged Ernest Hemingway in the new film In Love And War.

But it was hardly the most obvious casting. O'Donnell's main claim to fame, after first getting noticed as the naive acolyte to raging Al Pacino in Scent Of A Woman, is playing Robin in the Batman movies. And -- horrors! -- O'Donnell admits that, when he was in school and roughly the same age as Hemingway in the film, he could have cared less about the literary giant he portrays.

"I was a business major," the preppie 27-year-old actor with the close-cropped hair remembers of his years at Boston College. "I stayed away from reading the books because ..." His voice trails off, almost in shame. The because is implied: Because business majors didn't want to be intellectual geeks, because O'Donnell was more intrigued by future $uccess than by culture.

Now he is getting interested, after the fact, especially now that he's both rich and in the cultural industries.

"Yeah, I mean, I'm amazed at the life that this guy lived. I mean, it's exciting all the stuff he did, going to Spain and going to Cuba. And he went to the bullfights and he was a deep-sea fisherman and a hunter. I mean, he really got out there and lived life. I mean, it's a shame that he ... well ... he took his own life.

"But I'm actually anxious to go back and read some of his books. Especially, well, I haven't read A Farewell To Arms yet. I think it's going to be great."

Richard Attenborough's In Love And War is a loosely historical version of a doomed love affair between Hemingway and an American Red Cross nurse named Agnes Von Kurowsky (played by Sandra Bullock) just behind the front lines in Italy during World War I. Hemingway fictionalized the experience in his novel A Farewell To Arms.

The odd thing is that playing the irascible Hemingway -- whose bullying, bitching and self-absorption is depicted by O'Donnell in the film -- is unlikely to change O'Donnell's image as 'the safe-sex symbol of the 1990s.'

"It's a Mr. Nice Guy reputation, or something," O'Donnell chortles about his Hollywood public image, which he has done nothing to smear in his known private life.

He just enhanced it in December, announcing his engagement to his long-time girlfriend, 23-year-old Caroline Fentress, the kid sister of his college roommate and the daughter of sports agent Lee Fentress, who shows the money to athletes such as basketball's David Robinson and tennis star Steffi Graf.

"I don't really care one way or another," O'Donnell claims, without much conviction rising in his soft, mumbling voice. "That's fine," he continues about being Mr. Nice Guy. "It's better than people thinking I'm a jerk, you know."

Meanwhile, he continues his stint as Robin, with TV star George Clooney replacing mercurial Val Kilmer as Batman.

"George has been great," O'Donnell avows. "I mean, it was a little strange the first week, you know. But it's been excellent. I really get along well with George. You know, smooth sailing.

"He goofs around a little bit more on the set and we have kind of like an on-going banter. Val was kind of ... (again the thoughts are unexpressed as Mr. Nice Guy censors his words) ... he's a little more serious, a little more intense and a little more focused with his acting. George and I kind of hang out."

January 21, 1997
LOVE AND WAR

O'Donnell on being Ernest

By LOUIS B. HOBSON
Calgary Sun

BEVERLY HILLS -- Chris O'Donnell got quite a shock when he visited the Ernest Hemingway museum in Key West, Fla.

O'Donnell was researching his role for the movie In Love And War (opening Friday), in which he plays the famous American novelist and adventurer at age 19.

The young Hemingway wanted to fight on the allied front lines during the First World War. Instead he was made an ambulance driver.

Determined to see action rather than simply treat casualties, Hemingway volunteered to travel to the foxholes where he was injured.

While recovering in an Italian hospital, he fell in love with U.S. nurse Agnes von Kurowsky, played in the film by Sandra Bullock.

"I was looking through the picture archives in the Hemingway museum when I came across a photo of Hemingway on his hospital cot," says O'Donnell.

"It blew my mind away. He could have been my father. We have photos of my dad when he was a teenager and that's exactly what he looked like."

There are portrait photos of Hemingway that bear an eerie resemblance to O'Donnell.

"Maybe it's the water we drank as youngsters," jokes O'Donnell, who points out "Hemingway and I were born in Chicago and used to spend our school vacations in Michigan."

O'Donnell admits that like Hemingway, he was "a cocky teenager who was inwardly vulnerable. I certainly wasn't as much of an adventurer as Hemingway was because I'm a bit of a coward when it comes to anything life-threatening."

O'Donnell says he understands Hemingway's infatuation with von Kurowsky.

"When I was 17, I spent a summer living with a family in France. It was my first time out of America and on my own," he says.

"I met a French girl who I swore I was going to marry. To me she was the ideal woman. We parted after just weeks of meeting."

Three years later, O'Donnell spied the French girl at the university library in Chicago.

"I stared a bit too long. Later that night, she confronted me in the campus bar to tell me off. We tried to renew our friendship but nothing came of it."

Though her diaries proved Von Kurowsky loved Hemingway, she spurned his love for a wealthy Italian doctor.

"She really broke his heart and forever shattered his attitudes toward women. He had idealized von Kurowsky, so no other woman ever lived up to his vision of her."

Last year, O'Donnell married Caroline Fentress, a Chicago kindergarten teacher he's been dating for three years.

There were rumors he and Bullock had a brief affair during the filming of In Love And War in Italy.

O'Donnell insists he and Bullock "were never anything more than great friends. Everyone on a movie set falls in love with Sandra. Her personality is overwhelming. She lights up a room when she walks in."

O'Donnell is currently filming Batman & Robin.

December 12, 1996

An old fashioned romantic

By LOUIS B. HOBSON
Sun Entertainment HOLLYWOOD -- When it comes to love and marriage, Chris O'Donnell is a traditional guy.
The 26-year-old star of Batman Forever and The Chamber recently got engaged to his college sweetheart, Caroline Fentress.
"When my brother got engaged, he carried the ring around with him for five weeks. I had my ring for less than five hours and it was burning a hole in my pocket."
The actor was spending a weekend break in Chicago from filming Batman & Robin in Los Angeles.
He drove to his future father-in-law to ask permission to pop the question.
"That's how the O'Donnells have always got engaged."
Once he received her father's blessing, O'Donnell drove over to the kindergarten where Fentress teaches, picked her up and they drove to O'Donnell's house.
"Caroline really didn't expect the proposal that day so it was the wonderful surprise I'd planned."
The engagement lays to rest all the rumors that O'Donnell and Sandra Bullock had become an itemwhile filming In Love And War.
O'Donnell says the wedding will likely take place next year but he's not giving any further hints.

November 27, 1996

Chris O'Donnell announces engagement

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Will Batman be the best man?
Chris O'Donnell, who is reprising his role as Robin in "Batman & Robin," said he's engaged to longtime girlfriend Caroline Fentress, a kindergarten teacher. No wedding date was announced.
"Batman & Robin," now being filmed, stars George Clooney as Batman and Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr. Freeze.
O'Donnell's other films include "Fried Green Tomatoes," "The Three Musketeers" and "The Chamber."

October 6, 1996

Media rockin' robin

Batman's sidekick in the spotlight; appears next in thriller The Chamber

By LOUIS B. HOBSON
Express Writer

BEVERLY HILLS -- Holy hotbed of hoopla, Batman! You've turned Chris O'Donnell's life into a celebrity circus.
Since O'Donnell donned Robin's crime fighter suit to play Bruce Wayne's sidekick in Batman Forever, he's had to fend off everyone from adoring fans and international paparazzi to directors and studio executives.
"I can't go to a bar with my friends any more without people coercing them into getting me to sign autographs. Reporters and paparazzi from Europe and Australia have approached some of my buddies in Chicago to sell them pictures and anecdotes about me," says O'Donnell, who was already building an impressive resume with films like Scent of a Woman, Circle of Friends and Blue Sky before he played Robin.
O'Donnell is in Los Angeles filming Batman & Robin with George Clooney as Batman, Alicia Silverstone as Batgirl and Arnold Schwarzenegger and Uma Thurman as villains Mr. Freeze and Poison Ivy.
"We're being besieged by the photographers from the supermarket publications. They are hiding everywhere with telephoto lenses trying to get shots of us in costume.
"They're also trying to bribe everyone on the crew to spill plot lines, but everything about Batman & Robin is top secret," he insists, refusing to leak anything more vital than the film's title.
O'Donnell does admit he's sorry that Val Kilmer didn't return as Batman.
"I thought it was a real bummer that Val didn't come back. We had great chemistry.
On the other hand, O'Donnell says: "I have a lot more in common with George Clooney, so we hang out more off camera than Val and I did."
To accommodate Clooney's ER series, Batman & Robin closes down its sets each Wednesday and Thursday.
One of the running jokes when O'Donnell came aboard the Batman series as Robin was that his character's codpiece was more impressive than Batman's.
"I think that George must have slipped the costume people a couple of extra bucks because Robin's codpiece has shrunk," jokes O'Donnell.
He is thrilled that Robin no longer wears an earring.
"I hated that earring. I'm so relieved that it's not part of the image any more. The hole in my ear has almost filled in. They've given me Elvis sideburns instead. I can live with those."
On Friday, O'Donnell stars opposite Gene Hackman and Faye Dunaway in The Chamber, the latest John Grisham legal thriller to be converted into a movie.
The role was originally optioned to Alec Baldwin and Brad Pitt.
"After Batman, I was being offered all these action movies. When I heard about The Chamber, I had my agent pursue (producer) Brian Grazer. He told us they'd never thought of me but agreed to test me and I got the role.
"I needed something really dramatic between the two Batman films."
Drama is what O'Donnell got when Gene Hackman arrived on set.
"When those cameras are rolling, he's a very intimidating guy. Off camera he's real low key. You don't hang out with Gene Hackman. You talk quietly and seriously."
O'Donnell is trying to be serious about his off-camera life.
Last year, he bought himself a house in Chicago near his parents' home.
"Being a homeowner is a big chore. No one does your dishes for you and no one makes your bed.
"I'm celebrating my first anniversary as a homeowner and I've only spent a total of three months in the house."
O'Donnell was in Italy filming In Love and War with Sandra Bullock for director Richard Attenborough.
He has yet to get engaged to his longtime girlfriend, Caroline Rentress, a kindergarten teacher in Chicago.
"It's a great relationship that's progressing at a great, steady rate. It was much better and easier for us a year ago when Caroline was still in college.
"She could take off almost any time she wanted. Now it's pretty well weekends and school holidays."
O'Donnell says he has no desire to move to Hollywood.
"My extended family is my rock. Friends come and go, but when you have a great family like mine you know they're going to stick by you."
O'Donnell admits he's a real hit with his nieces and nephews.
"I'm Uncle Robin.
"They love me especially when I come back from shopping at the Warner Brothers stores in New York or Los Angeles."

October 6, 1996

Strictly business

Chris O'Donnell doesn't mind visiting Planet Hollywood, but he wouldn't want to live there

By JIM SLOTEK
Toronto Sun

HOLLYWOOD -- Let's say you're a guy in your 20s, and one of your buds -- for the sake of argument, let's say the best-looking one -- suddenly becomes a major celebrity, "the next Tom Cruise" according to some.
"People are offering them money for interviews," Chris O'Donnell says with an amused grin of his friends back in his native Chicago. "Some Australian magazine went to one friend recently and he's like, 'Dee, man, I could get 5,000 bucks just for talking!'
"I'm like, 'You do, and I'll cut the gravy train off, man. No more freebies.'"
Chris O'Donnell does spread it around back home -- in large part because he clearly hates aspects of the life of a fabulous Hollywood celebrity, and he clings tenaciously to that connection with Midwestern reality. He has, for example, been known to fly his cronies to play golf in Bali, Indonesia.
And then there are the mere ancillary benefits. "My guy friends love it (his celebrity). It's like, 'Hey, I know you don't feel like drinking. But just come out man, it's helpful for us.' So I go to the bars with them, girls come up and ask me questions and my friends kinda circle and feed, y'know, it's pretty funny."
As always, O'Donnell is just visiting Planet Hollywood -- the state of mind, not the restaurant. As we speak -- mostly about his role in John Grisham's The Chamber (opening Friday) -- he's preparing for another two days of playing the Boy Wonder on the set of Batman & Robin and then another flight east -- to Washington, D.C., where his longtime girlfriend Caroline Rentress works as a kindergarten teacher.
"Things were a lot easier a year ago when she was still in college," he says. "She could take off pretty much anytime she wanted. Now it's pretty much weekends.
"My family, my friends, the people who tell me I'm full of s---, y'know the happiness is there. L.A. is an exciting place to be. But if I stay out here too long I start to go crazy. I really need to get back East. I almost don't like myself when I'm in L.A."
Talk like this makes 'handlers' crazy, particularly when you've reached the high seven-figures in salary per film and they worry about their percentage. Not to worry, however. This golden-haired goose (dyed dark for The Chamber) is not about to retire before he reaches age 30.
"The things that I love about the business outweigh the bad. I love acting; it's fun to step into different shoes. I also love all the travel that's involved. It's great to be young and not have, y'know, responsibilities -- to be able to move around, live in different cities three months at a time.
"Also, I have a business background (he majored in marketing at Boston College), and I'll tell you right now, I'm not going to make this kind of money in business."
With that corn-fed face, the self-described "beer-drinking college kid" O'Donnell once seemed doomed to play characters in prep-school blazers (School Ties, Scent Of A Woman). Personal training helped him achieve a level of buffness suitable for action roles (The Three Musketeers, Batman Forever). Since then his career has gone nova.
"I did three movies in a row -- Circle Of Friends, Mad Love and Batman all back-to-back. Then nine months off back in Chicago, then I did The Chamber, In Love And War with Sandy (Sandra Bullock) and Batman again. Hopefully, I'll be taking some time off later. But the thing is, you've got to make hay while the sun shines, do as many movies as you can and as much money as you can."
Not that money is everything. The Chamber is a pointed career move, designed to show casting agents that the kid can act. The latest Grisham flick is a Death Row drama about a young lawyer (O'Donnell) who comes to Mississippi to plead clemency for his long-lost grandfather (Gene Hackman), a murderous Klansman convicted in an office bombing that killed two children.
His go-between is his alcoholic aunt (Faye Dunaway), who had long since buried the memory of her father.
"After Batman I got a lot of offers for action films," says O'Donnell. You can assume he turned down some of the ones Nicolas Cage accepted.
"I just really wasn't interested in being 'action boy,'" he says. "The roles just weren't very challenging. It's much more exciting to do something like The Chamber -- a role you're scared to do 'cause it's so challenging."
It's not as if his co-stars -- a couple of pros who could eat the scenery for the main course and Tokyo for dessert -- were blown away by the undiscovered acting talent of Chris O'Donnell. Ask Faye Dunaway what she thinks of him professionally and you hear about how much she likes him personally. "He's a wonderful young man, and very interested in what he's doing. His head is not turned. He's got a wonderful family, lots of brothers and sisters and a charming girlfriend."
"Chris is visually charismatic," says The Chamber director James Foley. "He's an Irish Catholic from Chicago, he could be a cousin of mine. I'd known him for years socially, but we had some beers and I learned more about him. He's very hungry for direction, which is perfect, because I have opinions about everything."
Acting-wise, O'Donnell admits he's still a work in progress. "I wasn't a trained actor when I started making films. I've had on-the-job training, and my teachers have been Al Pacino, Jessica Lange, Gene Hackman and Faye Dunaway. That's not too shabby."

PHOTO: Chris O'Donnell, looking sort of like Alec Baldwin in the new Grisham flick The Chamber

The CHRIS O'DONNELL File
BORN: Winnetka, Ill., the son of a radio station exec.
ATTENDED: All-boys' Loyola Academy.
ACTED: In commericals from age 13, generally playing four years younger than his actual age.
FIRST MOVIE: Men Don't Leave, playing Jessica Lange's son. "I was so attached to it, and actors would come and go with little parts, and crew members would be like, 'Oh, it's just another job.' But now I find myself on a set and yeah, it's another job. I mean, it's sad in a way, but it's not necessarily a bad thing."
ON ACTING: "I decompress as soon as we get the shot. I'm not somebody that takes it home with me at the end of the day. If that's somebody's technique to stay in character all day, I just leave 'em alone. I'd go crazy. I just joke around or whatever. Sometimes I go out and have a beer, whatever, kick back. A lot of times the best thing to do is just go for a run. I like to run a lot."

September 23, 1996

It's got the Boy Wonder wondering

LOUIS B. HOBSON
Calgary Sun Recently, Chris O'Donnell -- who plays Robin in the Batman movies -- was in a car accident in his home town of Chicago.
"This guy ran a red light and ran into me. He totalled his car. There was this poor guy sandwiched by his air bag and all these people gathered and started asking me for my autograph," O'Donnell says.
"I felt relieved when I saw a cop coming. The first thing he did was ask for my autograph, too. This Batman thing has really made my life feel surreal and bizarre."

August 7, 1996

Chris O'Donnell not thrilled with being a star

NEW YORK (AP) -- Chris O'Donnell knows the price of fame -- like the time a police officer asked for his autograph after his car got wrecked.
O'Donnell has two new films coming out, "The Chamber" with Gene Hackman and "In Love and War," with Sandra Bullock. The "Batman Forever" star started modeling at 13 and has already starred with Al Pacino in "Scent of a Woman."
He's not always thrilled with being a celebrity.
Last winter in Chicago, a car drove through a red light and hit the passenger side of his 1987 Honda. He says all he wanted to do was "slug the guy that hit me."
Bu when he got out to confront him, "People started recognizing me. Suddenly I'm signing autographs," O'Donnell says in the September issue of Premiere.
"My car is trashed and I've got a woman giving me gift certificates to some lunch place ... I even signed an autograph for the cop."

March 14, 1995

Chris The Boy Wonder

Actor O'Donnell Moves Easily From Intimate Film In Ireland To On The Road With Drew To The Caped Crusader's Sidekick Robin

By BRUCE KIRKLAND
Toronto Sun HOLLYWOOD - Scent Of A Woman co-star Chris O'Donnell, Hollywood's favorite college preppie, has taken his act to Ireland.
With his fresh-scrubbed college kid look and attitude intact, O'Donnell's Irish sojourn resulted in Circle Of Friends, Irish-born director Pat O'Connor's charming new movie about young love in the 1950s. It opens in Toronto tomorrow.
On a personal level, all that was different from scenes in Scent was O'Donnell's hard-earned Irish accent. Yet he still returned to the States wigged out enough to romance Drew Barrymore in Mad Love and then play Robin to Val Kilmer's Caped Crusader in the revamped Batman Forever (coming in June). His Robin has punk hair and an earring for decoration.
Because the truth is that O'Donnell is not quite the cliched preppie kid he was made out to be after Scent Of A Woman, in which he co-starred with Al Pacino, catapulted him into the front ranks of Hollywood newcomers. Now 24, he's got an edge, a sarcastic sense of humor and a mischievous streak.
"Pretty pictures," he says when asked to describe what he likes about Circle Of Friends, in which he plays English actress Minnie Driver's first love. When he does get serious, O'Donnell waxes poetic about what Circle has to offer: "It just has a great feel. I think that, although this film is very specific in its setting - it takes place in '50s Ireland - a lot of the stuff that these kids are dealing with is very universal."
But the kid in him erupts as soon as he's talking about Batman Forever and his wardrobe. "My tights are much tighter than Burt Ward's," he says, referring to the co-star of the camp TV show in the '60s. "Skin tight - I've got a Spandex deal."
Getting slightly more serious about Batman, O'Donnell says Kilmer will reinvent the superhero series: "He's younger (than Michael Keaton). And I think Robin is older than they originally thought of, so our own relationship at least has a different dynamic to it. It's cool." As was shooting the film. "It's like being in an amusement park."
In between Circle and Batman, O'Donnell filmed another off-beat role in Mad Love. Again dumping the preppie look, he portrayed a young man who breaks his girlfriend (Drew Barrymore) out of a mental hospital and takes her on the road.
"It was definitely a conscious choice," O'Donnell says of mixing genres, characters and the scale of the films he has been doing over the last year.
"I have the Irish film and it was a huge challenge working on the accent (his own Irish connection is his great-grandfather, who emigrated to the U.S. in the 1800s). I got to go over to Ireland and it was a really intimate experience.
"Then I went and did Mad Love (in Seattle), which was this fun movie on the road (with steamy love scenes that are causing a stir even before the film is released). Then I got to jump into Batman, which was this huge comicbook superhero film."
O'Donnell pops a Cheshire cat grin onto his face: "I knew this would be a good year."