HEADLINE: Crudup thrives on element of surprise
BYLINE: Luaine Lee, Scripps Howard News Service
It was one of those moments that makes an actor wonder why in the world he
ever chose to perform on stage.
Billy Crudup was playing Oedipus off-Broadway. The scene was leading to the
climax.
"I've been searching for my father for three hours -- it's a four-hour play.
I finally find this man and he says he's my father. The moment I discover
that he's my father, we hear these girls up on a fire escape outside the
theater singing songs from 'Grease.'
"Everything that led up is completely diffused. There was nothing that either
of us could do on stage that could overwhelm a couple of high school girls
singing 'Summer Lovin' ' a half block away," he chuckles.
Crudup can laugh about it now because he thrives on the unexpected. "That's
what's thrilling," he says. "That's what I always enjoyed about acting, the
real adrenalin rush. My heart -- still before I go on stage -- crashing out
of my chest. That's thrilling to me."
Crudup has been making a ripple with movies like "Without Limits," "Inventing
the Abbotts," "Sleepers" and "Everyone Says I Love You."
But he's hydroelectric with his latest film, "The Hi-Lo Country," opening
Friday.Along with Woody Harrelson and Patricia Arquette, he plays one
intersection of a tragic triangle, set against the vistas of the West in the
1940s.
He's not worried that this movie might catapult him into the big time and
sweep him away in the Great Hollywood Undertow.
"Frankly, I've been on that up-and-comer list for about four years now," he
says. "I've been acting for 12 years. I started acting in college; had seven
years in school."
He wonders what's so seductive about Hollywood money and power, anyway. "I t
hink of stuff like that and think of people cloistered off in their bedrooms
rocking in a corner, the phone ringing non-stop, people knocking on their
door."
Born on Long Island but growing up in Florida, Texas and North Carolina as a
kid, Crudup grew up learning to adjust to new schools and new friends.
Though he won't say what his father does, he says new business opportunities
kept the family on the move.
"There's a necessity; you develop the ability to adapt. That may be one
reason that people begin to think about playing characters or accessing
different parts of their personality," he says.
A good student, Crudup decided to earn his master's degree in drama. If he
couldn't act, he could teach, he told himself. But before he went to graduate
school, he spent two months driving across country with a friend. That trip
turned out to be a momentous one.
"We drove from North Carolina to Seattle, down to Mexico, back across Texas,
and it was exciting. We spent the whole time talking, naive post-college
talk. You're thinking, 'I've graduated from something, I must know something
now. So I have the right to talk about it.' In the end you look back on the
ideas you were sure were the keys to life and you go, 'Oh, that's just a
little flawed there.' "
He says on that trip he learned not to be afraid to take a point of view in
life. "That's one I continue to learn. Another is to be inquisitive and
curious about life, which I think is important in an actor, as well as
curiosity about people, life and relationships."
Crudup's sweetheart is actress Mary Louise Parker ("Fried Green Tomatoes,"
"Portrait of a Lady"). They did a play together in New York, but he first
spotted her on television in "Sugartime."
"I was completely infatuated with her. Aside from the fact that she was a
genius in that, I found her very attractive."
Being in the same business doesn't really affect their relationship, he
thinks.
"Relationships are difficult in any realm and relationships with an actor,
whether or not you are an actor, is going to be even more difficult. I don't
think you can make a decision on whether or not you want to date an actor.
You fall in love and you want to work on it or you don't. That's it." 
