Billy Crudup is a serious actor trapped in a heartthrob's body.</P>
  Won't someone please help him?</P>

  By Stephan Talty</P.

  Billy Crudup is wearing a seen-better-days overcoat, a blue hooded 
sweatshirt, old jeans and a thin, Russian-looking goatee. It's like he's 
hiding out as the least glamorous actor in America. You want to ask him, Do 
you owe somebody money?</P>

  But cash isn't his problem. This is: "My mom called me with this review 
of Sleepers," says the actor before a performance of Three Sisters at the 
Roundabout. "She goes, 'It says here that you're going to be a matinee 
idol.' I thought, I'm playing a sodomized, cocaine-abusing hit man. I'm 
fucked."</P>

  Women. They like him. A lot. And the media isn't helping; Harper's 
Bazaar, for one, called his skin "luminous" and his ears "elfin."</P>

  Apparently, it hasn't always been this way for the 28-year-old star of 
Inventing the Abbotts and the forthcoming Grind. "Growing up, I was kind of 
a kiss-ass," he says. "If I was dating a girl, her parents liked me more 
than she did. I was a dork. I had big feet and a goofier haircut than I do 
now."</P>

  Crudup was born in Long Island and grew up in a few states before 
attending the University of North Carolina. Six years ago, he came to New 
York. "I was terrified. I remember thinking when we pulled up in our 
U-Haul, that there were going to be people staking it out and throwing a 
blanket over my stereo and running away. But the
  vibe of the city was so exciting, and it hasn't died for me."</P>

  A week after graduating from NYU's acting program in 1995, Crudup won the 
role of Eddie, the secretive car racer in Grind, a working-class story of 
betrayal and brotherhood. His performance is sly, full of silences, if a 
little light for the film. "That was the first thing I've done, so it was 
kind of excruciating," he admits.
  Crudup's boyish eagerness gives way to sudden, intense self-criticism: 
"Every time we finished a shot, I would say, 'Why didn't I bring this or 
that to the scene?' </P>

  But he impressed the filmmakers anyway. "We had looked for almost a year 
for an actor to play Eddie; we saw over 150 people," says Chris Kentis, 
Grind's director. "Because of Billy's intelligence, I felt I had the 
freedom to play, because I knew he could do whatever I needed him to."</P>

  After winning acclaim for his performance in Tom Stoppard's Arcadia, 
Crudup was paired with the phenomenal Ron Eldard as the haunted gunmen of 
Sleepers. "I think those guys didn't know how to move on," Crudup says of 
the characters. "Killing someone had no meaning; the only rushes they got 
were chemical. [They kept] waiting to feel something. I've been in that 
place only once in my life, and it was like going crazy."</P>

  His screen roles haven't gotten any sunnier. Crudup is also appearing in 
the '50s teen-sexual-awakening drama Inventing the Abbotts as Jacey, whom 
he describes as "jaded, cynical and extremely narcissistic." The actor 
calls costar Liv Tyler "fantastic," but his immersion in his character 
prevented much chitchat. "Most of those guys didn't like spending time 
around me," he says, cracking up. "I was a downer. It's not like I'm some 
Method actor, but you try and indulge yourself in seeing the world a 
certain way. I was such an ass."</P>

  The role that may decide Crudup's future in Hollywood is this fall's Pre, 
the second recent biopic about legendary American runner Steve Prefontaine. 
This one happens to have been produced by Tom Cruise and directed by Robert 
Towne (writer of Chinatown). Crudup found the audition process unnerving: 
"I remember sitting at a table with Towne, and he was just looking at me. I 
was like, 'What the fuck is he looking at, man?' He was flipping me out. 
After a while, he was like, 'Yeah, um...yeah, so I'm pretty committed to 
you right now, ah, doing this part.' I was like, 'What are you talking 
about?' "</P>

  While the world awaits his elfin ears' next appearance on-screen, the 
mercurial Crudup is content in Three Sisters. Of Chekhov, he says, "I've 
found very few things that are so thrilling to play and at the same time so 
terrifying. I love to see people fighting for their lives."</P>

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