The San Francisco Chronicle
OCTOBER 4, 1998, SUNDAY, SUNDAY EDITION
Crudup's in the Running;
Ruthe Stein, Chronicle Staff Writer
In one of those Hollywood twists of fate, Billy Crudup and Leonardo DiCaprio
were competing for two roles at the same time. DiCaprio landed the big one --
the lead in "Titanic" -- and went on to become the idol of almost every
teenage girl.
Crudup won the other part, as legendary distance runner Steve Prefontaine in
"Without Limits." The movie finished shooting two years ago. Far from making
Crudup a star, the movie sat on a shelf for two years.
"I wished it would come out already," he recalls. "But after a while you just
move on and sort of accept that it isn't."
"Without Limits" was held up to put some distance between it and
"Prefontaine," last year's biopic about the same athlete, who died in a car
crash in 1975 at age 24.
Crudup (pronounced CRUDE-up) was a stage actor before he starred in
"Sleepers" in 1996 and "Inventing the Abbotts" in 1997. He was about to begin
rehearsals to play Oedipus off-Broadway when word came that "Without Limits"
would premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival last month. (It
will be released this fall.)
"I've got a few too many balls in the air right now," says Crudup, 30, who
left rehearsals to come to Toronto and had to return to New York immediately.
Dressed in a white shirt and jeans, he is a mass of hyperkinetic energy,
crossing and uncrossing his legs and finally sitting on them. At one point,
he lifts himself up with his muscular arms, looking as if he is about to
levitate.
Like Prefontaine, Crudup is short and stocky, which is one reason director
Robert Towne cast him. When Prefontaine competed in the Munich Olympics in
1972, sports commentators referred to him as the "chunky American." Crudup
worked with a trainer to add muscle.
Growing up in south Florida and Texas, he played sports with his two
brothers. Crudup also wrestled in high school and competed in intramural
sports at the University of North Carolina. But, he says, "I was never great
at any particular sport."
Still, he makes a convincing Olympic runner in "Without Limits." "I was
running as fast as Pre, but for short periods of time. That's the key. Thank
God he wasn't a sprinter. They would have had to computer-animate my body.
Running at a four-minute-mile pace if you're only doing it for 200 or 300
meters is not that challenging."
Tom Cruise had hoped to star in "Without Limits." But by the time it was
going to be made he thought he was too old to be believable as the teenage
Prefontaine. Instead, Cruise became a co-producer, along with his longtime
business partner Paula Wagner.
"I was very nervous when I met Tom," Crudup recalls. "I didn't want him to
say, Fraud, you're out of here' and throw me out in my rental car."
Cruise turned out to be one of his biggest supporters. "When I watched Billy
in the rushes, I could see the way he was developing the character," Cruise
says.
Before Crudup did any research, he had a strong visual image of Prefontaine
from a Sports Illustrated cover. "My dad must have had it on our coffee table
for years. He kept Sports Illustrated like my mom kept National Geographic."
His parents divorced when he was 6, then remarried and then divorced again
six years later. Crudup doesn't hold this against them. In fact, he sees it
as evidence of how hard they tried to make their marriage work. "My parents
are fantastic. They're both idols of mine," he says.
He knows of no other actors on the family tree. The closest thing to it is
his maternal grandfather, Billy Gaither, a famous Florida trial lawyer from
whom Crudup got his high cheekbones as well as his first name. "Lawyers are
sort of actors, so that must have been where I got the gene."
The way Crudup tells it, he got into acting by default. "I couldn't figure
out anything else to do. I'd been in some plays in college, so my last year
in school I thought, OK, I'll audition for graduate school and if I get in,
I'll try it.' "
He was accepted in the actors training program at New York University. His
first big audition was for the role of the tutor in Tom Stoppard's "Arcadia."
Crudup was rejected at first.
"I knew where I had screwed up in the audition as soon as I left. It was such
a great role that I just kept working on it by myself. It's the sort of thing
Pre would have done, but he would have done it as screw you -- I'll show you
that I can.' I did it because there aren't that many great roles for actors."
As luck would have it, the casting director was having trouble finding anyone
and asked Crudup to try again. This time he got the role, making his Broadway
debut at age 27. "It was serendipity. I've been luckier than anybody I know
to have gotten these unbelievable opportunities," he says.
Crudup's devotion to acting has impressed those with whom he works, including
Donald Sutherland, his "Without Limits" co-star. "Usually I'll tell young
actors the important thing is to be truthful. But you don't have to say that
to Billy because that's the essence of what he does," Sutherland says.
Pat O'Connor, who directed Crudup in "Inventing the Abbotts," says the actor
has "tremendous integrity. He's not going to fall all over himself to make
the $100 million movie. He's got ambition to do good work rather than to
become famous."
Crudup has shown this by repeatedly returning to the stage. He met his
girlfriend, Mary-Louise Parker, when they appeared together in a revival of
"Bus Stop." Although he keeps his own apartment in New York, he's at her
place most of the time. Soon he will be doing "Oedipus" right next door to
the off-Broadway theater where Parker stars in "Communicating Doors."
"She's my favorite actress by far. We're actively trying to find something to
do together, but it's very rare that there would be great roles for two
people in a film."
Crudup did three movies since "Without Limits." "Monument Avenue" opened this
weekend, and "High-Lo Country" and "Waking the Dead" will be out in the next
few months. But, he says, the film offers have dried up. "Have you heard the
phone ring once?"
He pays no attention to the hype about him being the next hot actor. "My
agents and friends know me too well to try to hype me."
Prefontaine may have felt he had no limits as an athlete but, Crudup says
with refreshing candor, "My limits are limitless. I find my limits every time
I act."
