Sunday, February 14, 1999

Calgary Sun

Billy Crudup wants the world to know he didn't actually turn down Leonardo DiCaprio's star-making role in Titanic.

"A lot of us guys were called in to read for the role of Jack," explains Crudup.

"I just didn't show any enthusiasm. It was an honest reaction. It's not the kind of film I want to be involved in."

Crudup made his screen debut in 1966 opposite Brad Pitt, Dustin Hoffman, Robert DeNiro and Jason Patric in Barry Levinson's Sleepers.

Before that, he'd had two successes on Broadway in Tom Stoppard's Arcadia and in the revival of the William Inge classic Bus Stop, in which he played a cowboy.

Next month Crudup will be riding the range again, but this time on screen opposite Woody Harrelson in The Hi-Lo Country.

"I lived in Texas," says Crudup, who lives with his Bus Stop co-star Mary Louise Parker.

"I think that qualifies me as a cowboy."

Last year, Crudup starred as doomed Olympic runner Steve Prefontaine in Without Limits. The Robert Towne film was a hit at the Toronto International Film Festival, but died in its theatrical release.

But it didn't bother Crudup.

"As an actor you don't think of box-office when you make a movie," he says, philosophically.

"That's somebody else's business."