Billy Crudup is ruggedly handsome, talented and a movie star in the making. Too bad so few people can even pronounce his name properly.
"It kind of cracks me up," the Long Island-born, Florida and Texas-raised young actor says after his latest film, Without Limits, made its Canadian debut in the Toronto film festival. It opens in theatres here tomorrow.
"People have always pronounced my name wrong, so it's no different now than it has been all my life."
For the record, it's a soft 'Crew-dup' and not a hard 'Crud-up' -- not that he seems to mind that much when it's screwed up. What Crudup won't do is change it.
His first agent, when he turned professional in Manhattan theatre after graduating with a master's of fine arts from New York University, asked Crudup if he was willing to dump it. "No!" he said emphatically. "It's my name."
Crudup is the first name in the credits for Without Limits, the Robert Towne film about the spectacularly short life and tragic death of American long distance runner Steve Prefontaine of Oregon, a superstar in the 1970s.
Crudup, who made his film debut in Barry Levinson's Sleepers and co-starred in Woody Allen's Everybody Says I Love You and Pat O'Connor's Inventing The Abbotts, plays Prefontaine. Without Limits and two future projects, HiLo Country and Waking The Dead, could propel Crudup into the kind of movie stardom that Prefontaine had in sports.
Crudup, an articulate actor who combines self-deprecating humour with a kind of thoughtfulness both startling and refreshing, just doesn't seem interested in 'future star' lists.
"To be perfectly honest, ever since I did Sleepers I've seen lists from time to time. That stuff passes after awhile.
"I've been lucky enough to get opportunities to do lots of different things and I don't see any reason to stop that. I haven't bought a mansion in Beverly Hills that I need to make payments on. So I like the lifestyle I lead and I don't have much interest in changing that."
When the subject comes up again, during banter about Prefontaine's stardom, Crudup looks a little astonished. "Do you think I'm a star?" he asks, as if he's reacting to news he just emigrated from Mars. Crudup laughs and elaborates:
"Not that it's bad, but I just feel that there are other priorities in my life that I find more interesting. So, to embrace that aspect of it is to neglect other parts of what I think is really interesting about acting."
Which brings us back to Prefontaine, a notoriously 'difficult' athlete who challenged the system and permanently changed American athletics. Pre (his nickname) shamelessly promoted himself to forward the interests of his sport.
"The way he could run around a victory lap and really take people in and thrive on that, I found exhilarating at the time," Crudup confesses about filming those scenes.
"What is interesting about this story is that here is a guy who people couldn't resist. He was complicated. He believed in himself without question and wasn't afraid to voice his opinions." Pre even did and said "idiotic" things, Crudup says, basing the comment on extensive research.
"I think when we lose sight of that, we lose sight of how we are all flawed and complicated. If we can't understand that in our heroes, then we can't understand it in ourselves and we can't strive to rise to levels that seem beyond our capabilities. That is something that I think is great about Steve Prefontaine."
Pre did it. Billy Crudup admires him for it.
