JANUARY 1 2009
AMERICANWAY 55
Tell me about
Possession
.
It’s a really fun, sexy
thrillerwithme andSarahMichelleGellar. I play her
brother-in-law. My brother— her husband— and I
are in thiscaraccident, andhediesand I spend some
time in a coma.When Iwake up from the coma, I’m
convinced that I’m her husband and try to convince
her that I’m thehusband she lost in theaccident. It’s
fun. It’s sexy. It’smysterious. It’s complicated.
You’ve played some fascinating and fairly offbeat
characters — killers and transgender lovers.
Pushing
Daisies
creator Bryan Fuller says you have “a very
strangeandwide range.”
Thankyou, Bryan. [
Laughs
]
I think I choose todowhat I’m interested in.When I
read
Soldier’s Girl
, the first film project I ever did, it
was not a character Iwas prepared to play, this guy
who’d had the sex-change operation and falls in love
withanotherman. But Iwas thinkingabout it all the
time— onmy bike, on the bus, everywhere I went.
It became something I couldn’t shake. It occurred to
me that that’s probably a goodway for an actor to
choose which projects to do: Go with the ones that
won’t get out of your head.
You’re building a solid résumé. How has life
changed for you?
Work has gotten harder, to tell
TAKINGTHE LEAD
you the truth. There are a lot of parts out there,
but there are also a lot of great actors out there. I
want to play the parts thatwill makeme better for
having played them, and those are the hard ones to
get. I auditioned for [my part in] Robert De Niro’s
The Good Shepherd
for a year — jumped through
hoops, readwith different actors, met withDe Niro
several times. I really wanted that. And that year
was one of the most valuable times of my life. I
learned somuch.
You also used to be a competitive swimmer?
I was
for a while, but it hurt my ears too much. To this
day, I can’t get my headmore than a couple of feet
underwater before it feels like my head’s going to
explode. I eventually had to stop, which iswhenmy
mom urgedme to go into high school theater. Iwas
so competitive in swimming that I became just as
competitive at acting. I did theater in high school,
went to Juilliard, did theater, got film, got TV, and
here I am. The truth is, if I had better ears, I might
never have become an actor.
Tell me one thingwe’d be surprised to know about
you.
There’s a version ofme thatwouldgive it all up
and sit on a beach, stringingbeads.Wouldn’t you?
LEE PACE IS NOT YOUR AVERAGE HOLLYWOOD HUNK. The mild-
mannered 29-year-old former Boy Scout prefers reading to the club
scene andmay, one day, jettison his acting career (you likely know
him fromABC’s recently canceled
PushingDaisies
) for a life ofmak-
ing jewelry on a tropical island. But on occasion, the quick-witted
star’s adventurous side comes out — in hiswork. He played a trans-
gender crush in a TVmovie called
Soldier’s Girl
and a cold-blooded
killer in
Infamous
. This month, he’ll star as a morally ambiguous
accident victim in
Possession
.
With a stacked résumé and a newmovie out thismonth, LeePace
is proving that nice guys don’t always finish last. By J. Rentilly
