Box office Le Gros

It's hard to get a handle on actor James Le Gros, He frequently plays characters who let out so little that you don't know quite where they're coming from or where they'll take you, But there's one constant, Le Gros is the best thing in every film that gives him a chance to excel: as Diane Lane's puppy-eyed neighbor in My New Gun; as the vacant ex-con opposite Drew Barrymore in Guncrazy; as the solipsistic slacker fumbling his way through the Generation X hex in the aimless Floundering.

Le Gros is almost as elusive in person as onscreen, but a clearer picture of him is emerging. He's got half a dozen movies due out in 1995, starting next month with Mario Van Peebles's Panther, in which, as the leader of the Peace and Freedom party at U.C. Berkeley, he delivers a pro-Black Panthers speech and introduces Huey Newton at a student rally. Then come Todd Haynes's Safe and Tom DiCillo's Living in Oblivion, both previewed at the Sundance Film Festival, and George Hickenlooper's Low Life. Later this year he appears with Quentin Tarantino in Destiny Turns On the Radio and Patricia Arquette in Matthew Broderick's directorial debut, Infinity.

We met at his in-laws' sprawling house in East Hampton, Long Island, where he was staying with his wife, actress Kristina Loggia, their two-year-old son, Noah, and their dog, Bear. I got into LeGros's spare swimsuit, and we swam in the kidney-shaped pool before diving into the following interview on the front porch later that afternoon.

RAY ROGERS: What was your first professional acting job?

JAMES LE GROS: I lied and I got a job working as a mime for this company based in Irvine, California, where I was going to school at the time. They wanted to promote ride sharing so they hired a bunch of street performers. I got, like, a hundred dollars - I needed the money. I had to wear white base and try to escape from a glass box; it was pretty stupid, and I was pretty abysmal. To make matters worse, the company had failed to get a permit for street performing, and I was arrested and put in a holding cell, like a real criminal. It was frightening because I was only twenty years old. You know, I'm wearing these ridiculous dance shoes and white pants and white shirt and white face - it was really pathetic. [laughs]

RR: Who were your role models when you began acting?

JL: I never really looked at actors as role models. I looked more to people who seemed to reinvent their approach to their work. Marcel Duchamp, Matisse, Picasso - those were artists that I drew more inspiration from, in terms of risk taking.

RR: Are there any actors that you think reinvent themselves?

JL: Not on that level, but it's kind of impossible to do that. You're restricted by what you look and sound like. Even an actor like Robert De Niro, who's brilliant, still has obvious limitations. I'm sure he'd say that - I don't know, maybe he wouldn't, maybe he'd punch me. But movies are not really an actor's art form. It's geared more to the director, or producers who can put a big stamp on certain kinds of pictures. And those are generally pictures that I hate, but nobody's asking me. [laughs] That's the thing I have to remind myself whenever I have one of those crazy, bitter show business days. I just have to repeat this mantra: Chachi [from Happy Days] is a millionaire, If you can grasp that, then you are the master of your world.

RR: Why do you primarily do independent films?

JL: Because those are the most interesting scripts for me, and the independents are the people that offer me work - I think they are the only ones naive and desperate enough to hire me. The studio work that I get offered is horrible.

RR: Where do you draw the line between what you will and will not portray?

JL: I remember I was wanted for a movie where these guys murdered a foreign dictator, and they made him a creepy guy. Basically, the film's message was that it's O.K. to murder people in another country if you don't agree with them. I just thought, I don't want this on my soul. And there were other movies that trivialized relationships and sex. I couldn't really see myself going down the ski slope, coming to a stop, and picking up some babe; it seemed that it wouldn't be a credible choice, regardless of the money that they were trying to throw at me.

RR: Are you starting to he sought after for bigger pictures based on the films that you've done that have a hip cachet to them?

JL: Definitely. I get scripts now that have fewer sets of fingerprints on them. But it kind of comes and goes. I've been hip and sought after before and then not! And then again.

RR: Would you say that you are hip?

JL: No. I'm like the uncoolest guy around.

RR: I don't know - I think you're pretty cool. Drew Barrymore and Ricki Lake recently interviewed each other for us and they spent about a page talking about how great you are.

JL: It's funny. When Drew and I first started working, we didn't get along. We got on each other's nerves, and then one day there was a scene where we were shot from above washing blood off one another in the shower. We were fighting that day, and it came to a head. But eventually we worked it out, and she came to my side of the shower stall and gave me this big warm hug, and in that instant this twelve-by-twelve glass that was covering the lens fell about forty feet and shattered, missing her by about eight inches. In retrospect, I was grateful that we had been at each other's throats that week, because if we hadn't we would have never made up and she would have got hurt. It was just one of those freaky things. And, of course, I love her.