Kip Pardue - Interview - Brief Article

HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL, COLLEGE FOOTBALL, MOVIE FOOTBALL, CAREER TOUCHDOWN!

You've probably seen Kip Pardue in glossies for the likes of Armani, Polo, and Abercrombie & Fitch. But now, this beauty boy makes his big-budget film debut with Denzel Washington in Remember the Titans, opening this month.

"My experience and the movie are so similar, it's amazing," says the former Yale quarterback and economics major. On screen, Kip plays "Sunshine," the quarterback for the first integrated high school in Virginia. Denzel Washington plays the coach who leads them to a championship season. In real life, Kip's Atlanta high school was part of an integration program called Majority to Minority, and, yes, Kip was quarterback for their championship team, also led by a black coach.

Titans is not Pardue's only football role, it seems. In the upcoming But I'm a Cheerleader, with Clea DuVall and Natasha Lyonne, he plays a gay guy sent to a heterosexual training camp. "And at the camp," he explains, "I have to learn football to prove I'm straight." Pardue also appeared as the jock boyfriend, Josh, in the WB pilot of Popular. "Getting fired from that ultimately gave me the room to do these two movies," says Kip, who was discovered by Molly Ringwald's publicist while working as a personal assistant. "I'm definitely the luckiest guy in Hollywood."

Susan Johnston is a playwright and journalist in New York. Kip Pardue, whose lucky break came when he got fired.

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