Miller time

Despite the formidable presences of Julie Christie and Nick Nolte, Alan Rudolph's newest feature, Afterglow, elicits the strongest reaction whenever Jenny Lee Miller appears: It's a nagging, "almost got it" jolt of recognition that lasts the whole of the film but simply can't resolve Itself. That's because Miller, like a lot d actors, prides himself on defying the typecasting that clings to his profession like a shadow. Unlike most, however, he blends so modestly into such different characters that each time you find out it's him, you're less likely to respond with an "Of course!" than an "Are you sure?" The guarded twenty-five-year-old Londoner was a sullen American teen in Hackers; plays a mute, shell-shocked English soldier of the Great War In the upcoming Regeneration; and can be seen this month as a cold Canadian businessman In Afterglow. But you might recognize him rest - If barely - as the cocky, bottle-blond Scottish Sick Boy with nothing better to do than spend his days trainspotting.

ELIZABETH WEITZMAN: The film you're making now is about highwaymen, right?

JONNY LEE MILLER: Yeah. It's called Plunkett and MacLeane, and it's like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid but set in eighteenth-century London. I'm MacLeane, this guy who wants to be a gentleman but is more of a scoundrel. Robert Carlyle's Plunkett, and Liv Tyler's in it, too.

EW: If it weren't for the fact that you're an Englishman, people might start mistaking you for Meryl Streep.

JLM: I don't think there's much danger of that.

EW: You really are very different in each movie, though. I hate to admit this, but I was halfway through Afterglow before you even started to look familiar. I don't know of any other young actor who is so unrecognizable from one film to the next, so you must have faith in your ability to play anybody, which Is maybe a challenge not all actors take on.

JLM: For me there's no point otherwise.

EW: Do you actually become a character, so that people have to walk around the set callIng you Sick Boy or whatever?

JLM: No. I don't think you can ever really become a character. If I'm playing a surgeon, what am I going to do - operate on someone? You can go to certain lengths, but you can't be so arrogant as to feel that you're actually living this person's life. There are actors who take their roles very seriously and get to the bottom of them without parading around like that twenty-four hours a day. But I guess some people need to do that.

EW: No matter how different they are, all your characters do have -

JLM: Problems?

EW: Yes. For example, your character in Afterglow Is this selfish, workaholic jerk. He's Impotent, too. But I liked him anyway.

JLM: In the script he was all bad, but I couldn't bring myself to portray him that way. Alan [Rudolph] said afterward, "I don't believe it. You managed to make him a bit human."

EW: In Trainspotting, Renton says Sick Boy is "lacking In moral fiber," but he was definitely the most charming of those four guys.

JLM: He was such a rich character in the book. To me what was really twisted was that he compared himself to the young Sean Connery.

EW: It's quite a coincidence that Sick Boy had a James Bond fetish, considering that your grandfather [Bernard Lee] played M in the Bond movies.

JLM: They didn't know that when I went up for the job. It was a nice bit of synchronicity. Right away, I could really identify with the character.

EW: How many Bonds was he In?

JLM: The first twelve. He made over a hundred films altogether. My father was an actor years ago, then he became a stage manager.

EW: Did you always know you'd want to act?

JLM: Not always, but from early on, which is pretty fortunate for a young kid.

EW: Were you an attention grabber back then?

JLM: I was one of those kids who tries to be funny all the time. But if you behave like that at secondary school, you get your arse kicked [laughs], so I was more quiet at school after that.

EW: Of the film roles you've chosen so far, which have you connected with the most?

JLM: Sick Boy was pretty good. It's not that I act like that, but the fact that I could.

EW: Sick Boy was your id out of control?

JLM: I guess you could say that. Acting's a way to do something without anyone getting hurt, though I got hung the other day, which was pretty interesting.

EW: Hung?

JLM: Yeah, I was strung up. I got to dangle around at the end of a twenty-foot rope.

EW: How'd it feel?

JLM: Pretty uncomfortable.

EW: What do you think you'd be doing if you weren't an actor?

JLM: Absolutely no idea - losing. I used to be a bit musical, but I didn't think I was good enough to pursue that as a career.

EW: What genre of film would you like to do that you haven't done yet?

JLM: Um, espionage?

EW: Well, Hackers was espionage, sort of.

JLM: [laughs] Oh, get out. No, I mean something Michael Caine-ish, a really hard-core spy film.

EW: So not a Bond-type film?

JLM: If I were to do that, it would be much darker.

EW: All of your films have had a pretty strong undercurrent of darkness in them.