Smash hit

Not that he was ever likely to stay close to home. Phillippe describes his boyhood self as having been introverted and largely anti-social. “I just wasn’t that interested in what was immediately around me. If you come from a little place and don’t share the mentality, it can be a bit stifling. I hope it doesn’t sound bad to say I didn’t want a small life. I wanted to experience something different. I aspired to that even without knowing how I’d achieve it.” It was seeing Paul Newman in the classic Cool Hand Luke that first opened his eyes to acting. “I remember being fascinated and inspired by his performance. But the idea that I might be an actor too? We didn’t have money or any connections. It just seemed so unrealistic.”

Fate intervened when he was 15. “I was getting my hair cut one day and this lady in the shop said to my mother, ‘A friend in Philadelphia has an agency and you might want to take your son to meet her...’” This because of how he looked? Phillippe laughs. “Yeah. I think it was that superficial.” Within months he was getting cast in TV commercials. Then, following an audition in New York, came the offer to play a gay teenager on the daytime soap One Life to Live. “Coming from where I do, just being on television was a huge deal. But in that role? It was really controversial in our little world. People in the church were appalled, I heard, which seems funny now but was high drama back in 1992.”

When his character was written out after a year, Phillippe decided to move to Los Angeles, “because I knew there was the most opportunity here for actors of anywhere on the planet. But I was scared and out of my depth. I hadn’t travelled much. I’d never been on a plane. But off I went, and ended up living in someone’s garage. I had no friends and no money. There were more than a few bleak nights where I’d be on the phone to my mom saying, ‘No, everything’s fine. I’m doing good,’ while pretending that I wasn’t close to tears.”

His first break was getting cast as one of the young Adonis crew members in the at-sea drama White Squall in 1996, and since then Phillippe has worked steadily, with the following year’s I Know What You Did Last Summer and 1999’s Cruel Intentions among his early box office hits. Thereafter, however, he found himself being offered only replica roles. “So I decided to hold out and not compromise. I can’t say agents were always supportive. I think they’d have preferred bigger pay checks and a more obvious trajectory so I’ve had to switch them here and there. But now I think people are starting to get what it is I want from my career.”

Stop-Loss is director Kimberly Peirce’s first feature since 1999’s Boys Don’t Cry (for which Hilary Swank won the Best Actress Oscar) and takes its title from a measure the US Government has enforced in the cases of 80,000 servicemen and women to date, over-ruling the right to return to civilian life at the end of their agreed tour of Army duty and sending them back into conflict instead. It is an affecting story of patriotism, brotherhood and the often insurmountable difficulties soldiers face when trying to reintegrate into their former lives. The performances are, without exception, beautifully judged and executed. But it is Phillippe (as a staff sergeant who is forced against all previous instincts to go AWOL) who gives the film its real weight, with a performance that is at once highly physical yet emotionally intelligent.

He was not Peirce’s first choice for the leading role. “But she met with me and I’m told what hit her hardest was this paternal thing I’ve had going on since childhood. I like to look out for those I care about and am responsible for. And a staff sergeant’s role is akin to father-protector. For that reason alone, I think I started to make a lot of sense to her.” What Peirce gave to Phillippe in return was the chance finally to come of age on film: having already proved himself amid ensemble casts, Stop-Loss marks his successful transition to leading man. He is unlikely to stop looking cute any time soon. But with luck and further good choices, it should be much more about the acting from now on.

Stop-Loss opens nationwide on April 25

Explore Film

• Film Reviews

• Trailers

• DVD

• London Film Festival

Editor's choice

• The 100 Best Films of the Decade
• 70 facts you didn't know about Marvel
• The 50 Biggest Movies Of 2010