One-time teen idol Ryan Phillippe maturing fast

Director Billy Ray called Eric O’Neill at his Washington, D.C., home one night and suggested that the young lawyer and his wife go see the movie “Crash.” The couple did as Ray asked.

“What did you think of the actor who played the younger police officer?” the director asked after the O’Neills returned from the theater.

“He was good,” O’Neill said. “I want him to play you,” Ray said.

“Wow, he’s pretty handsome,” O’Neill said.

More than a year later, sitting in a Los Angeles hotel, the 33-yearold O’Neill says he was taken aback when the director said he wanted Ryan Phillippe to play him in the real-life spy thriller “Breach,” which opened Friday.

“Of course it was flattering, and then my whole family got into it. My father said he wanted Sean Connery to play him.”

The casting of Phillippe in the role of the FBI undercover operative who helped to bring down the biggest spy in U.S. history was not a foregone conclusion, according to the director.

“Once we had Chris (Cooper) in place to play Robert Hanssen (the FBI double agent who sold classified information to the Russians for more than 20 years before being caught in 2001), everybody wanted to work in this film. Chris is an actor magnet.

“If I was a 13-year-old girl, I would have had the fantasy month of all time,” the director jokes. “I met with every goodlooking 25- to 30-year-old actor in Hollywood. Finally, I screentested four guys, including Ryan.”

Phillippe’s well-received performance in Clint Eastwood’s “Flags of Our Fathers” hadn’t been filmed yet, but Ray said that the actor’s work in “Crash” convinced him that Phillippe should play O’Neill.

“Honestly, I was aware of his existence,” Ray says of Phillippe, “but I didn’t know his movies. ‘Crash’ put him on my radar, and a lot of other people’s radar as well. I think he’s wildly underrated, but that’s all about to change.”

BLANK CANVAS

Phillippe, who may be better known for the breakup of his marriage to Oscar winner Reese Witherspoon than for his acting, calls himself a “news junkie” and says he was well aware of the Hanssen case long before he got the call from the director.

What he didn’t know was the involvement of O’Neill, then a 27-year-old member of an FBI surveillance unit who was placed in an undercover position as Hanssen’s assistant. Hanssen, who is serving a prison term for treason, pleaded guilty to avoid a trial.

O’Neill, who left the FBI after the case and is practicing law in the nation’s capital, never had to testify in court and was a relative unknown.

“I had a general knowledge of the case and I had read the script, so I knew about Eric,” Phillippe says. “But I didn’t know Eric, and I needed to know what kind of a person he was. I needed to find a way into his personality.

“It is crucial because I don’t have much of a personality myself,” he adds with a smile, “so I needed to borrow Eric’s.”

The two men spoke on the phone, and then sat at the same table at a cast and crew dinner near the film’s Toronto set. After dinner, the men went to a bar.

“I kept expecting him to ask me questions about the movie, but we talked about everything but the movie,” O’Neill says.

Phillippe, 32, says he was more interested in studying O’Neill than in asking about his role in the investigation that led to Hanssen’s downfall.

“I’m a blank canvas,” he explains. “I don’t look for myself in the roles I play. I try to go as far from myself as possible. I need to know the guy I’m playing. When I know him, I can connect with the story.”

O’Neill, who is working with his producer brother on a TV pilot about a surveillance unit similar to the one he worked on in the FBI, says it was a little uncomfortable the first time he watched Phillippe play him on the screen.

“I realize that the character he’s playing has my name, but I needed to separate myself from that character or it would just be too creepy. I kept telling myself that it wasn’t me up on that screen, but Ryan’s interpretation of me. That’s why they call it acting.

“But this whole process has been crazy. I never imagined that anyone would make a movie about my life.”

THE WORK CHANGES

Phillippe, a one-time soap actor (“One Life to Live”) who went on to star in a string of teen dramas (“I Know What You Did Last Summer,” “Cruel Intentions” and “54”), is on a roll that began with “Crash.”

His “Breach” director, who wrote and directed the 2003 film “Shattered Glass,” says he was stunned by Phillippe’s talent.

“I remember one particular day on the set. We had just finished a pretty intense scene, and I went up to Ryan and whispered in his ear: “Do you know how good you are in this movie?”

Without hesitating, Ryan said: “I can do better.”

Phillippe says the point of acting is to keep learning and to keep trying to do it better.

“There is a big difference between what I did in the early part of my career and what I’m doing now,” he says. “Back then, all I cared about was being in movies. It didn’t matter what they were. But your tastes change as you get older, and I no longer wanted to be in the kinds of movies that I didn’t want to see anymore.

“I was being offering a bunch of money to be in romantic comedies, but I don’t like to watch romantic comedies, so why do I want to be in them?

“That’s why my last three movies (“Crash,” “Flags of Our Fathers” and “Breach”) were so important to me. They’re the kind of movies I want to watch now, and therefore they’re the kind of movies I want to be in. That’s not cockiness. Believe me, I am not a confident actor. But I am a fearless actor. I’m not afraid to try any role as long as I feel inspired.”

Read movie critic Craig Outhier’s review of “Breach” at www.getoutaz.com.