I won’t work for three weeks in December. I always take three weeks to be home and play in the snow with the family.
Where is home?
A small town in Pennsylvania. That’s next. It’s nice. You work really hard to reach certain plateaus as an actor and so it’s nice for me to finally to get to that place to be picky. It’s very lucky.
What are you looking for?
I’m not reinventing the wheel to say it’s nice to do different things all the time so in the past couple of years, I’ve done a couple of period pieces, I’ve done real life stories, “We Were Soldiers” and “The Alamo,” and the war pieces and ensemble pieces and general romantic comedy so, next, I’m not going to make my target small than it already is by saying, “Oh, I know I want this.” If I read something and it doesn’t hit me in my head, my heart and my stomach, if it doesn’t hit me in the right places, then I’m in a position now where I don’t have to do it, which is a nice, lucky place to be. It’s nice to say, “Whatever job I do next, it’s for the right reasons.”
What if a director you really admire offered you a movie that shoots in December?
I hope it happens. It would be a nice bridge to have to cross but, in general, the business kind of shuts down during Thanksgiving and Christmas time. There’s not much that shoots because no production wants to shut down for two weeks. You lose your momentum. But, sure, if it was the right thing. I love what I do and I’m the guy that would like to wrap and go right to work the next day on something else. If it were the right thing, one way or another you’ll find time for family and make them both happen.
Do you still get the “Buffy” fans?
Sure. And, hopefully that will never be over. It was so great to be part of a big hit show with such a loyal fan base that has a huge, cult, loyal following. I don’t think that will ever go away. You might talk to some of your friends and say, “Yeah, I saw ‘Friends’ last night but I didn’t see it three weeks before that.” It was do or die with “Buffy.” You either didn’t watch it or it was every week and you didn’t answer the phone, you didn’t go to the bathroom, you don’t miss it. So, yeah, it was fun to be part of a show that has that kind of fan base.
Have you found it easy to balance your craft doing commercial films?
I guess yes and no. Sometimes it is. The lesson you learn your first year of college is time management. It has nothing to do with the curriculum, it’s like you’re forced to do those things. At the same time, doing the bigger studio movies, I still look at that as the craft. It’s a credit to Forest because this could have very much been a movie where the classic formula of boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy wins girl back, and he made sure that every character had their own set of obstacles that they were trying to overcome. Here was a guy that was leaving college and wondering [if] he is on the right path. Is he doing the right thing? And this is a very relatable idea. These are things we’ve all been through. Am I doing the right thing in life? And, for her character, someone who is away from home for the first time and is falling in love for the first time and who she is and what she does obviously complicates those things, but it takes these two people to get together to learn from each other and it happens to be romantic in the case of the movie, but to see each other through and help deflect each other on the right path. We’ve all experienced those moments in relationships in life, romantic or otherwise, where we’ve met someone and said, “That was a meaningful thing. They kind of pushed me in this direction and it was a necessary thing to have happen at that time.” I think that’s what these characters do for each other in the movie.
Are you romantic?
Sometimes. Certainly not when I’m with a wrench underneath my car but I’m not opposed to lighting a candle and cooking dinner either so…
