Bentley does it

10 April 2012

After his mesmerising performance as the drug-dealing, camcording, potentially psychopathic teen of American Beauty, Wes Bentley shot to the top of every Hollywood exec's future A-list.

Mooted roles included Spiderman and, in Tom Cruise's fangprints, the vampire Lestat. But, with an old head on young shoulders, Bentley has so far steered cleared of such temptations in favour of something, in his mind, more credible.

'I'm not one for Hollywood pictures,' says the likeable, down-to-earth 22-year-old from Arkansas. 'For me it's more about integrity. About personal goals.' Thus his role as the ambitious railroad engineer paving a way across the West in British auteur Michael Winterbottom's original and unusual Western, The Claim.

This may have a cast to drool over - Peter Mullan, Nastassja Kinski, Sarah Polley, Milla Jovovich - yet the tale of a Gold Rush prospector who sells his wife and child for a fortune, but whose new life falls apart when they return years later, is a much grittier affair than you'd expect from Tinseltown.

The actors worked for weeks in sub-zero temperatures, 7,000ft up in the Rocky Mountains, where Winterbottom built a Klondike town from scratch.

'It was very hard, physically, very rough,' recalls Bentley in London, where he is adding some finishing touches to the film's soundtrack in the more comfortable confines of a London studio.

'There were times when it was so cold it would freeze my beard and my face. I wasn't used to that kind of cold - it was always minus something, some days even minus 20. Just walking in the snow can be really difficult, trying not to slip and fall, and we rode a lot of horses, climbing up steep rocks and cliffs. They were good horses, but you never knew when you were gonna go down. I'd come back every day with some new pain or bruise.'

But he clearly revelled in the experience. 'It was incredible. It was sweeping,' he sighs. 'To reach the set you'd have to get into these ski-doos [motorbikes on skis] or these little tanks which roll you over the mountain very slowly. Then all of a sudden you see this huge set, this beautiful town and you just jumped into that time, the Gold Rush days. It was fun, I tell you, it was like being a kid again with your own big playhouse.'

When you meet Bentley, you realise just how well cast he was as American Beauty's Ricky Fitts, who turns out to be more dreamer and idealist than nutcase. Wearing tatty blue jeans and a bandana swathed around his dark hair, and with piercing ice-blue eyes, the actor cuts a handsome figure - but what is most notable is the rapturous way he describes things.

He chose The Claim, he says, 'Because it was a mountain Western. They only turn out a few Westerns nowadays, but they are all glorified, shoot-'em-up films - there's nothing truthful about them. I wanted to know what it was like to live in the middle of nowhere, to be one of those railroad surveyors who were educated but had to be as tough as everyone else running about in the snow. They were a bit like Arctic explorers, with a similar willingness to die for what they were trying to achieve - for the discovery, but also for the excitement.'

Bentley was already familiar with Winterbottom's work, notably Welcome To Sarajevo and Jude ('two of my favourite films'), from his time working in a Blockbuster video store on Long Island while still a struggling young actor. 'I was living with three flatmates and we all worked there. We each had five free rentals a week. That's 20 movies' - he smiles broadly - 'so you start to learn a few things about people in the industry.'

The son of two Methodist preachers, he started acting at high school, then at his mother's urging attended the prestigious Juilliard School in New York.

After Juilliard he had a number of small roles on stage and in films, including the blink-and-you'll-miss-him rapist in the Oprah Winfrey slave drama Beloved. His biggest part prior to American Beauty was as a serial killer in The White River Kid with Antonio Banderas, which still hasn't been screened.

Two years ago he was still waiting for the elusive break that would mean the end of jobs in video stores and restaurants. 'I had quit Blockbuster and moved back to New York,' he recalls. 'I was still living off the money from The White River Kid and not planning to get another job, just yet. But financially, it was getting close. Then I decided to visit a friend in LA, and that's when I heard about American Beauty. I read the script and I knew I had to get it.'

It was a prodigious piece of casting by Sam Mendes, who said at the time that 'in three years I'll be begging him to do my movies'. Similarly, Michael Winterbottom can't believe his luck in bagging the young actor, just weeks before American Beauty's release. 'No one had any idea who he was. We just felt he'd be great for the part. He's such a young guy, but he can do pretty much what he wants now.'

But Bentley is being decidedly cool about the opportunities now being thrown at him. Whether it's romantic or foolish, he's a young actor who regards movies as 'art' - and Hollywood as the enemy. Although not at first.

'I grew up in Arkansas, and in Arkansas Hollywood is glorified and it's glamorous. The fact is, Hollywood is none of those things, but I didn't get a chance to learn that before American Beauty - then success happened and I was still buying into the Hollywood dream.'

So what happened to change his mind? 'I don't know. I'd already started to look at films - big blockbuster movies - but in the end I decided they weren't gonna be satisfying. There was something inside me which was making me avoid them, and helped me choose films like The Claim instead.'

If young Wes was in a period of self-discovery, he found a mentor in Peter Mullan, Glaswegian star of My Name Is Joe, and a take-no-prisoners critic of the baser aspects of Hollywood.

'He was very influential. Talking to Peter straightened me out. I don't mean by telling me Hollywood is evil, just hearing his stories and seeing what type of man he is and knowing what an incredible actor he is. He kept me on the right track.'

One high-profile role that Bentley does want to tackle is the biopic of Hollywood legend Montgomery Clift, who in his heyday shared the same dark, intense looks as Bentley, and the same screen sensitivity. In the meantime, he's about to film the umpteenth version of the classic tale, The Four Feathers, in Morocco, alongside other rising stars Heath Ledger and Kate Hudson.

Bentley admits to currently living in the city he fears, LA, but 'Only because my close friends are there. But soon I will get my ass out of the place.' Where to? 'Anywhere where there's not a lot of "business". Anywhere where I can just milk the cow.'

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