Billy: more than Almost delicious

Billy Crudup has been almost famous for several years. In fact, he's been almost Leo. But he turned down the audition for Titanic. It didn't capture his imagination. And Brad Pitt has been almost him. Or at least there was some talk of Pitt playing his latest character - a rock god called Russell Hammond in the new Cameron Crowe movie, Almost Famous.

In the film, Crudup is one of these charismatic, sensitive, self-obsessed creatures who are adored by women but are not sure how to adore back. To prepare for the role he "listened to Led Zeppelin exclusively for six months. I was in a den of despair," he says. "It was great." Peter Frampton taught him how to play guitar, a fact that still excites him.

On screen, as well as in real life, Crudup is groupie fodder. But to my friend who described him as the thinking woman's crumpet, I would say he's unthinking woman's crumpet as well. He's so absolutely gorgeous, delicious, any woman would easily want to devour him without thinking.

It is always hard to inter-view someone you fancy in case they're a disappointment. It's even worse if you meet them and they're not. Crudup is not. He's articulate, attentive, not quite as brooding as his characters, but with the same melting brown eyes and skin of warm sand. Small, though. Which may be why he isn't troubled in the street. "They don't call me anything. They just say, 'Move, mister,'" he says. "I went to Channel Four to do a show this morning and I had a hard time convincing them I'd ever been in a movie."

But does he want to be, you

know, properly famous? "Who doesn't want to be appreciated? But I don't want to be appreciated for having oral intercourse with the president. I want to be regarded for my work and I don't think there's anything special about people who are in movies."

So far, I'm finding him a bit intoxicating because he manages to be attentive yet detached, warm but mysterious. It's that hot-and-cold thing - gets me every time. So, as one of the themes of the movie is whether a journalist can ever really be friends with a star, I ask him whether he has any journalist friends. He doesn't. No offence, he just doesn't.

He didn't always want to be an actor, he says. "But I was the class clown and I wanted the attention of my peers. I developed some level of comfort in performing in front of people." Oh, I say. Classic middle-child syndrome. Or is that too much of a cliché? "Not too much. I was attention seeking, but everybody is. The only thing that's different is the kind of attention people seek - sometimes it's from mass populus, sometimes you want it from a partner, or parents, or people you work with."

Having admitted to being somewhat needy, he gets a little closed when I probe further into his parental background. I had heard that his parents divorced, married, then divorced again. Must have been confusing. But he tells me he won't say whether I am right because it would lead people to draw conclusions about his parents and that's not fair.

He does tell me, though: "When I was in school, we were given these books where you fill in what I want to do when I grow up, and I had said 'lawyer or decathlete'. I also wrote in answer to what I didn't want to be: 'actor'. I discovered this in my second year of grad school studying acting, and I thought, 'I am absolutely f***ed. Deep down inside I don't want to do this and now it's the only thing I know how to do.'"

Oh yes. Very deliciously contrary. He met his girlfriend, Mary Louise Parker, five years ago when they were doing Bus Stop. Did they fall in love as characters first? "Yes, we did, and much like the play, she came begrudgingly. In the first read through, she shocked me, she was so good. She shocked me."