Davies - the million dollar man

Bird-like, frenetic Jeremy Davies is all sizzling intensity as Tom Tom in Wim Wenders's new drama-meets-arthouse movie The Million Dollar Hotel. The real Davies, a 30-year-old green-tea drinker, is much the same when we meet as he enthuses about the film for which he wrote a 30-page letter of application to Wenders. Formal auditions unnerve him, you see. 'Either I come in and vomit all my ideas and they are overwhelmed, or I shut down and can't speak. Neither does much good.'

Once hired, however, he chose to vomit ideas, especially when improvising with leading lady Milla Jovovich. The result is a gibbering goblin who leaps around fellow guests in the hotel and finds himself at the centre of a murder investigation, headed by Mel Gibson. Definitely a few-sandwiches-short-of-a-picnic performance. 'Very interesting component in the alchemy of the film,' muses Davies over Mel's involvement, adding, 'I was just as curious about him as my character was about his character.'

Though undeniably off-the-wall, Davies has turned in a string of highly credible perfomances to date, notably in Oscar-winning Saving Private Ryan as vulnerable Corporal Upham and alongside Jodie Foster in Nell. Recently he was seen in period piece Up At The Villa as a hapless refugee fleeing the Nazis, who becomes the object of Kristin Scott Thomas's desire. In Hollywood he's highly rated. 'I was recomended by an actor I respect very much, Sean Penn, to Wim. Sean saw Spanking The Monkey and he was on the jury of some film festival and saw an obscure art film I did called The Locusts,' explains Davies. With friends like that, Jeremy Davies could well be on the way to his own million-dollar hotel.