Interview: Chris Klein

Interview by Clint Morris

Interview with Chris Klein
Starring in the movie Just Friends.

He tensely waits. He knows it coming. His inhalation starts to amp up. His voice starts to crack. Then, suddenly like the unforeseen attack on Hawaii, the oily Aussie writer lets rip with the ‘Dude, what the heck happened with Rollerball?’ question.

Thankfully, actor Chris Klein, best known for his role in the American Pie films, is down-to-earth enough not to rip Clint Morris’s jugular out...

In 2002, after a string of successes, actor Chris Klein’s career was left in tatters – all thanks to one film. John McTiernan’s remake of the '70s future-sports epic Rollerball was both critically and customer bashed, and bearing in mind it was one of the year’s most expensive and most anticipated films – it stung like a bee bite to the neck for all involved.

“I was really disappointed,” says the actor. “It was my first time working on a really big action piece and we all went out there and tried our best. We had John McTiernan directing the movie, and at the end of the day it wasn’t received well. I don’t know…I guess you have to sometimes take the good with the bad. Sometimes what you put out there isn’t going to stick.”

Klein, who got his big break playing the charming Oz in the hit comedy American Pie, believes too many people compared it to the original, “which is really tough because even though we have the same title it’s definitely a different kind of movie. [But] the way it was edited and finished, and the scenes that we were trying to bring across to the audience, didn’t quite work I guess.”

Klein, who has been quiet the last few years, says he doesn’t believe it hurt his career too much, but “it certainly didn’t help my career either.”

Understandably, Klein’s been swimming in less-riskier waters since. His latest film, Just Friends, is an out-and-out comedy starring Ryan Reynolds as a highschool chubster who returns home ten years later as a successful spunk. Klein plays Dusty Dinkleman, a guitar-playing charmer fighting for the affection of the same woman Reynolds’ character is crushing over.

“We had a lot of fun making this movie,” gushes the actor. “Just really great characters too – Anna Faris really blew me away in this movie, and of course, Ryan’s fantastic. We had a lot of fun. The director Roger Kumble really let Ryan and I make a good run for it too – so we had a good time with each other.”

Dusty is charming, but he’s also a bit of closet idiot. How close to the character is Klein? The actor laughs. “Dusty Dinkleman. When I read that name, I thought ‘how am I going to play that part’, the name itself made me laugh. The difference between him and me is that Dusty’s a bit of a shallow young man – and he’s got one play in his playbook. It seems to work in New Jersey, but I don’t know how well he’d do out of that.”

Dusty’s ‘play’ is his guitar and his singing voice. He seems to be able to win women over with his strumming. Klein says that he might have looked like he was striking those strings and serenading his love, but it wasn’t him. “I can play enough to get by, but on the track, it’s not really me. I’m a very novice guitar player. I’ve got a couple of songs that I can play – but that’s about as far as I can go.”

Still, Klein admits that all his characters have a “little bit of me in them. The first thing you bring is your own human condition. But to play a typical character that you would usually see me play and then turn it own it’s head in the second half – that was really fun for me,” he says of playing Dusty.

Klein’s character in the film wasn’t too popular at highschool, unlike the actor, who says he tried to keep in good with everyone. “I lived in two worlds – I played football and swam competitively, but then I was interested in the acting side too. So I was friends with the jocks, but I was friends with the drama class too. I floated between both groups.”

Of course, Klein will probably always be remembered for his role as the jock-that-joined-choir in the American Pie movies, an opportunity he says he’ll always cherish.

“I was with those five guys and growing up with them in the business and going through the ranks with them – it was such a great opportunity. We had an opportunity to register and touch a generation gap, and that’s not easy to do.”

Klein opted not to return for the last sequel, American Pie: The Wedding, because the script didn’t really utilise his character. “Oz and Heather’s (Mena Suvari) storyline had ran it’s course and I was actually busy doing a play called 'This Is Our Youth' in London. As much as I would’ve liked to have been a part of it, because those guys are like my family, it didn’t work out. It was a case of what can you do?”

Next for the actor, who was engaged to actress Katie Holmes before couch-jumping Tom Cruise entered her life, is a film called Valley of Light, “which is starring me and Gretchen Mol and it’s a wonderful little film about a soldier from World War II who’s attempting to reconstruct his life in this little town called – indeed – Valley of Light.” He adds that it’s “nice to do a character driven dramatic piece – it’s quite a change for me.”

Then, he re-teams with American Pie director Paul Weitz for American Dreamz. “This one’s really, really funny. It’s a real dry look at reality television. It’s hysterical – Hugh Grant plays this Simon Cowell-esque sort of character, and Dennis Quaid plays the President of the United States. It’s a funny movie.”

Klein believes 2006 is going to be his year. “The future, I tell ya, I’m excited about it. I’m really excited about it. Having an opportunity to start in this business as a teenager and then growing into an adult and still getting an opportunity to act, and keep making people laugh and try new things, it’s great. Every day you walk onto a movie-set you learn something new and that’s really the exciting part of it.”