Ryan Phillippe played Billy Douglas on the soap opera One Life to Live, a role usually described with the lengthy honorific of "the first gay teenage character on American daytime TV." Slender and handsome, with copious blonde curls, Phillippe moved to the big screen, landing a co-starring role in the horror flick I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997, with Jennifer Love Hewitt) and then bigger starring roles in 54 (1998, with Neve Campbell), the teenage sex intrigue Cruel Intentions (1999, with Reese Witherspoon), and the gritty The Way of the Gun (2000, with Benicio del Toro). In 2005 he played a troubled Los Angeles cop in the racially-charged drama Crash (with Don Cheadle and Sandra Bullock).
Phillippe married actress Reese Witherspoon in July of 1999. Their daughter Ava was born on 9 September 1999, and their son Deacon was born on 23 October 2003... Philippe and Witherspoon announced in October 2006 that they would formally separate.
Career Highlights: Cruel Intentions, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Playing by Heart
First Major Screen Credit: Lifeform (1996)
Biography
With his golden curls, sensuous mouth, and sculpted body, Ryan Phillippe looks more like he was peeled off a Botticelli canvas than "discovered" in a Delaware barbershop. Phillippe, who was born September 10, 1974, in New Castle, DE, rose from obscurity to become one of the most talked-about actors of his generation, attracting at first numerous admirers of his good looks, and later fans of risk-taking performers.
Phillippe got his first break on the ABC soap opera One Life to Live, on which he portrayed daytime's first gay teenager, Billy Douglas. The role, which he played from 1992 to 1993, won him both favorable notices and increasing recognition. After quitting the show to focus on his screen career, Phillippe got a small part in 1995 submarine action thriller Crimson Tide. More work -- and more boat-oriented action -- followed in 1996 with Ridley Scott's White Squall, in which Phillippe was given a prominent role alongside two other up-and-coming actors, Ethan Embry and Scott Wolf. After this mainstream, big-budget venture, Phillippe took a walk down the yellow brick road of independent filmmaking, first with his starring role as an abused trailer-park teen in Little Boy Blue (1997), and then in Gregg Araki's Nowhere (1997), as the latest of Araki's trademark ultra-horny boys.
Phillippe's major screen break came with his role in the formulaic 1997 slasher pic I Know What You Did Last Summer, in which he starred alongside fellow Next-Big-Things Jennifer Love Hewitt, Freddie Prinze Jr., and Sarah Michelle Gellar. The film's success, coupled with Phillippe's exposure from previous films, was enough to propel him into two leading roles in 1998, first as a blue-haired club baby in Playing by Heart, and then as a starry-eyed bartender in the critically disembowelled 54, a film which showcased Phillippe's abs over his acting.
Following 54, Phillippe opted to play a naïve dope farmer in the obscure Homegrown (1998), in which he co-starred with Billy Bob Thornton and Hank Azaria. This preceded his next big break as the petulantly seductive trust-fund brat Sebastian Valmont in 1999's Cruel Intentions, a film that was essentially a present-day, all-teen adaptation of Choderlos de Laclos' Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Co-starring Sarah Michelle Gellar as his scheming stepsister and Phillippe's real-life wife-to-be Reese Witherspoon, the film proved to be one of the year's most guilty pleasures, winning Phillippe further acclaim in the hearts and minds of lust-struck women and men alike.
Subsequently teetering on the brink of all-out superstardom, Phillippe faltered a bit with the late summer 2000 action thriller The Way of the Gun, co-starring Benicio Del Toro. Though some saw the film as a smartly penned meditation on violence, others brushed it aside as just another post-Tarantino study in excess, and the film faded quickly from the box-office radar -- with the following year's AntiTrust dissipating almost immediately following its January 2001 release. But the tables turned for Phillippe in the years to come, with involvement in films that consistently found dual favor with critics and audiences -- and thus helped the young actor transition from a widespread reputation as a heartthrob to a reputation as an immensely gifted dramatist graced with a succession of plum roles (and suggested a keen instinct for script selection). This turnaround began with the actor's participation in director Robert Altman's critically worshipped mystery comedy Gosford Park. Phillippe (as Henry Denton) was not among the top-billed members of the ensemble cast, but his work shone brightly alongside such luminaries as Maggie Smith, Michael Gambon, Helen Mirren, and Kristin Scott Thomas -- no small feat for a relative newcomer.
The following year, Phillippe drew raves for his work in Burr Steers's sleeper hit Igby Goes Down (2002) -- a commercial and critical indie darling -- as the spoiled, conceited older brother of the title character. Thereafter, Phillippe's screen activity declined just a bit (perhaps because of his off decision to father and raise additional children with wife Witherspoon), but he also became increasingly selective. His star rose higher with 2005's Best Picture winner Crash, directed by Paul Haggis. A Gaghan-esque muckracking drama with a massive ensemble cast that included the gifted Don Cheadle, Matt Dillion, and Brendan Fraser, the picture meditated on modern-day racism through multiple interlocking stories that unfold throughout the City of Angels.
2006 marked a fortuitous year for Phillippe. He secured a leading role in director Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers, the American half of the director's two-part dramatization of the Battle of Iwo Jima (as Bradley, a man who learns of his father's heroism in that conflict decades later). In that same year's Lionsgate release Five Fingers, helmed by neophyte Laurence Malkin, Phillippe plays the difficult role of a brilliant Dutch pianist abducted by terrorists and threatened with having his fingers lopped off one by one. At about the same time, Phillippe signed on (alongside Chris Cooper and Laura Linney) to play Eric O'Neill in director Billy Ray's Breach, which the studio slated for a 2007 release. The picture -- a docudrama -- concerns real-life FBI turncoat Robert Hanssen (Cooper). Phillippe plays the "mole" assigned to catch Hanssen in the act.
Also in the fall of 2006, the busy Phillippe had to contend with drama in his personal life in the form of a highly public divorce from Witherspoon, announced that October. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide
Phillippe was born in New Castle, Delaware, the son of Susan, who ran a day care center in the family's house, and Richard Phillippe, who worked for DuPont.[1] He has three sisters. Phillippe attended New Castle Baptist Academy, where he played basketball and soccer, as well as earned a black belt in Tae Kwon Do; he was also the Yearbook Editor in his senior year. At the age of fifteen, he became interested in an acting career, inspired by a neighbor's suggestion. A casting agent spotted Phillippe in a barbershop two years later, and began sending him to auditions in New York. At age 17, Ryan Phillippe worked as a waiter (1-1/2 yrs) at Rascals BBQ & Crab House located in New Castle, Delaware.
Career
Phillippe's acting career began with an appearance in ABCdaytime dramaOne Life to Live. His character Billy Douglas, whom he played from 1992 to 1993, was the first gay teenager on a daytime soap opera, causing quite a stir. After leaving the show, Phillippe moved to Los Angeles, where he appeared in a number of small parts in various television series including Matlock, the tv mini-series The Secrets of Lake Success, and movies, including the 1995 film Crimson Tide and the 1996 film White Squall.
In 2006, Phillippe played real-life Navy corpsman John Bradley in the war filmFlags of Our Fathers, directed by Clint Eastwood and following the journey of the United States Marines who lifted the flag at the battle of Iwo Jima. Phillippe has said that the film was the "best experience" of his career because of its "personal meaning" to him,[2] and that he would have "given [his] life" to fight in World War II, noting that both of his grandfathers fought in the war.[3] Phillippe's role was positively received by film critic Richard Roeper, who specified that he thought it was Phillippe's best performance to date.[4] Phillippe's next role was in the thriller Breach, in which he played FBI investigator Eric O'Neill opposite Chris Cooper. He has since commented that he believes Cooper to be "the best actor America has to offer".[5] He then starred in several 2007 and 2008 films, including Chaos, in which he plays a police officer, Five Fingers, a drama set in Morocco, Kimberly Pierce's Iraq war film Stop-Loss, and the futuristic story Franklyn. In March 2009, Phillippe began filming the Canadian/South African production The Bang Bang Club, which tells the real-life story of the Bang-Bang Club, four South African photographers whose images documented the bloody end of Apartheid.[6] Phillippe stars as Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Greg Marinovich. The film is set for a 2010 release.
Phillippe and his long-time friends Breckin Meyer, Seth Green, and David E. Siegal run a production company called Lucid Films. Phillippe is becoming more actively involved in his films as a producer.[3]
Personal life
In 1997, Phillippe attended a party given for actress Reese Witherspoon's 21st birthday. Upon meeting Witherspoon, Phillippe was reported to have spent all night talking to the young actress, with Witherspoon telling Phillippe, "I think you're my birthday present."[7] The following morning, Phillippe left California to film I Know What You Did Last Summer in North Carolina, and subsequently began a long-distance courtship with Witherspoon by mail, e-mail, and telephone. When Phillippe returned to Los Angeles, the couple continued dating and became engaged in December 1998. The following year, the pair starred in Cruel Intentions together. Phillippe and Witherspoon married on June 5, 1999, in a small ceremony on a plantation near North Charleston, South Carolina.
On September 9, 1999, Phillippe and Witherspoon had a daughter named Ava Elizabeth, after Phillippe's grandmother. Their son, Deacon Reese (named after Phillippe's distant relative, Deacon Phillippe, a baseball player) was born on October 23, 2003. The family resided in a gated community in Brentwood, California.
On October 30, 2006, Phillippe and Witherspoon released a statement announcing that they had decided to formally separate.[8] After over seven years of marriage, Witherspoon filed for divorce from her husband on November 8, 2006, citing irreconcilable differences.[9] In light of the couple's lack of a prenuptial agreement, she requested that the court refuse to grant spousal support to Phillippe, and asked for joint legal custody and sole physical custody of the pair's two children. Phillippe filed for joint physical custody of the children on May 15, 2007, and did not seek any spousal support.[10] The couple's divorce became final October 5, 2007, according to court documents. The couple share joint custody of their children.[11] Phillippe is currently dating Australian actress Abbie Cornish, whom he met in 2006 while filming Stop-Loss.[12] Phillippe is a Philadelphia Phillies , Philadelphia Eagles, Philadelphia Flyers & Philadelphia 76ers fan.
