HOLLYWOOD -- American poet Robert Frost would be proud of Ryan Phillippe and Benicio Del Toro.
They're taking a road not usually travelled by hot young actors.
And hot they are.
In 1995 and 1996, Del Toro won the Independent Spirit Award for his powerful performances in The Usual Suspects and Basquiat.
After appearing in I Know What You Did Last Summer, 54 and Cruel Intentions, Phillippe was poised to usurp the crowns held by the likes of Brad Pitt and Leonard DiCaprio as a Hollywood hunk.
The obvious route would have been to capitalize on their looks and emerging box-office status to appear in big-budget films. The offers were there, but Del Toro and Phillippe chose to team up with writer Christopher McQuarrie for his modest directing debut The Way of the Gun, which opens Friday.
McQuarrie, who won the Oscar for his screenplay for The Usual Suspects, explores the dark world of crime in this tale of a kidnapping that goes horribly wrong.
Del Toro and Phillippe play Longbaugh and Parker, a pair of ruthless petty criminals who kidnap a surrogate mother (Juliette Lewis) not realizing the parents of her unborn child have dangerous mob connections. Suddenly, there is a contract out on their lives.
"I wrote the role of Longbaugh for Benicio. After Usual Suspects, we vowed to work together again," explains McQuarrie.
"I never thought of Ryan for Parker. He came to me and I was extremely resistant about casting him.
"Ryan seemed to me to be the kind of guy who fights with his mouth and Parker is a born brawler. Physically, Ryan wasn't remotely the kind of Parker I'd imagined."
Phillippe was so intent on playing Parker that he gained 25 lbs., shaved his wavy locks and grew a scruffy beard.
"I owed it to Chris and the audience to make myself look as if I could have lived a criminal life," says Phillippe.
GRAVID MOMENT
For Phillippe, the idea of kidnapping a woman who is in her final weeks of pregnancy became surreal when his real-life wife, Reese Witherspoon, was due to deliver the couple's first child.
"The irony played real mind games with me," says Phillippe. "Like Juliette's character, Reese was in the final weeks of her pregnancy. We had our baby the day after we finished shooting The Way of the Gun."
Phillippe's daughter, Ava, is a year old.
He says fatherhood "is everything I'd ever hoped it would be.
"It made sense for me to start a family at a young age," says Phillippe, who turns 26 on Sept. 10. "I've been on my own since I was 17. My mom ran a day-care centre, so I was always around little kids.
"I don't feel as young as people in the industry tell me I am."
WORKING WAY
Del Toro, 33, has been working non-stop for two years.
With The Way of the Gun, he will have four movies out before the end of the year.
"In Guy Ritchie's film Snatched, I play a Jewish jewel thief in London, and I play a Mexican cop in Steven Soderbergh's Traffic, that is due out in December."
Del Toro also filmed a cameo opposite Jack Nicholson in Sean Penn's The Pledge.
"I play an American Indian in that one. I'm a mini-United Nations. I'm taking over from Anthony Quinn, who got called on to play every possible ethnic character."
Del Toro was born in Puerto Rico.
Both his parents, fraternal grandmother and uncle are lawyers.
"It's an understatement to say my parents were shocked and saddened when I announced I wanted to be an actor.
"My dad said he didn't want me to have to drive cab in New York for the rest of my life. His worst nightmare was realized when my first role was playing Duke the Dog-Faced Boy in Big Top Pee-Wee.
"He's a little more content with my career these days."
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