  Kevin Zegers, co-star of Frozen.
|
PARK CITY, Utah — In Hollywood, if they’re not talking about you, you’re probably not working.
And like it or not, Canadian Kevin Zegers says after years of being “a very artsy-fartsy” movie actor, he’s courting industry clout with a multi-episode stint on TV’s Gossip Girl.
The slick, youth-skewing series about Manhattan high society is, you might have guessed, worlds apart from the indie likes of Transamerica, in which he played a hustler. Which may be why Zegers, speaking on this day to promote his new thriller Frozen, is enjoying himself so much.
“Part of doing something like that is just going and having fun ... I feel there are certain times where you go, ‘This is supposed to be fun and tongue-in-cheek.’ And I think part of my downfall as an actor is I think I take it too seriously sometimes.
“This doesn’t always have to be so heavy. People watch it. I hadn’t watched (Gossip Girl) before I did it, but it’s fun. Sometimes you need a little cotton candy in your life. It doesn’t always have to be transsexuals and male prostitutes.”
Not that he came to this realization quickly.
For a long time, Zegers admits, he eschewed the sort of projects — on both film and television — he deemed unworthy. “And if I realized anything, it’s that there’s probably work out there I didn’t get because I was being precious with myself, and I’m not anymore.”
The 25-year-old, who hails originally from Woodstock, Ont., came to Gossip Girl while he was on a break from film work. “New York sounded fun and I knew Blake (Lively), so it felt like a very warm venue.”
And, he says, like a savvy career move.
“No one really likes to talk about it, but this is also a business. I don’t know if I want to be an actor for the rest of my life, but to get where I want to get, there are certain things you have to do. And I think it’s the big old monkey in the closet. It was a very smart business move on my part — or at least that’s what I was told. And I felt like they were giving me a venue to do my thing ...
“I feel like they let me run rampant for four episodes, and it’s fun. I like TV because it’s very immediate. I’ve shot movies four years before they’ve come out — and those are the bad ones.”
Frozen, he adds with a laugh, was shot only a year ago. In the suspense-horror hybrid, Zegers stars with Shawn Ashmore and Emma Bell as friends battling frostbite when they’re abandoned on a ski lift.
While that proved arduous enough, the shoot was further complicated by scenes involving wolves.
In one sequence Zegers, buried to his waist in snow, found himself dangerously close to one of his salivating co-stars. Although food kept off-camera was supposed to keep the wolves at bay, this one, remembers director Adam Green, “got right up in Kevin’s face like the T-Rex in Jurassic Park and he was sniffing and growling and smelling his hat.”
Says Zegers, “They were interested in exploring, and apparently my face is what they wanted to explore.”
He suspects he knows why. “Wolves are only interested in Canadian actors. They love the smell of poutine.”
More Movie Reviews
