Ryan Phillippe was on the Jimmy Kimmel show last night to promote his movie Stop Loss and the interview was pretty interesting. The more I see Phillippe the more respect I have for the guy, because he really seems down to earth. The best part of Phillippe’s segment on Kimmel was the spoof night vision sex video at the end, and you can skip to the bottom to see it now, but I wanted to include a little of his interview too
Ryan’s son Deacon was named after baseball player ancestor
Jimmy asked Ryan about his kids and he said they were doing great. He said that Ava, 8, was named after Ava Gardner, the woman who broke Frank Sinatra, because he’s a big Sinatra fan.
As for his son Deacon, 41/2, “I had an ancestor who pitched and won the first game of the first world series ever. He beat Cy Young… He was recently voted the best right handed pitcher in Pittsburgh Pirates history.”
Jimmy said: “Name was Deacon Phillippe of the Pittsburgh nationals.”
About soldiers’ response to “Stop Loss”
Ryan said “The film is really about the soliders… and what it’s like for them to come back home… the response we’ve gotten from the military has been incredible. They’ve all said thank you because it truly tells the soliders’ story. The sacrifice they make for us is far beyond anything any of us will ever really have to experience.”
He said the film is less about a political agenda and is more a human, heartfelt story.
That night vision faux sex tape video
And here comes the hysterical part. Kimmel said he had a video of Ryan that’s been on the Internet, and Ryan claimed it wasn’t him. The audience was roaring with laughter when they saw who Ryan was in bed with.
It was Kimmel’s older female security guard, Veatrice. These outrageous couplings are about to jump the shark, but not quite yet.
I heard this story last week, but People Magazine is reporting it now, so we may as well cover it: A gay blogger and playwright is slamming Jay Leno for careless remarks he made when Ryan Phillippe was on his show. Ryan played the first gay teenager on television in his first acting job. He played Billy Douglas in the opera soap opera “One Life to Live,” and said that it caused some controversy with the Baptist church in his small town in Delaware. (Phillippe later told Ellen Degeneres that he received letters from gay teens saying he saved them from suicide, but he didn’t realize the importance of his role at the time, because he was 17 and was just glad to have a job.)
Jay told Ryan to show the camera his “gayest look,” but he was talking about the way that soap operas make everything melodramatic for effect, and how the actors look at the camera with piercing eyes. I took it in that context and not as something he came up with as a stereotype of a gay man:
Apparently attempting to become playful during his interview with guest Ryan Phillippe (whose appearance was keyed to his new movie Stop-Loss), Leno, 57, said to the actor, “Can you give me, like – say that camera is your gay lover …”
Despite Phillippe’s instant discomfort, Leno went on to say, “Can you give me your ‘gayest look’? Say that camera is Billy Bob – Billy Bob has just ridden in shirtless from Wyoming.”
“Wow,” replied Phillippe, 33. “That is so something I don’t want to do. Are you just going to embarrass me tonight, or … ?”
“No,” said Leno. “I got more stuff. This is the least of it.”
Among those in the home audience who quickly took offense, reports USA Today, was Tony-winning Avenue Q librettist Jeff Whitty, 36.
On his personal blog, Whitty flashes Leno what he considers his “gayest look” – which involves a well-known gesture with his middle finger. Whitty also asks, “Would you ask a guest to make their ‘blackest face?’ Their ‘Jewiest face?’ ”
Following suit, others have posted their “gayest looks” for Leno – also involving the same gesture – at the newly created Web site, My Gayest Look.
I didn’t cover this when I first heard it, because I watched that whole interview carefully and even transcribed some of it, and the comments Leno made did not seem offensive or targeted at gay men to me. Jay was talking about the way that soap operas exaggerate things, from my perspective. Plus I didn’t want to stir up a controversy. Sure Jay Leno made some stupid remarks, but I felt that as a semi-straight woman I’m not the one to say whether it was offensive to gay people or not, and frankly I felt stupid for not recognizing it as potentially offensive in the first place.
Whitty has some valid points that Jay wouldn’t ask someone to make their blackest or Jewiest face, and Leno even seemed uncomfortable when Halle Berry said that a photo of her with her nose photoshopped to look big was her “Jewish cousin.” Producers recognized that Berry’s remark was offensive and removed it prior to the show being aired, but someone has to hit them over the head to see that Jay is doing a similar thing here.
The best thing to come out of this is the website My Gayest Look, which involves tons of people giving Jay the finger. Now that this has some media attention, expect an apology from Jay. Maybe this will make media personalities think twice before making offhand stupid comments about groups of people. Also - I think that Asians are routinely stereotyped and made fun of in the media and that it gets hardly any attention. It’s good that people speak out and let us know when someone is out of line and I feel enlightened in this case, but am kind of humbled that I didn’t see it myself.
Update: Leno has apologized for his comments, saying that he agrees that it was dumb and that is came out wrong. He should have said “most melodramatic look” or “best soap opera stare”
“In talking about Ryan’s first role, I realize that what I said came out wrong,” the host of NBC’s Tonight Show said in a statement to PEOPLE. “I certainly didn’t mean any malice. I agree it was a dumb thing to say, and I apologize.”
Ryan Phillippe played the first gay teenager on television in his first acting role on the soap opera One Life To Live in 1992. He talked to Ellen Degeneres today and told her in an interview that he got discovered as a teen in a barber shop by a casting agent who asked him if he wanted to get into modeling. He did some modeling work and commercials before landing his role on the show.
Ryan Phillippe on “One Life To Live in the early 90s
Ellen asked Ryan if his people advised him against taking the controversial role and he said “you know, I had no people… no one stopped me.”
Ellen said that was a good thing because he probably made a difference in a lot of people’s lives.
On gay teens telling him he saved them from suicide
Ryan said “I wasn’t really aware at the time, I was 17 years old myself, but I remember getting fan mail and since it was my first big job - that’s exciting, getting fan mail… Some of them were pretty moving. There was one or two who said ‘you know, I was contemplating suicide and I saw a representation of who I was on television for the first time… and it made me feel good about myself…’ those things were pretty moving.”
On his kids
Ellen: “What do you do with them? Where do you hang out?”
“You can check the pages of most magazines and find out unfortunately. I take them snowboarding, we go to the beach, I’m teaching them how to skateboard, my daughter just learned to ride a bike. That kind of fun, fatherly stuff. We’ll watch Nancy Drew or Hannah Montana or something. All suitable stuff for a 33 year old guy.”
Ryan then talked about his film Stop Loss, which is out in US theaters this Friday. He said we need to stop the practice of the backdoor draft in which soldiers are called back to service after their tours of duty are completed, which is what Stop Loss refers to.
I’ve seen a lot of celebrity interviews and rarely are the celebrities as candid and quotable as Ryan Phillippe. This guy has really grown on me over the past couple of weeks when he’s been doing press for this film. He comes off as down to earth, open and matter of fact, but guarded enough to keep some things private, like his relationship with Abbie Cornish.
Ryan has been slightly struggling with his career and hasn’t reached the level of success of his Oscar-winning ex wife, but I see a lot of good roles in his future after this. He seems like a real stand up guy and a solid actor. Plus he’s a dreamboat, who am I kidding?
Here’s the video of Ryan on Ellen, thanks to clipper lindsey on Redlasso.
Ellen also showed this photo from Ryan’s high school year book.
The Huffington Post points to a throwaway mention in the Fox411 Entertainment column, in which Roger Friedman gives Stop Loss a glowing review and mentions as an aside that Ryan Phillippe’s presumed girlfriend, Abbie Cornish, is pregnant:
Phillippe is not the only good actor working in “Stop Loss.” Peirce has stocked the film with talent: Channing Tatum and Joseph Gordon-Levitt are his army buddies, Abbie Cornish (whom Phillippe met on the set and apparently is having a child with) and Timothy Olyphant also are featured to great effect.
This made me scour the photo agencies for recent photos of Cornish and she didn’t show up at the premiere of Stop Loss on March 18th. The last event photos I could find of her were at the Sydney premiere of Elizabeth: The Golden Age in November. The most recent paparazzi photos I could find are from December and she was seen kissing Ryan and hanging out with his kids. Cornish was wearing a loose top but she didn’t look pregnant or anything from those faraway photos.
Fox news could be right, and it seems curious that Cornish didn’t show up at the premiere, but maybe she just wants to keep a low profile after all the rumors.
Phillippe has gone a long way toward repairing his image recently with candid and funny interviews on the talk show circuit. He held his own with Howard Stern last week, and came across as both open and gracious about his divorce and his ex wife’s new boyfriend. He didn’t directly answer a question about whether an affair with Cornish broke up his relationship with Reese, and answered “That’s what they say. It’s funny to me. A story gets told and then it becomes truth to everyone else. And unless you hold some kind of bizarre press conference where you refute everything … they take on a life of their own.” Ryan also said “no comment” when asked about Abbie by a USA Today journalist.
We’ll have to see if Cornish resurfaces and if she looks pregnant. When Stern asked Phillippe if he would consider getting married again, he said “I would imagine someday, yeah.”
Ryan repeated that sentiment to USA Today, adding that he would like to have more children too:
“I can see doing it again, yeah. And I can certainly see possibly having children again. I’m pretty young, and there are many beautiful things about that idea of marriage and family. It just doesn’t always work out perfect for everybody. But I’ve done all I’m going to do in terms of talking about that part. It’s fair to her [Reese] and fair to myself to move on.”
Abbie Cornish is shown below on 11/4/07 at the premiere of Elizabeth: The Golden Age in Sydney, thanks to Splash News. These photos are not to show that she looks pregnant here at all, they are just the last event pictures I could find. She is seen in the header on 10/1 at the Elizabeth premiere in LA. Still of Ryan Phillippe is from USA Today.
Ryan Phillippe was on Conan O’Brien on Friday night to promote his new film, Stop Loss. Like his appearance on “The Tonight Show,” his interview was chock full of quotable moments. I’m not a huge fan of the guy but after watching these recent interviews he seems like less of a jerk to me than I previously assumed.
On the paparazzi trailing him
Conan showed a hot photo of Ryan lifting up his shirt to wipe his face while working out, and Ryan said that the paparazzi follow him every day even though he has the same boring routine.
“My friends will say to me, ‘you are not that interesting,’ and I tell them ‘this is what I think every time I see a camera pointing at me in public.’ They must make money.”
On his food-throwing incident with the paparazzi
Conan showed the photo of Ryan with a towel over his head throwing what looks like a 1/2 eaten burger.
Ryan identified the food as a breakfast jack from Jack In The Box and said that the photographer blocked his car after he went through the drive through.
“The pen me in at the drive through… I don’t know, but you get a little bit tempted to hit the accelerator… every once in a while I lose my cool and throw food.”
On his kids and the paparazzi
Conan: “Do they understand when people are taking pictures of you and stuff? Does that bother them?”
Ryan: “The whole point is to try to minimize that… My daughter [Ava, 8] gets a little anxious. My son [Deacon, 4] it kind of goes over his head. It is kind of nerve-wracking to have large men, some of who have prison records, pointing long [lenses] it’s kind of intimidating.”
On the title of his film, Stop Loss
Ryan then explained the title of his new film Stop Loss, which means to stop a soldiers legitimate “loss” of service. After fulfilling a tour of duty honorably, soldiers are sent back and told they can’t get out of the Army. Ryan says that “to be told you’ve got to turn around and go back to what essentially is a hellish environment, has got to be beyond anything that you or I will ever… you know.”
Ryan was on Howard Stern’s radio show on Thursday and he talked about his ex wife’s relationship with Jake Gyllenhaal. He said “He’s a good dude. I love [Reese] and I want her to be happy, and it seems like she is.”
Stop Loss is out in the US on Friday. Ryan is doing a great job promoting the film, which seems to have an important message.
Here’s his interview on Conan, thanks to clipper Monkeyboy on Redlasso.
Ryan Phillippe is shown outside Good Morning America on Friday, thanks to Splash News.
Ryan Phillippe was on Jay Leno last night, and his interview was pretty entertaining. Leno opened up with the statement that he’d Googled Ryan. Ryan said that he stopped doing that because it’s depressing and people say hateful things online since they’re anonymous.
On “hateful comments” online
“I’ve stopped Googling myself. Some of the stuff that you see when you are someone who is known is so depressing. Just the comments. People make really hateful comments sometimes, because there’s anonymity and you can get away with it.”
On his first role, a gay teenager on a soap opera
Ryan didn’t elaborate and then Leno told him that he found out that Ryan played the first gay teenager in a soap opera on “One Life to Life.” Ryan said he was 17 and came from Delaware and it was his first paying job as an actor. He said that the local Baptist church “had a little bit of a reaction to it.”
Ryan said his character’s name was “Billy Douglas,” and Leno asked him to give the camera his gayest look and he laughed and said he wouldn’t do it. Ryan fidgeted in his seat and said “are you just going to embarrass me tonight?” and then got up jokingly like he was going to leave but sat down again.
On his “naked commercial”
Leno said “You also made a naked commercial” and Ryan countered “I am not kidding, I am going to walk off this stage right now.”
Ryan then said “I feel kind of cheap actually… it was for Armani jeans. I was probably only 19, and David Lachapelle who is a like real serious photographer… it was a commercial that he was doing and he saw me at a restaurant and put me in it, and I didn’t know that I would end up being naked in skid row at 2:00 in the morning with rats crawling around.”
Then Leno showed this commercial:
After the break Leno asked Ryan how he spent his money when he first started making it and he said that he bought a lot of CDs and music and that his first big purchase was a house for his parents.
On his kids
Then Leno brought up the fact that Ryan is a Frank Sinatra fan and he said he has a 12 year-old bulldog named Frank and that his daughter, Ava, was named after Sinatra’s second wife Ava Gardner. Leno said he used to open for Sinatra and that they did North Carolina once and the crowd wasn’t receptive to Sinatra’s jokes.
Ryan called Ava “amazing, beautiful,” and said “I can’t believe I have an eight year-old daughter.” He also mentioned his son, Deacon.
He was promoting his new film Stop Loss which is about a soldier called back to war in Iraq after his tour of duty ends. It is out in the US on March 28.
Here’s his full interview on Leno last night, thanks to clipper monkeyboy on Redlasso.
Ryan Phillippe on Leno part 1
Ryan Phillippe on Leno part 2
Ryan is shown at the Stop Loss premiere on 3/17/08, thanks to PRPhotos.
Have you ever looked back on your life and wondered what it would have been like if you had made different decisions? You could have chosen a completely different spouse, home, university, or career. For a fresh out of high school Ryan Phillippe, his life almost took a completely different turn in an army recruitment office.
“Out of high school, I didn’t have a ton of options because my grades weren’t the best and I didn’t come from money,” he tells Entertainment Tonight. “When I graduated, it was around the time of the first Gulf War and I did go and sit in a recruitment office and got the T-shirt and everything.”
However, it just wasn’t meant to be for the now 33-year-old. While the young man who went in with him ended up serving in the Gulf War, Ryan ended up doing something else on the other side of the world. “I went to New York to be an actor instead.”
Fortunately for us, Ryan only walked away with a t-shirt, not a profession. It’s hard to imagine Hollywood without Ryan Phillippe, his ex-wife Reese Witherspoon, and their two little children.
Ryan would almost definitely have children though, he says that fatherhood comes completely naturally to him and it’s his first priority.
“You try to make it (media interest) seem as commonplace as you can,” he says. “That’s sort of the approach you have to take with all of that stuff, with the press, with the paparazzi. You kinda just say, ‘Well, you know, Mommy and Daddy do this certain kind of job and it creates an interest in the public,’ and you minimize all of that stuff as much as you can.”
Paparazzi or not, nothing can take away the joy of fatherhood for the actor.
“Being a father is by far my greatest achievement and the most important thing about me,” Ryan says. “My mother had a day-care center in my house growing up and I come from a big family on the East Coast. We grew up helping take care of and raise kids, so it’s second nature to me.”
Ryan might never have had to explain to his pre-school children what paparazzi are if he had chosen life in the armed forces – but he would have been dodging shots of a completely different kind if he had served in the Gulf War.
And here’s Ryan Phillippe at the Stop Loss premiere yesterday, thanks to PRPhotos. Ryan’s on-off girlfriend, Abbie Cornish, co-stars in the film but was not at the premiere from what I could. Ryan is rumored to have had an affair with Cornish toward the end of his marriage to Reese Witherspoon.
Reese Witherspoon is a marketing genius. She knows exactly how much to say in an interview without giving much away. Reese says “Yeah, my divorce was devastating, but I’m not going to talk about it” and you’ve got your headline, baby. “Reese says divorce was devastating’. Ta da. And the conversation goes back to whatever project the actress is currently promoting.
Reese is currently out promoting Penelope, her latest flick from her production company Type A, in which Christina Ricci plays a woman with a pig’s nose. I’m not giving away any more of the plot, because I am dying to see this (I love Reese) and don’t want to spoil it.
Reese spoke to E! News telling them she wants to shoot someone. That’s headline-worthy right there.
Here’s what she said about shoot-’em-up movies wherein the leading man gets to take down the bad guy. “Why does the guy get to shoot him? I want the girl to shoot him!” she said, laughing intermittently. “I love watching Angelina Jolie kick ass in Mr. & Mrs. Smith, and I can’t wait to see her in Wanted. I would love to shoot someone. In the knee cap or something, just to stop them!”
I would really like to see Elle Woods (Reese’s character from Legally Blonde) go crazy and shoot people. Elle, in a movie with Jason Bourne, where they go around shooting all her ex-boyfriends and members of her sorority. That is an instant movie classic.
Then, Reese told Good Morning America that she wants her kids to get bullied so they’ll have the experience:
“I’ve had movies that were stinkeroos! And then, you know, I think everybody has experience of a being awkward. I was always really short and really underdeveloped and had big coke-bottle glasses … I think, that’s where I got a personality from, though, man. I wouldn’t give any of it back — not for a day.”
Penelope has grown up not only dealing with the shame of her parents, but also with the ridicule of her classmates. Witherspoon sees this taunting as “formative” and says her own experience with failure has helped define who she is.
“I wouldn’t want my children to miss out on any of that teasing and bullying and don’t you think it kind of makes you who you are?” Witherspoon asked Connelly.
“This drives me crazy about today. Everyone wins the award and then, you know, everybody’s an MVP? No! They’re not! Okay? I distinctly recall the two weeks of crying because I didn’t make the softball team. It made me interesting, you know?”
Gee, why don’t you just put a couple of ‘kick me’ signs on their backs as you drop them off to school Reese? You don’t think they’re going to get picked on? All kids get picked on, and famous kids probably more so. Reese was actually talking about this in the context of her new movie, where the title character has a pig’s nose and I suspect would get some teasing. And when I say ’some teasing’ I mean ‘relentless teasing’.
Then, she talks about paparazzi and her fear of a butt shot.
The mother-of-two admits the prospect of her bikini-clad bottom gracing the pages of tabloid magazines and internet sites around the world terrifies her.
Witherspoon says, “I hate that the paparazzi takes my picture when I’m on vacation: `Oh my god, did they see my butt? I hope they did not see my butt.’”
Which I totally sympathize with, because even the most bootylicious are afraid to see a photograph of their asses on the cover of a weekly rag.
Now this is all very cute and entertaining of Reese, and makes for good press, but what was the pink elephant in the room she was avoiding talking about? One was the death of Heath Ledger and her (unconfirmed) boyfriend Jake Gyllenhaal’s reaction to it. The other was her husband’s latest interview about the divorce and the other woman Abbie Cornish.
Way to go Reese. Penelope is in cinemas February 28th.
Note by Celebitchy: Here’s the trailer for Penelope, it looks so cute!
And here are some stills from the film, thanks to AllMoviePhoto. Also shown are Christina Ricci, James McAvoy and Peter Dinklage. The last three pictures were taken in May, 2006 during filming. Spoiler Alert: The final picture below shows Ricci with her full face for the film, so don’t look at that image if you would rather not spoil it before you see the film.
For reasons completely unbeknownst to me, I’ve always sided with Reese Witherspoon in her divorce from Ryan Phillippe. Probably due to that nasty rumor that he was cheating on her, and/or jealous of her career. But whenever he’s interviewed he comes across as genuinely brokenhearted about the whole thing, and admits to a level of sadness few men would. It seems like he was truly broken apart by the whole thing, and is still very much in the process of putting himself back together. Ryan gave a pretty in-depth interview to W magazine recently, where he talked about the divorce and his relationship with Abbie Cornish, who he was long rumored to have had an affair with. Ryan insists that the two are not a couple.
“She and I are close friends, and as far as if there is any future, that is not where we are at now,” he says. “That is what other people like to say or like to assume. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a friendship, and we are getting to know each other in a really difficult situation.”
Cornish was labeled the “other woman” after it was rumored that the two slept together during production on Stop-Loss. Asked about the veracity of the gossip in a rather blunt manner, Phillippe bursts out laughing and says, “First of all, I wouldn’t answer that, but I would say that things are never as simple as it’s made out to be in the tabloid press. It was unfair for her to be called the names that she was, because it wasn’t about that. I don’t think an outside person can ever cause a divorce. I had difficulties in my relationship, and in my marriage, long before I ever met her.”
Ryan also gives a really astute answer when the subject comes up of why his relationship with Reese ended. He says that the public wants answers - and he doesn’t even go off on how people aren’t entitled to answers. He just says that they wouldn’t necessarily be satisfied with them.
Phillippe says these popular diagnoses of his failed union widely miss the mark. “I certainly understand the level of interest that comes along with a public marriage,” he says, “and with being married to someone like Reese, who so many people love with good reason. People want answers. But I think sometimes they wouldn’t be happy with what the answers would be.”
Ryan has mentioned in a previous interview that he was so depressed over the divorce that he was suicidal. He noted to W that he couldn’t get out of bed for months, but that things did eventually get better, little by little.
A little later, Phillippe says his divorce was “the darkest, saddest place I had ever been. It was a struggle—there were a good four or five months of not being able to get out of bed. It was the worst time in my life.” These days, things are better. “You get through it. It’s a process that’s not easy, but I get less and less sad about it every day.”
It’s really heart-wrenching to read what he has to say. Phillippe definitely doesn’t come off as a bad guy, and he doesn’t portray Reese as a bad person either. I am always curious as to why their relationship ended, but he’s right, the average member of the public would probably never be satisfied with the answer, because we weren’t a part of that relationship and don’t understand the intricacies of what went on. Ryan says he and Reese have maintained a cordial relationship because of their kids. It doesn’t seem that they’re warm to each other, and it appears that there’s still sadness and hurt, which is understandable. Hopefully as time goes on everyone will heal and things will thaw out.
Header image is of Ryan at the Edinburgh film festival on 8/23/07, thanks to WENN.
Reese and Ryan at the Walk The Line premiere on 11/13/05
Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillippe are fighting over Jake Gyllenhaal. And who wouldn’t? Damn, he is hot. Waaay hotter than Ryan “I’m so pretty” Phillippe. Except they’re actually fighting over the kids, and how much influence Jake has over them.
According to a family friend, the kids love Jake so much that when it’s time for Reese to hand them over to Ryan , little Deacon can’t stop talking about Jake. “It’s Jake did this, Jake brought mommy flowers and coffee, Jake says we should recycle,” the friend tells OK!
It’s reportedly taking it’s toll on Ryan. “Ryan called Reese and suggested she stop letting him (Jake) spend so much time with the kids,” the insider tells OK! “He was pretty irate on the phone. Reese barely let him finish the sentence before she shot back that what she does with her personal life is her business.”
Unfortunately, this is what happens when you get divorced. Your kids become part of another person’s life, if your former partner takes up with someone new. I’m pretty sure that Reese isn’t exactly loving the role Abbie Cornish has in Ava, 8, and Deacon’s, 3, lives, but you have to accept that you don’t have any say over your former partner’s girlfriend. Which is shattering, and takes a long time to get used to.
Ava and Deacon spend equal time with both parents and their new partners under the custody agreement arranged while Reese and Ryan were divorcing.
Reese this week had a blood blister on her eye - ew, gross, poor Reese - that held up shooting on the movie Four Christmases. Staying true to her type A personality, she was more concerned with disrupting a day’s work than with her painful eye, and “kept apologizing to everyone from producers to the lighting guys.” Which is kind of sweet, except that they were probably actually happy to get a half day off work. They were probably just trying to hide it until she left.
Picture note by Celebitchy: The header image is obviously an old one of Reese and Ryan. It was taken at the premiere of Walk The Line on 11/13/05, thanks to PRPhotos.
lmao… i was a total nkotb fan when i was younger, just dont...
