One of the first things you notice about Peter Facinelli, the young actor who starred as Jennifer Love Hewitt's love interest in Can't Hardly Wait and who appears in the soon-to-be-released The Big Kahuna opposite Kevin Spacey and Danny DeVito (a role that will hopefully and quite deservedly launch his career) is not his stunning good looks, but his intense, almost Zen-like composure. Facinelli is soft-spoken and has steady, watchful eyes. Observation, in fact, seems to be one facet of his considerable acting talent. As a child, he remembers seeing Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Later, in the library, he found picture books on Paul Newman and Robert Redford. "To this day, I am a biography nut," Facinelli said, "I just find peoples' lives so interesting."
Unlike kids who are born to show-business families, Facinelli took a more circuitous route. "Nobody in my family knows anything about acting, so I didn't really do anything about wanting to act for a while. When people asked what I wanted to be, I said a lawyer, and that seemed like a good response." He joked, "I'd at least have courtroom drama."
In his first year of college, Facinelli worked at a law firm where he "realized that lawyers spent most of their time trying not to go to court." He decided to pursue his love of acting but "instead of just getting on a bus and going to Hollywood, I wanted to train. I wanted to learn craft."
Facinelli ended up at New York University's Tisch School of The Arts. Not a bad place to learn craft. Still, Facinelli noted, "You can't really study acting the way you would study law. There are so many techniques, ideas, and thoughts on acting. It's so complex and so simple." Facinelli studied with the Atlantic Theatre Company at Tisch, but he has also studied Stanislavski and Meisner techniques, among others. "There are a lot of different approaches," he said. "You have to take them and make them your own."
In The Big Kahuna, directed by first-time film maker John Swanbeck, Facinelli worked with two of the most accomplished and well-respected actors working today. Asked what it was like to walk onto a set with Danny DeVito and Kevin Spacey, Facinelli paused thoughtfully for a moment.
"I've got to tell you, I don't get intimidated. I have a lot of respect for actors, and I know that some have been doing it for a long time. But in the end, we're all trying to tell a story. We're all trying to be truthful." (The plot involves three salesmen who go to a convention in Wichita and spend the weekend sharing stories and tales of their experiences.)
"The Big Kahuna was great because there were no egos involved in the movie. Danny is a producer and a director and an incredible actor. Kevin is a director and an actor and a producer on this movie. They could have come in and said, "OK, kid, go stand over there'. But they didn't. It was very collaborative. Everyone's opinions were valid."
Facinelli continued, "John Swanbeck was great to work with because he has vision, but he understands that he doesn't know everything." At one point (in what Facinelli calls "the best John story"), Swanbeck approached Facinelli and said, "You know this line your character says? What does that mean?" And then, Facinelli laughed, eyes brightening at the memory, "He walked away! That showed so much trust. He needs you to go deep and find the connection with the character. He pushes you. He guides you."
Facinelli definitely wants to avoid being pigeonholed by an industry famous for shuffling actors into categories. "I look for roles I haven't done before," he explained. After Dancer Texas, Pop. 81 and Can't Hardly Wait, two movies in which Facinelli played a teenager, he was offered a lot of teen roles. "I didn't want to go that route," he said, "I want people to wonder, What's he going to do next?"
Despite all of his recent success, Facinelli is also still very much in touch with the hard parts of being a professional actor: "I dread auditioning. If I had to audition for The Big Kahuna, I don't think I would have gotten it. To try to bring a character to life in a small room that's like a 3x5 cell? It's not going to be three-dimensional. I'm not a factory. I can't make a character in a night. I understand that I still have to convince people, and I try to enjoy the process. But auditioning makes you feel like a number."
Auditioning may not be a big part of Facinelli's life much longer. And, in any event, Swanbeck never seemed to have a moment's doubt about who would be getting the role in The Big Kahuna. "I received many actor's reels for the role, but Peter's was the first that I looked at and I never looked at another," said Swanbeck. "He amazed us all because the story only works if all three of the characters are equally identifiable and equally engaging and equally challenging. Very few actors of his generation could hold their own with Kevin Spacey and Danny DeVito. He's one of them."