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He's
a TV idol, his wife's a pin-up...just how lucky can one guy
get?
David
Boreanaz was
spotted on an L.A. street - and now he's everyone's favourite
Angel.
David
Boreanaz is living the dream, Hollywood style. A TV idol
with a budding movie career, a world full of fans and a gorgeous
new wife best known for her Playboy pictorials, the brooding
star of the hit TV show Angel couldn't ask for more.
"If
living the dream means being happy with where you are, who you're
with and what you're doing, whether that's acting or picking
up garbage, then yeah, I'm living the dream," Boreanaz,
30, agrees.
Yul
Brynner made him do it. As a boy, Boreanaz headed to New
York to see the bald star wow them on Broadway in The King
And I. By the time the show was over, he had decided
to become an actor.
"I
was inspired by Brynner's passion. His command of the
stage. His ability, his conviction, how he maintained
the intensity of his performance. It moved me. After
that I went to the theatre as often as I could."
Aged
21, he left his Philadelphia home to make it big in Hollywood.
"I was determined to get involved in the business on any
level I could. I wasn't in town long before I got my first
part, but it was very small and so were all the others for a
very long time. I did a lot of plays, which taught me
a lot about acting, and to pay the rent I did all sorts of odd
jobs, from parking cars to selling frozen meat. I even
worked in the props department of a studio for a while.
At least then I was near to where I wanted to be."
Ironically,
Boreanaz's efforts didn't pay off nearly as successfully as
his decision to one day walk his dog, Bertha Blue. Spotted
on the street by an agent and sent to audition for the role
of friendly vampire Angel in Buffy The Vampire Slayer,
Boreanaz was finally on his way. "I was very lucky,
I met the right person and it got my foot in the door.
I got called back a couple of times and finally they offered
me the job."
Happy
to be working, Boreanaz didn't mind that his big break came
more from his looks than his ability. "You have to
use what you've got and if people cast you because of how you
act or the way that you look, the important thing is that you're
working. That's all that really matters."
As
the title character of the Buffy spin-off Angel
- which has now acquired cult status in its own right - Boreanaz
plays an undead private eye in Hollywood, a vampire with a soul,
a couple of sidekicks and no end of troubles. "The
show's writers are always adding things to keep the character
interesting, not just for me to play, but for the fans.
Angel's searching for meaning, for peace in his life, but thing
don't work out that way for him. He's a tragic character,
really. That's the appeal of the show. It's much
darker and more adult than Buffy, and that's why I think
it's only going to get more popular as time goes by."
Boreanaz
isn't short of admirers. Type his name in a search engine
and the results run to more than 44,000 websites dedicated to
the actor and his work. He is modest about his following
- "I'm not really into computers so I haven't seen much
of it, but I appreciate how popular the two shows are, how they
have a huge and dedicated following, and obviously I think that's
great" - and besides, he is now happily ensconced with
his Playmate wife of two months, 25-year-old Jaime Bergman,
who's expecting their first child in May.
Bergman
- also an actress, whose credits include "Blonde in drag
race" in Gone in 60 Seconcds and "Buxom blonde"
in horror movie Soultaker - is perhaps better sutied
to David's glamorous lifestyle than his first wife, an Irish
social worker-turned-screenwriter called Ingrid Quinn.
They met when Boreanaz was a struggling actor and divorced after
two years of marriage in 1999, by which time David was one of
America's biggest TV stars.
Boreanaz's
first crack at big-screen success can be seen in the recent
video release Valentine (which is available to buy from
February 11), a traditional slasher film with lashings of gore
and a typically attractive cast.
Was
he worried that making a horror movie after two horror TV series
might typecast him within the genre? "That didn't
occur to me. Other film offers had come along but I'd
always been working on Buffy or Angel. With
Valentine, I was on hiatus, so it was more a case of
timing that anything else. Also, I met the director, Jamie
Blanks, and liked him and the ideas he had for the movie."
Fortunately,
Boreanaz's next movie is entirely killing-free. "I've
just finished making a romantic comedy called I'm With Lucy,
where I play an out-of-control orthopaedic surgeon. Now
that's not a horror movie. I guess I'll always have the
opportunity to play charming, good-looking guys, but if I can
something to that, therein lies the challenge." BACK
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