All-American Canadian hero

TORONTO -- For a guy who has a knack for playing all-American heroes, Barry Pepper wants you to know he's Canadian at heart.

"I was in L.A. at the Four Seasons hotel screaming my lungs out on the balcony," laughs the Campbell River, B.C. native about his reaction to Canada's men's hockey team winning gold at the Winter Olympics. "You guys probably could have heard me in Toronto, I was screaming so loud."

Pepper, 31, in town last week to promote his new movie, We Were Soldiers, has performed opposite some of Hollywood's brightest. He played Bible-quoting sharpshooter Pvt. Jackson in Saving Private Ryan, which starred Tom Hanks. Then he was baseball hero Roger Maris in Billy Crystal's acclaimed 61*. And now he's acting alongside Mel Gibson in We Were Soldiers, where he plays journalist Joe Galloway.

THRUST INTO ACTION

Galloway was thrust into the action in Vietnam during the Americans' first major engagement with the Vietnamese, and co-authored the book We Were Soldiers Once ... And Young with Lt.-Col. Hal Moore, played in the film by Gibson. Pepper says he researched his role by reading the book and meeting with Galloway.

"When a man like that has been through the experiences he has and, in vivid detail, describes the personal nightmares he's living with for the last 36 years, it just changes you forever as a person," he says. "And as an actor, it leaves you with this very profound responsibility to tell this story as truthfully and as honestly as possible."

While Pepper says, "We just had sort of an actor-weenie boot camp" to prepare for the shoot, their night-infiltration course, which took place in the pitch black of midnight, was gruelling. "You had to crawl on your belly through this mud underneath barbed wire in a 155-yard obstacle course as fast as you could to get to the other end while they fired live machine gun rounds over your head," he recalls. At this point, he gamely demonstrates by leaping on to the floor and crawling forward on his stomach.

HIGH PRAISE FOR GIBSON

When Pepper clambers back into his chair, he has high praise for Gibson. "It just doesn't happen where a $30 million star is crawling through the mud and getting shot at with live ammunition beside the actors that are getting paid peanuts," he says. "It takes a star like Mel Gibson to be at the helm of these kinds of films to make them a success. He's an egoless, gracious and talented human being -- it's almost impossible to make these kinds of movies with an egomaniacal superstar. Mel, if you were looking for him, he'd be smoking cigarettes with the Vietnamese extras, telling dirty jokes."

Hollywood's phoniness is one reason why Pepper splits time between L.A. and Vancouver with his Canadian wife, Cindy, and their 20-month-old daughter, Annaliese.

"It's just such a surreal environment," he says of L.A. "It doesn't have the same kind of character that New York, Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal have. It tends to zap you of your individualism and your creativity after a while.

"You've got every prom king and prom queen across North America walking to L.A. to seek their fortune and they end up with all the same clothes, same haircuts and same fake breasts. That's why I'm trying to spend as much time in Canada as possible."

 

Barry Pepper enlists again

NEW YORK -- Last spring, Barry Pepper packed up his old kit bag and headed off for a second tour of duty.

The Vancouver actor who played sniper Daniel Jackson in Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan, had been cast as war correspondent Joe Galloway in We Were Soldiers.

Galloway co-wrote the account of this Vietnam offensive with Lt. Col. Hal Moore, who commanded the 400 American soldiers who fought in the first encounter between Americans and North Vietnamese in November 1965.

"I went down to Fort Benning in Georgia to meet Joe Galloway and some of the other vets. When I got there, the other actors had begun their boot camp training," recalls Pepper.

"Because Joe was a journalist, I wasn't required to participate in the training exercises, but once I watched them hopping in and out of helicopters, doing the obstacle courses and ducking live ammo, I just had to join them. It proved to be an excellent decision because it helped me bond with them before we began the actual shooting."

For Pepper, 31, the exercises brought back memories of the Spielberg bootcamp he endured for Saving Private Ryan.

"The one for Ryan was much more intense because we were out in the forest sleeping in tents, eating rations, trudging through mud. At Fort Benning, we ate in the mess hall, slept in barracks and trained with the recruits."

It was no holiday camp by any means especially when it came to the simulated night infiltration training.

"It was held at midnight. We had to crawl 150 yards on our bellies under barbed wire with mortars exploding on either side of us and a machine gun firing live rounds above us."

But that's not what sticks in Pepper's mind.

"What impressed me most was that Mel Gibson, (director) Randall Wallace and Sam Elliott were right there beside us. That's the degree of commitment there was at every level of this picture.

"Mel, Randall and Sam are three of the coolest dudes on the face of the Earth."

No one was more impressed with Pepper's dedication and commitment than Galloway who describes Pepper as "a dry sponge. He just soaked up everything I could give him. He wanted to know exactly what I had carried in my pack. Every item I detailed he put in his pack. That's how deep he went into becoming me."

Galloway recalls he celebrated his 24th birthday covering the Vietnam offensive adding that made him "an old man compared to most of the soldiers. The Army arranged short day-trips to the battlefield for journalists, but I chose to stay that's how I came to be in the middle of the battle at Ia Drang Valley.

"There is truth even in the smallest corners of We Were Soldiers -- that's how much attention Randall Wallace put into recreating the (three-day) battle."

Pepper became a father for the first time on June 17, 2000 when his wife, Cindy, gave birth to their daughter, Annaliese.

"I met Cindy in high school and we began dating seriously three years before I shot Saving Private Ryan. It was observing Tom Hanks that convinced me to get married," says Pepper. "Tom is such a committed father and loving husband. He is proof it's possible to have an immensely fulfilling personal life as an actor. I wanted a similar foundation in my life.

"Cindy and I got married shortly after I finished shooting Private Ryan. She'd been a model for a while but she hated it. It's an even more cut-throat business than acting."

Pepper is shortly about to embark on another new adventure, as executive producer on his next movie, a Canadian film based on a Farley Mowat short story from the Snow Walker collection.

"It's the story of a bush pilot who crashes in the Arctic and is saved by a young Inuit woman who teaches him how to survive.

"I'm going to play the bush pilot and we're in the final stages of casting the Inuit girl. We're looking at shooting in Manitoba and Yellowknife as early as April."

Peppered with praise

Barry Pepper is taking a break from filming Knockaround Guys in Toronto with John Malkovich. It's a break of sorts.

He's doing press in L.A. today and tomorrow for The Green Mile, which stars Tom Hanks. Pepper is getting raves for his role as a death row prison guard alongside Hanks.

The Frank Darabont film of the Stephen King novel is set for release in a few weeks. Meanwhile, the Vancouver native is living up to his 'Breakout Performance' award after his introduction in 1998 in Saving Private Ryan as Private Jackson, the Tennessee sharpshooter. This summer he worked with John Travolta on the sci-fi thriller, Battlefield Earth, in Montreal.

Yesterday, Pepper did a GQ magazine shoot themed "Leading Men Of The New Millennium."

"And five years from now, they will be saying 'So what happened to your career, dude?' " he joked.

Forget about the hype, he's no overnight success.

"Are you kidding me? It's been seven years of hard work," reports the 29-year-old Pepper.