Barry Pepper on women, working in L.A., and taming his wild instincts

He may have played the smolderingly hot sniper soldier in Saving Private Ryan and a buttoned-up prison guard in The Green Mile, but that doesn’t mean Barry Pepper needs a uniform to look good.  Today, he’s in the market for civilian clothes—he’s come to Manhattan to attend the Hugo Boss spring fashion show. So will the handsome and intense actor be working the runway?  “Hell no,” laughs Pepper, who lives in Vancouver with his wife, Cindy, a part-time furniture designer.  “I wear a lot of their clothes, and they invited me to come.  But I’m pretty basic: jeans, boots, and tee shirts.”  The 30-year old actor had better get used to the glamorous, film-star life.  Besides having two Tom Hanks movies and Will Smith’s Enemy of the State (he was one of the bad guys) under his belt, he’s just landed his first big Hollywood lead, in the sci-fi epic Battlefield Earth opposite John Travolta.  But before he goes galactic, he sat down to dish about the romantic thing he did for his wife, his wild youth, and the best part about working with Travolta.

Tell me about Battlefield Earth.

Pepper: It’s like Planet of the Apes meets Star Wars.  It takes place in 3000 A.D.  Aliens have seized Earth and man is fighting back.  My character is a young hunter.

I hear Travolta films have great food.

Have you ever been star struck?

Pepper: College was a miserable failure so I answered an ad for acting classes.  I slowly built up a resume of guest-star parts on a few Vancouver series.

How did you make it to L.A.?

How exactly did you manage to get the meeting with Spielberg?

Pepper: I read at a cattle call for Ryan and he liked my tape, so we ended up talking on the deck of the Amistad, which he was shooting at the time.  As I left, he turned to his producer and said, “Hire Barry Pepper.”  It was the greatest moment of my life since I proposed to my wife.

Speaking of which, where did you meet her?

Pepper: We went to high school together.  We knew each other, but we both had different puppy-love relationships going on at the time.

So you were slow dancing with your prom date, looking over her shoulder at your future wife?

Pepper: Probably.  That was my style back then [laughs].  I actually met up with her about seven years later in Vancouver.  I didn’t even recognize her.  She was so beautiful.

Where did you propose?

Pepper: On a beach where she used to play as a child.  It was really special to the two of us.

Are you a super romantic?

Pepper: Well, I gave my wife a gift recently.  She’s four months pregnant, and maternity clothes are really terrible.  So I went out and bought a pair of her favorite Levi’s 501s.  My mom showed me how to use the sewing machine, and I cut out the tummy of the pants, sewed in a fleece pouch, and then sewed back in the button fly.  She loves them.

You had an interesting childhood . . .

Pepper: Yeah, when I was five, my family and I left home and sailed around the South Pacific and Mexico for five years.  My dad used celestial navigation—no electronics.

How did that experience shape who you are as a person?

Pepper: I actually think that’s why I became an actor.  We had no television, so we entertained ourselves through our imaginations—lots of reading, plays, and drawing.

Do you get recognized much?