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Barry Pepper plays his edge in 25th Hour
Glen Schaefer - The Province Newspaper


He's B.C.-born and raised, but people keep thinking Barry Pepper is from the American south.

It came up again a year ago when he was talking to director Spike Lee about playing a fast-talking Wall Street commodities trader in the movie 25th Hour , which opens Friday.

"Spike was telling me, 'How do I know you can pull this off, Barry? I've only ever seen you play white-bread, apple-pie-eating southern boys,' " Pepper tells The Province . "It's funny- when I met Spielberg he thought I was from the South. Everybody does."

Pepper launched his career with his role as a Bible-spouting southern sharpshooter in Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan , and followed that up with further uniformed turns in The Green Mile (another southerner) and the TV baseball drama 61*. His role as an urban New Yorker in the Spike Lee movie opposite Edward Norton and Philip Seymour Hoffman is a departure- for one thing, Pepper has more dialogue than usual.

"It was such an extreme from anything I've ever done before- a fast-talking, high-level Wall Street hustler, a real hard-edged, foul-mouthed thorn in the side of his friends and co-workers," says Pepper. "A womanizing partier, the antithesis of who I am. I'm a mellow, low-key family man, small-town Canadian kid, so it was a real challenge for me".

The Campbell River-raised Pepper has been based in Los Angeles since the mid-'90's but still maintains a home in the Vancouver area with his wife Cindy and 2 1/2 year old daughter Anneliese. Get him talking about recent projects and he'll switch from film to talk about the backyard paly center and swing set he built out of cedar for his little girl: "All hand-made but I got all the professional playground stuff. She's at that age where she can really enjoy it".

25th Hour follows a convicted drug dealer (Norton) on his last night of freedom before going to prison. Hoffman and Pepper play his boyhood friends. Pepper showed up three weeks before filming started las summer to get ready.

"Spike hooked me up with this Wall Street success-story hustler friend of his, this $20 mis-a-year whiz kid," Pepper syas. "I used him as the template for the character- he showed me all of the hot spots on Wall Street, all the fancy steak houses, took me down to the traking floor, showed me where they live, where they get their coffee. It was a cool process."

The result is an actor's showcase for Pepper and his co-stars. Hoffman plays a private school teacher obsessed with a student (Anna Paquin) while Rasario Dawson shows up as Norton's girlfriend, who trades insults with Pepper's abrasive suit. Pepper says Lee's reputation is what draws the powerhouse actors to his movies.

"Everything I'd been told about him bieng tough and difficult and hardcore was only ture to the point of his undying passion for filmmaking," says Pepper. "He's like Spielberg, he's got that Midas touch. Spike has such a tight-knit crew and he prepares his cast so ferociously, so by the time the camera rolls, you hit the ground running. Everybody and thir dog wants to work with him- it's because he puts toether genius material.

Also last year, Pepper starred in and produced the Canadian wilderness drama The Snow Walker , which should hit theatres by springtime. The actor figures he'd like to direct some day but working with Spielberg and Lee has convinced him he has a lot to learn.

"I could direct a film tomorrow but it would probably be less than gratifying because of my lack of technical knowledge," he says. "I feel like I have the basics but a Spielberg or a Spike Lee, they can do everybody's job. I'm in such awe of that ability and I see how that pays off."