The Safe House - Expositions - Exclusively Michael

Every actor should have a skill to fall back on when times get rough. For Harrison Ford it's carpentry; Tom Cruise had the priesthood. Michael Vartan, on the other hand, star of the decidedly dark and malicious thriller "One Hour Photo", has a way with a pool cue. "I was out of work for four years as an actor," he says, "So I spent my whole time in pool halls hustling - and being hustled. It's not quite as sexy and dangerous as you'd think it is in the movies: no one ends up being knifed in the back in an alley, but there are definite times when you underplay your talents for an hour or two and all of a sudden you're brilliant and people get very angry.."

These days, the 33 year old Vartan has no need to grift. He's got a steady day job as Michael, Jennifer Garner's CIA handler in award-winning US TV series "Alias". And in his new movie, the unsettling "One Hour Photo", he more than holds his own opposite notorious scene-stealer Robin Williams who is in evil mode, just as in last months "Insomnia". Vartan plays the guy with the perfect job, house, wife and kid: Williams is the creepy loner working in a photo lab obsessed with his family. There's a crucial, truly disturbing scene in a hotel room which Vartan is traumatized just talking about. "The fact that I was naked was the least of my problems. I can't tell you how uncomfortable the atmosphere was: I remember leaving the set that day thinking, 'What the hell was that all about?'" Perhaps he'd witnessed, first hand, the full horror of Williams's all-over body hair or been forced to sit through "Bicentennial Man".

Despite making a convincing All-American guy, Vartan was actually born in France. His father was French - his aunt was even married to Johnny Hallyday, France's perplexing answer to both Cliff and Elvis - and his mother American. After they split young Michael grew up in both the States and a tiny French village where there was nothing to do for fun but try to tip cows. "It never works - they wake up miles before you even get there and walk away. How can you sneak up on a cow and push them over? It's ridiculous!"

While visiting the US in his late teens he discovered that he had missed his French national service call up date and had been officially listed as a deserter. "I feel terrible, but there was no way I was going to go back and be arrested by the military police." Vartan heritage becomes even more cluttered when he reveals he has Geordie connections too, his step-father is Ian La Frenais, one half (with Dick Clement) of the genius sitcom writing duo behind "The Likely Lads" and "Auf Wiedersehen Pet". It was "Uncle" Ian who put him on screen with the perpetually scowling wing nut Jimmy Nail in and episode of "Spender". "I've always ribbed him 'When are you going to write something for a French-American hockey player with a tattoo on his left arm?? So he finally did, and I thought, 'F**k me, If I don't get this part I'm really crap!'"

On a midly more glamorous note, he's played screen boyfriend to both Drew Barrymore ["Never Been Kissed"] and Madonna ["The Next Best Thing"], but "One Hour Photo" might be ushering in a new era of paternal roles. "I'm really pissed off because I missed my niche: I remember not so long ago it was always 'He's too innocent' and all of a sudden I'm playing the dad. So I never got 'he's edgy, he's dangerous'. No, I went from the wimp to the old father."

"One Hour Photo" is out on October 4th (UK)

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