Reviewers called him a Marlon Brando look-alike. When he grew a dashing mustache they compared him to a young Clark Gable. Tall, dark and dangerously handsome, Billy Zane is one of the most glamorous actors to grace the silver screen in recent years.
Whether he’s a marksman in his current release, “Sniper,” an American adventurer in the summer film “Orlando,” or a psychotic murderer in the taut 1989 thriller “Dead Calm,” Zane smolders in front of the camera.
Cut to reality. It’s a flawless Southern California day, and the Chicago-born-and-bred actor wants to meet at an “un-Hollywood” location: a small cafe on a quiet, tree-lined street near the L.A. home he shares with wife, Lisa Collins. He rides his bicycle to the interview.
One is reminded of a movie mogul’s comment on Tyrone Power: “He has a perfect face.” But Zane’s manner-once described as “Everyman likability”-is friendly and accessible. Neither vanity nor self-absorption mar those beguiling, matinee-idol looks.
“His personality is totally different off-screen. Which suggests a great actor,” says Nicole Kidman, Zane’s co-star in “Dead Calm.”
The 26-year-old performer stretches out his hand in greeting and initiates a gracious exchange of amenities. Then he slips into comfortable conversation about the four films he stars in this year, the advantages of growing up in a Chicago theatrical clan and his wish for an enlightened cinema.
In “Sniper,” he plays a former Olympic marksman, now a pencil pusher in Washington. A CIA mission in Panama takes him from paper targets to flesh targets, precipitating a crisis of conscience. Tom Berenger co-stars as a blood-and-guts military lifer. Mark Johnson (“Bugsy,” “The Rain Man”) is executive producer.
“He makes this transition from not being allowed to kill to not being able to,” Zane says of his character’s evolution. ” `Sniper’ uses the dynamic of an action picture to examine a spiritual dilemma that every soldier from every century encounters: Does the taking of a life-no matter what the virtue of the cause-have a price? The film explores the dark heart of that.”
Peruvian director Luis Llosa wanted an actor with broad emotional and intellectual scope to travel the arc of Zane’s character. “Billy Zane projects an interesting complexity,” Llosa says. “You can define him by his contrasts. At moments on the set, he was extremely rational and articulate about his character. Then he would surprise me with these unexpected outbursts, instant creativity. It adds richness to his performance.”
Early on, that complexity colored Zane’s choice of roles. The parts of a bombardier in David Puttnam’s “Memphis Belle” and a good-hearted environmentalist on TV’s “Twin Peaks” stand in stark contrast to his first successes as a killer: Hughie Warriner in “Dead Calm” and Kenneth Bianchi in NBC’s “The Case of the Hillside Stranglers.”
His 1993 releases boast a wide array of characters. Complementing the mainstream “Sniper” is the art-house film “Orlando” with Zane cutting a Byronic figure in the adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s fantasy. In Zalman King’s “Lake Consequence,” an erotic drama airing on Showtime cable Feb. 21, he’s an itinerant gardener, a symbol of freedom. In the black western “Posse,” Zane plays Mario Van Peebles’ arch enemy, a cavalry colonel wearing an eye patch and brandishing a sword.
Though critics lavished praise on his portraits of villains, he refused the part of Julia Roberts’ demented husband in “Sleeping With the Enemy” (1991). That decision reflects his idealism about the role of the performer in society.
“You have to respect the privilege of performing before an audience,” he says. “If I did something painfully similar to `Dead Calm,’ they could question my motives. You have to keep it clear through your performances that your motives are to help alleviate tension in today’s world through entertainment or information or a morality play.”
Zane is the son of Chicago performers Bill and Thalia Zane. He made his debut at 6 at Theatre on the Lake in Lincoln Park, delivering one line to his actress mom. Family walks to and from that theater on soft summer nights are among his fondest childhood memories.
Zane’s parents started out entertaining Army troops while his father was stationed in Munich. They returned to their native Chicago, where acting became a “professional hobby.” Performances on local stages were supplemented by Thalia’s teaching at the former Patricia Stevens Career College and Bill’s teaching at New Trier High School. Aunt Pauline taught acting at Zane’s alma mater, Francis Parker High School. Life in the second-generation Greek household was a picturesque circus melding domesticity with the world of entertainment.
Both Billy and his sister Lisa, a regular on “L.A. Law,” profited from their free-spirited upbringing. The actor remembers it as “an incredibly stimulating environment. I wouldn’t have traded it for the world. Much of what I am, I owe to my folks. They trusted me when I wanted to go to Hollywood after graduating from high school. That early start led to a fairly young reaping of rewards. The support I got was unmatched; I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for that.”
Chicago remains the city where Zane feels “most creative.” That’s why “Gargoyle,” the six-part series for TV that he wrote with his wife, is set there. When the cliffhanger-fable finds an exhibitor, he plans to film it in his hometown.
Zane dreams of an enlightened American cinema, “morality plays based on the premise of what else could go right, instead of movies like `The Out-of-Towners’ focusing on what else could go wrong. We’ve come to expect that lurch out of the darkness; it conditions us to feel cautious instead of trusting in benevolence. Why do people constantly refer to Capra? It’s no mystery. There was hope there.”
Capra is the tipoff. Beneath the actor’s intellectually complicated exterior pumps the heart of a populist. A populist who would like nothing better than to make a musical, that most upbeat of American film genres. Simply mention a musical, and Zane’s face lights up like a marquee. “I’d make one in a minute,” he says.
A tuxedoed Zane, looking like a million bucks, tapping his way into the hearts of moviegoers? It’s not so difficult to imagine.
