Just two years ago, Skeet Ulrich was Hollywood’s “it” boy, the next big thing. He was everywhere – appearing in five movies, including as the bad-boy boyfriend in the surprise box-office smash “Scream.” His sultry performance and greased-back dark hair had moviegoers – when they weren’t covering their eyes – taking a closer look at the actor.
Then the buzz quieted. Ulrich’s star turn in “Touch” went largely unseen when the movie came and went, and he all but got cut out of “As Good As It Gets” (he’s the street thug/model who beats up Greg Kinnear). That’s when Ulrich discovered that, hey, he could act and not worry about the spotlight’s glare.
And he likes it that way.
“Unfortunately, that has to happen for you to move on,” says Ulrich, who’s back on the big screen with “The Newton Boys” (PG-13), a Western co-starring Matthew McConaughey, Ethan Hawke, Vincent D’Onofrio and “ER’s” Julianna Margulies. “I understand that publicity is supposed to bring audiences to the film, but it can all get skewed. Everybody on `Newton Boys’ laughed, because they’d been through the miseries of the process too. To me, it’s pretty embarrassing.”
Ultra-casual in jeans, an ugly baseball cap and a wispy beard, the 27-year-old looked more like he just stepped off his farm than into the swanky Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles. Growing up in North Carolina, he told KidNews, he liked such Westerns as “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” So when he got “The Newton Boys” script – about brothers who became America’s most successful bank robbers from 1919 to 1924 – Ulrich leapt at the chance to play Joe, the Newton who dislikes stealing.
Even better, he knew he’d have a blast with his co-stars. “We didn’t get into too much trouble, but we were always trying to make each other laugh,” he says. “We could make Matt crack up pretty easily, and Ethan too. Julianna (who plays McConaughey’s girlfriend) fit in perfectly. She could take it and dish it out.”
Ulrich turns up next in the Vietnam War film “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong,” which co-stars his wife, Georgina Hale, then in the Civil War drama “To Live On” with Jewel.
After that? Ulrich drops the bombshell that he may not act much longer. “Hopefully, I’ll make six more films and that’ll be enough,” he says. “I’m serious. I’m acting pretty much to make money. I like filmmaking, but I just like other things better.”
Ulrich smiles. “I think Garbo had it right,” he says, referring to the screen legend who quit at the height of her stardom. “She was able to say goodbye.”
