Topher Grace, star of the hit TV sitcom 'That '70s Show', is ready to make the leap into the big time, writes Michael Dwyer
In his relatively short career to date, Topher Grace has demonstrated a level of shrewdness and restraint uncommon for actors of his generation, turning down all but one of the teen comedies and romances offered him after making his mark in the TV series, That '70s Show, and holding out for more demanding roles that would demonstrate his range.
In person, the first impression the 26-year-old Grace strikes is that he is thoroughly self-assured, and not dissimilar from the confident young seducer involved with an older woman (Laura Linney) in PS, the romantic drama in which he has his first substantial cinema role, nor from his character in the new film, In Good Company - a highly ambitious young advertising executive who is promoted above his boss (Dennis Quaid) and then starts dating his daughter (Scarlett Johansson).
Grace responds with appropriate modesty to the observation from PS director Dylan Kidd, that Grace's work in PS signals the breakthrough performance of a future movie star on a par with the emergence of Tom Cruise in Risky Business and Brad Pitt in Thelma & Louise.
"Well, I certainly hope so, of course," Grace shrugs, sidestepping the subject. "It was great to work opposite Laura, who is one of the great actors alive today. I could not get away with one second of bad acting. It was like getting a masterclass in acting."
He was born Christopher Grace and dropped the first half of his name when he got tired of fellow students calling him Chris. He gained his first acting experiences in school productions of The Pirates of Penzance and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and he just happened to be in the right place at the right time when producers Bonnie and Terry Turner were planning That '70s Show. They came to see their daughter on stage in a college production of A Funny Thing Happened On My Way to the Forum and spotted Grace, who was playing Pseudolus, and they cast him as Eric Foreman on the TV show, which is coming to the end of its successful run after seven years.
"I was very lucky to get the sitcom after my very first audition," Grace says. "It made me feel guilty because when I tell that to my actor friends, they really hate that story, because I had it so easy compared to most actors. So, after the fact, I felt more of a responsibility to earn it.
"I'm really going to miss the show after all these years. It was the kind of show where everyone could go out and try whatever they want to try. And I've been working with the same kids since I was 19, and having a home base like that to come back to made it all really easy. There was never any sense of competition between any of us on the show, and everyone was so supportive of each other." There are "lots of wonderful sub-plots" in the final series, he says, and despite rumours that it may be extended for one more season, "this is definitely the last one with Eric in it", he insists.
PS director Dylan Kidd and In Good Company director Paul Weitz both have said it was not Grace's work in That '70s Show that encouraged them to cast him, but his small but scene-stealing role as a manipulative young junkie in Steven Soderbergh's Oscar-winning Traffic.
"I waited a while until I found what I thought would be right for me as my first film," Grace says. "I only had a certain window of four months every year when I wasn't working on the sitcom. I think you can afford to wait for good material sometimes. Everyone on my show did movies before me, so I was the last to do one, but I was glad I waited and I'm happier that I turned down the movies I didn't do."
In PS, Grace plays F. Scott Feinstadt, a young painter who applies for a place at Columbia University. He seduces the admissions officer (Laura Linney), who is divorced by from her sex-addicted, bisexual husband (Gabriel Byrne). The movie called for Linney and Grace to participate in an extended, awkward sex scene. "I had never done a sex scene before, but this felt real to me," Grace says. "You can never live up to versions of sex scenes you see when you are growing up, because you realise how unrealistic they are. This type of relationship has been done on film many times before, but often not very well. You really have to buy that they take something from each other, and not just in a physical sense.
"I was trying to be a real gentleman to Laura, but then I realised that she was pulling me through the scene because I had never done anything like it. You really do feel naked out there on the set, and there were some emotional scenes that were just as revealing - and just as tough to do.
"My life is so different from that guy's life. One of F. Scott's main features is that he has to prove himself. I did feel like that, but once I started doing the TV show, I found I didn't have to prove myself as much."
In Good Company goes on release nest Friday. PS opens later this year