Movie horse sends Fehr flying

Thanks to Mr. Manager for sending this to me.

Movie horse sends Fehr flying
The Vancouver Sun
Lynne McNamara

He doesn’t do glamour, he doesn’t do pretty, he doesn’t forget his hard-rock
roots. He doesn’t avoid style, but doesn’t let it get in his way.

That’s how New Westminster-born, Winnipeg-raised actor Brendan Fehr is described
in the May issue of Movieline magazine. Fehr is nominated as a “new stylemaker”
in the glossy publication’s annual Young Hollywood Awards to be handed out
Sunday at the House of Blues in L.A.

He might not make it to the awards. For the next few weeks, Fehr is in rural
Manitoba on hiatus from his role as teen alien Michael on the Warner Bros.
series Roswell to shoot Anne Wheeler’s 1890’s drama, Wilderness Station.

Fehr calls to chat from his room at the Castle Bed & Breakfast in Minnedosa, a
21Ú2-hour drive west of Winnipeg, where he is nursing bruises inflicted by a
horse on the first day of shooting.

During one take, Fehr, cast as the brutal and demanding Scot homesteader Simon,
frightened the animal, which bucked him off.

“He shot forward and É I saw two hooves coming at me. Luckily, they missed my
[family jewels] by about an inch.”

Fehr’s manager, Jim Sheasgreen, who joined the phone call from Vancouver, sees
Wilderness Station as a great showcase for his client’s talents.

“He’s played the brooding teen angst guy,” Sheasgreen said, referring to
Roswell’s Michael. “But Simon was something completely different.”

Fehr adds: “He was a bad guy — it was something I’d never done before, and it
put me close to home as well.”

Sheasgreen discovered Fehr in 1997 when the handsome teenager, visiting
Vancouver from Winnipeg, popped into Sheasgreen’s Look Management talent and
modelling agency, looking for a quick modelling gig.

He saw Fehr’s potential and sent him to a few auditions. A week later, Fehr was
up for a nine-line guest role on the teen series Breaker High.

Soon he was a hot commodity locally, guesting on Millennium and The New Addams
Family, and landing film roles, including teen movie, Disturbing Behavior.

In the fall of 1999 he moved to Los Angeles for his Roswell role.

Fehr’s new movie, Screen Gems’ The Forsaken, opens Friday.

Shot last year in Yuma, Ariz., it’s the story of a guy (played by Kerr Smith)
driving cross-country to deliver a vintage Mercedes. He picks up a
hitchhiker/vampire hunter (Fehr) and the trip turns surreal.

“That, to date, in my small and short career so far, was the fun-est time I’ve
ever had making anything,” Fehr said.

He and Smith hit it off right away.

“He’s absolutely hilarious,” Fehr said. “I could just sit there and hang out
with him for days on end. He’s not this Hollywood-type guy. He just wants to
hang out with his ‘boys of old’ and go out and have fun, which is exactly how I
am. Everything just seemed to really click on that picture.”

But sometimes vampire movies can really suck. Does this one?

“We’ve kind of reached the point where if you stick to the strictly vampire
thing you’ve just seen it before,” Fehr concedes. “Ours encompasses a whole
bunch of genres, beyond the vampire horror element. We got a road-trip thing
going, car chase desert stuff, we got a buddy element with me and Kerr, there
are light moments, funny moments.”

In the next few weeks Warner Bros. will decide whether there will be a third
season of Roswell. Fehr is not concerned about a possible cancellation. He says
that although Roswell and Warner Bros. have afforded a great springboard to
working in features, network series television can be limiting.

“I don’t regret ever taking it, no one wants to be ungrateful, but there’s a
time when you want to move on and you want to try new things. Being stuck in a
television series where we work the hours [10 to 14 hours five days a week] and
the amount of time we do, it’s really difficult to spread your wings in that
sense.

“I never got into acting to play the same character for years on end. It’s not
what I thought it would be.”