Chris Pine steps back onto terra firma with the Geffen Playhouse production of ‘Farragut North.’
In 2007, Chris Pine was appearing in a Los Angeles production of Neil LaBute’s Fat Pig. He played the bad-boy pal, that cocky kid in the office who bends the rules for the sport of it. It was a secondary role, but Pine absolutely nailed it—a young actor to watch.
And people were indeed watching. He caught the attention of a Paramount Pictures exec who attended the Geffen Playhouse production. And Paramount was soon to be in need of a young Captain James T. Kirk.
Also in the Geffen audience were the director and CD in need of actors for 2008’s Bottle Shock. They nabbed Pine for the little film about an upstart Napa Valley winery in the sleepy 1970s, in which he was unrecognizable as a sunny hippie, the antithesis of his LaBute character. Playing opposite Alan Rickman in Bottle Shock, Pine apparently did what he is doing to this day: He spent his off time discussing theater. As Rickman last year recalled from their time on the set, “Chris and I talked and still do talk about theater and things he wants to do in the theater, which is reassuring in terms of somebody who just finished doing Star Trek and is about to have all that’s going to land on him through that—that he’s still got his eye fixed on a different horizon, or a parallel horizon. He’s a serious, and really talented, actor.”
Yes, the publicity and fan adoration from Star Trek has landed squarely on Pine. Nice, but seemingly not his goal in life. When Back Stage spoke with him, he was into the second day of rehearsals, back at the Geffen Playhouse, working on a lead role in Beau Willimon’s Farragut North. As Pine says, “At the end of the day, I want a long career, and I want a career made up of many and diverse roles.” The 28-year-old is well on his way.
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