Mora than just a Pretty Boy
tMF profiles one of Canada’s most talented and appealing young actors, Kevin Zegers.
By Jed Medina

With more than 50 film and TV roles to his credit, 19-year-old Kevin Zegers was about to call it quits and say goodbye to acting. Sounds unbelievable right? How can someone as young as he have done so much work? Well, if you know that Kevin Zegers started acting at the age of seven, then you won’t be surprised at all.

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"It wasn't that I'd had enough. But I sort of said, it's going to get a lot more difficult now that I'm older, now that I'm the age I am - in my early 20s," he says. Then I did Transamerica and it just sort of changed the way I looked at my career. That's when I made the decision - okay, this is what I'm good at, this is what excites me."

Now aged 23, the young actor continues to pursue his acting career, having proven he has what it takes.

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In Transamerica, Kevin plays Toby, a New York queer hustler with an appetite for heroin whose life changes when a mysterious woman named Bree (played by Felicity Huffman), bails him out of jail and agrees to take him to Los Angeles. What Toby doesn't know is that Bree is a pre-op male-to-female transsexual - and his long-lost dad.

Released in the same year as Brokeback Mountain, the movie had its share of critical acclaim and awards. While Ang Lee’s gay cowboy epic explores the universal theme of love and loss, Transamerica deals about coming of age and family relations.

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Playing Toby made people realized that Zegers has a lot more to offer than just playing teeny-bopper roles. At the prestigious Cannes Film Fest, Kevin won the 2006 Chopard Award, which is given to promising young actors for their breakthrough roles.

Introducing Kevin Zegers: Born in Woodstock, Ontario, Kevin is unlike some of his contemporaries who belong to the film industry. His parents are from different professions: his mother Mary Ellen works as a school teacher, while his Dad James Zegers is a quarry worker. But not surprisingly, his two sisters Krista and Katie are actresses.

Aside from acting, Kevin also does part-time modeling, having appeared in a Calvin Klein commercial and a number of fashion shoots.

The Child Actor: Kevin Zegers first film role was at the age of seven, in a Michael J. Fox film Life With Mikey. He subsequently appeared in many supporting roles, including a guest appearance on The X-Files.

“I wanted to play a character who is kind of, could have been played as a cliché kind of beaten-up kid. But not in the expected kind of way. I think I wanted him to be more likeable than you would expect. I wanted people, the audience to love him even though he was damaged and had all these problems. I did not want him to not be savable. I wanted Bree to be able to love him.” Says the actor on his performance as Toby.

After playing normal kids with extraordinary pets, it must have been a radical departure to begin preparing for the role of a gay street hustler. Evidently, Zegers was desperate to get the part and as soon as he had it, he made sure he got some idea of what it's like to be a hustler.

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“I went to Toronto with my manager [Paul Nicholls] and he showed me the hustler neighborhoods where kids sell themselves. So I went in there and sold myself for $350 and proceeded to run off as fast as possible. It was a cool learning experience because it was much more civilized than I imagined. I thought the whole film would be scary for me to do so getting that stuff out of the way before you start alleviates being uncomfortable when you're on set.”

Most Recent Roles: So exceptional was his performance in Transamerica that I wasted no time looking for current movies that showcase Zeger’s talent.

One of the more recent movies he made was The Jane Austen Book Club, the story of five women and one man who meet regularly to discuss Jane Austen’s most acclaimed books. Kevin plays a high school student who desires an intimate relationship with his French teacher, who happens to belong to the book club. The teacher was played with such class by Emily Blunt.

There wasn't much Kevin could do with his role except to appear naughty and sexy, but the movie has quite a number of scenes that I found entertaining and amusing. Definitely worth watching.

I hope that with the next five movies he’s about to appear in, perhaps there are two or more that will not waste Zeger’s acting talent, but will instead show us more of what he’s capable of. Here's the latest from IMDb:

Caitlin (2008) (in production) .... Young Dylan Thomas
Antique (2008) (pre-production) .... Danny
The Light-House (2008) (pre-production) .... John Jacob Moran
The Narrows (2008) (post-production) .... Mike Manadoro
Normal (2007) (post-production) .... Jordie

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Profile of Kevin Zegers written by Jed Medina, exclusively for The Movie-Fanatic.

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