Fan of Gossip
Source: jam! ShowbizBy LOUIS B. HOBSON -- Calgary Sun
There are rumors that James Marsden will soon be made an honorary Canadian.
The 26-year-old Oklahoman has spent much of his eight years as an actor filming movies and TV series in Canada.
"My first real job for 18 months was filming the TV series Boogie's Diner in Toronto and my first TV movie was Gone in a Heartbeat with Jill Eikenberry and Michael Tucker that we filmed in Calgary," recalls Marsden in a phone interview from his home in L.A.
These early projects are not on his resume and he would rather they be forgotten.
"I was 19 at the time and had no real experience. I'd left Oklahoma for L.A. because my stepmom grew up with a casting agent who was able to get me a manager.
"People still ask me if I was nervous about striking out on my own in L.A. but it was a thrill.
"I also had a safety cushion. I knew if it didn't work I could always go back and finish the journalism degree I'd started.
"Those first few things I did were my training ground so they're not my best work."
Marsden's more recent made-in-Canada projects are definitely featured on his resume.
In 1997, he filmed the teen sci-fi thriller Disturbing Behavior in Vancouver. Two years ago he was in Toronto filming the new sex thriller Gossip and last fall he returned to TO for this summer's much-anticipated X-Men movie in which he plays Cyclops.
"I could be back in Vancouver soon to film a fantasy road movie called Interstate 60 that was written by Bob Gale, who co-wrote Back to the Future with Bob Zemeckis.
"I'd actually really like to be up in Canada during the summer. Every other movie I've filmed there has been a spring, fall or winter shoot and it's really cold up there.
"Interstate 60 depends on my schedule because I've been signed to star as Paul Watson, the man who founded Greenpeace, in a film called The Ocean Warrior that starts filming in the Netherlands and Malta in August."
This is the kind of fortunate dilemma that continues to grace Marsden's career.
For the first season finale of Party of Five, he was brought in to create the role of Griffin, who would become the love interest for Neve Campbell's character Julia Salinger.
"They didn't know if they were going to be renewed and I was suddenly offered my own series Second Noah. I didn't want to gamble so I went with Second Noah."
Party of Five continued for five more seasons. Second Noah was cancelled in its second season.
"It sounds bad at first but the cancellation freed me to do movies."
His first offer came from Disney to play the hot shot young hockey player in David E. Kelley's Mystery Alaska, which would have brought him back to Alberta.
Within days, Marsden was offered the lead in Disturbing Behavior.
"Mystery Alaska was a David E. Kelley project but it would have meant having to take a crash course in hockey for a supporting role.
"On the other hand, MGM was offering me the lead in Disturbing Behavior at a time when teen movies were becoming the rage."
Marsden has actually been waiting 18 months for Gossip to hit theatres.
It's a Dangerous Liaisons-style sex thriller in which Marsden and two friends start a vicious rumour about another couple only to have it all backfire on them.
"The studio felt that the original ending was a bit too ambiguous so it was recut to make the guilt and innocence of the characters a great deal clearer.
"I'm proud of my work in Gossip and I like the film because it is cool and sexy and refuses to dumb itself down for the youth market as so many of those films do."
Marsden is also excited that casting agents are no longer seeing him as a teenager.
In X-Men, his fiancee is played by former Bond girl Famke Janssen.
In real life, Marsden has been living with actress Lisa Linde for the past four years.
"Lisa played Ali on Days of Our Lives for a year and has just returned from Seattle where she filmed an X-Files-style thriller called The Darkling.
"I'm really excited for her. Both of our careers are really heating up."
That's a fact, not rumour.