X-Factor
Source: Men's Fitness August 2006By Brian O'Connor
With starring roles in two of the summer's biggest blockbusters - X-Men : The Last Stand and Superman Returns - actor James Marsden has found his own path to becoming a superhero
On any street corner in Manhattan, at any given time of day, doom awaits. For James Marsden and me, today it lurks on 65th Street. We've committed a pedestrian faux pas, ignoring a Don't Walk sign and stepping into the wide crosswalk on Columbus Avenue. Two columns of cars are now racing towards us with alarming speed. To avoid certain death, we must run - no, fly - to the other side of the street.
Fortunately, I'm with a superhero - Cyclops from the X-Men franchise. As he pumps his arms and rushes across the avenue, I struggle to keep pace alongside his awesome burst of athleticism. Naturally, even such brief exertion burns calories. To top off our tanks, we head to a nearby bistro and duck into a booth, hoping to avoid peril for a while.
Marsden is in town filming a Disney live-animation fantasy, Enchanted, in which he plays a dragon-slaying prince out to save his love, Amy Adams, from Susan Sarandon's evil queen. In the diner, Marsden looks a bit less the hero. At 32, he maintains a boyish charm. With a T-shirt and shorts draped over a lean frame and a baseball cap covering his tangled hair, he looks like he's set to play pickup b-ball before hitting a kegger. It's a sharp contrast to his model good looks.
Colleagues of Marsden describe him as an exceedingly swell fellow, a loyal husband, and a doting papa - the kind of guy you want to kick back and grab a beer with. "I absolutely abhor confrontation," he says. "It's an effort for me not to get along with somebody, only because its a waste of energy." There is, however, one consistent target of Marsden's disapproval: himself, or, more specifically, the work he does. "It's really difficult for me to watch myself onscreen," he says. "I have no objectivity and I think I'm one of the worst actors in the world. Of course, I'm seeing things that nobody sees, technical things."
Although Cyclops is arguably his most famous part, Marsden considers it just another role in his ever-growing body of work, especially when compared with some of his darker, more conflicted projects: In 2004's Heights and 24th Day, his characters' hidden pasts come back to haunt them. Combine these with his roles in sci-fi films like Disturbing Behavior and teen thrillers like Gossip, and you see the portrait of an actor constantly striving to grow, all the while fighting the little voice in the back of his head that's constantly telling him he's not good enough. It's an insecurity that, like most of us mortals, he's been trying to overcome for years.
For Marsden, everything started in Oklahoma City. A child of divorce, one of three brothers who spent most of their free time beating the crap out of each other, young Marsden was shy and lacked athletic talent. "I was nerdy back then," he says. "I felt like I need a manual that told me, 'Here's what you're supposed to do in life.' I was a loner, but without the cool, James Dean part of it. Girls didn't even notice me. I tried sports, but it was Oklahoma, and all the other guys were corn-fed boys - giants. At the time, I was tiny - 100 pounds - the smallest person on a football team where everybody who tried out made it just so their feelings wouldn't get hurt. But the entire time I was on the team, I just stood on the sidelines."
Visions of that football field came rushing back to Marsden in 2000 when he received a call from X-Men director Bryan Singer, who was securing the final cast for his first X flick. Although Marsden says he auditioned six times for the Cyclops role, it initially went to Jesus himself - The Passion of the Christ's James Caviezel. But when Caviezel dropped out, the part of the visor-wearing mutant landed directly in Marsden's lap.
Although he was thrilled with the opportunity, there was also a fair amount of terror. Teaming with actors like Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, Patrick Stewart, and Ian McKellan can do that sort of thing to you. And that's when he felt it - that's when he was transported back to the sidelines of that Oklahoma City football field, once again surround by rows of corn-fed giants.
"It was like, 'Can I hang with these guys?'" he says. "This was big. I knew I was going to be playing this iconic, superbuff comic-book character, but something was telling me I was still little Jimmy from Oklahoma."
Despite his initial fears, Marsden dove in and gave it everything he had - even when it came time for hours of grueling special-effects and stunt shots. "I see guys like Tom Cruise doing all their own stunts, and there's something exciting about it," he says. "There's something very exhilarating about getting physical for a role."
Luckily for Marsden, Hollywood has noticed his dedication. "With Jimmy, it's craft first," says Nancy Green-Keyes, the casting director who hired him for 2004's The Notebook. "He's a character actor who lives in a very handsome body. But he's a thinking actor: He doesn't just look at what's on the page, he goes beyond it."
He first went "beyond it" in his junior high school drama club, where he discovered he possessed the actor's flair. And slowly, Marsden began to conquer his insecurity. Although he enrolled at Oklahoma State, the acting bug gnawed at him - so much so that he finally dropped out and drove to Hollywood. And before he'd even had the chance to wait a single table or shake his first Cosmo, his career miraculously took off. At his very first audition, for the soap, Days of Our Lives, the casting director was ready to offer him a long-term contract. He'd only been in L.A. for two weeks.
"I read for it and I just suddenly had this confidence," says Marsden, who turned down the offer and soon scored a gig acting in the pilot of a prime-time sitcom. And for the first time, Marsden says, his future began to take shape. "I was going to show them something that they wouldn't expect from someone having just moved from Oklahoma, someone just off the turnip truck. I enjoyed that whole experience so much, I had blinders on to how scary it was."
A week has passed since our brush with death, Marsden is now calling me from Nashville. It's Sunday afternoon, and he's at the home of his wife's parents. He's been married to actress Lisa Linde since 2000, and it's clear from his relaxed tone on the phone that his most comfortable role is the one he's playing right now: family man and father of two. "They've taught me that I can lead a richer life by living for someone that's not me. For much of my life, I felt like I was just going through the motions. It was like, 'When am I gonna be who I am, so I can start living?' And then it happened: My son was born, my daughter was born, and suddenly, it feels like you're really living. I decided I was going to stop thinking about things so much. I got this push from behind - it was like, 'Just do something. Just go. Do it. Live.'"
Early last year, Bryan Singer called to offer Marsden another part, this time in Superman Returns. From the second he picked up the phone, Marsden knew the role he was being offered didn't start was an S. But he took it anyway, playing Richard White, a reporter at the Daily Planer and Lois Lane's fiancé. And that, he says, is all he needs. Being Superman to his kids will suffice.
"Now, when I measure what I want to do, I take into consideration how it's going to affect my other life. Part of me now doesn't want to be the big megastar. When you look at tabloids and you see people's lives under the microscope ... what they want to do is take you and put you on the back of a Cheez-It box, on Dr. Pepper cans, billboards, talk shows. That scares me, because I have kids and I have a family. I just want to act. To be someone who's respected and always doing good work."
Later that week, the Enchanted production crew jams Times Square like an occupying army. Marsden is standing on top of a bus, outfitted in a red velvet shirt, knee-high brown boots, tights, and cape. With a sword in hand to slay the attacking bus (which in the movie will be a dragon), Marsden is indeed a Prince in the City.
On the bus, Marsden pauses briefly, as clusters of tourists and the paparazzi cameras focus on his every move. And then, with his shoulders and hips squared toward the front of the bus, left foot forward and knees bent, he draws his sword. He swirls it over his head in a figure eight and yells, plunging it into the bus, into the dragon, and into all those insecurities that sometimes rear their ugly heads.
"Facing tour fears can really help you get a handle on life," he tells me later, reliving the events of the day. "It's nerve-racking, because you're dealing with the unknown. But when you're out there doing it, it forces you to live in the moment. And when you're done, you can step back and really appreciate where you are and what you've accomplished." Spoken like a true superhero.