Tuesday, September 09, 2003

By Ron Weiskind, Post-Gazette Movie Editor

TORONTO -- Wentworth Miller took out his family photo album, looked into the faces before him, saw the endurance and perseverance of his forebears and pondered the whims of fate.

	Jacinda Barrett and Wentworth Miller embrace in "The Human Stain." (Takashi Seida)

A graduate of Quaker Valley High School, Miller, 31, makes his movie debut next month in "The Human Stain," adapted from Philip Roth's novel. He plays the lead character, Coleman Silk, as a young man in the late 1940s. Anthony Hopkins plays the contemporary version of Silk, a septuagenarian who teaches classics at a college in New England.

To share a role in your first film with an Academy Award-winning actor must be daunting. But Miller brings qualifications to the role that even Hopkins cannot match.

Coleman Silk has been living a lie for most of his adult life. He is a black man passing for white, his skin so light that no one can tell the difference. Feeling trapped by prejudice in his youth, he chose the route that he thought led to freedom, only to ultimately find himself confined in other ways.

Miller is the son of a black man and a white woman. You can't pin a racial label on him, least of all by his skin color.

"I'd like to think that talent had everything to do with my getting cast in the role," he says of "The Human Stain," which also stars Nicole Kidman and Gary Sinise and is being screened at the Toronto Film Festival. "My being of the right background, racially speaking, was an added bonus. It brings a certain authenticity to the table.

"I remember during the casting process, they wanted to make sure I was who I said I was." That's when he pulled out the family album and waxed philosophical.

"Has all of this been for this moment? Has this entire familial experience led up to me getting this job? The answer was no, but yes in a way. I feel incredibly honored that I am able to bring a story to the table that my family is very eager to see -- not just because I am in a movie, but because it touches on issues that touch all of our lives.

"This character is incredibly frustrated and dissatisfied with the cards that life has dealt him. That is something everyone can relate to. We've all been in a position where, because of religion or ethnicity or gender, we've been boxed into a corner. Therefore, that struggle is universal."

Silk chose his label when he marked "white" as his race when he joined the Navy. Miller doesn't want to be labeled.

"As far as being black versus African-American, I have a problem with hyphenates," he says. "I don't want to be African-American or Chinese-American or Irish-American. My family's been in this country for generations. There is no reason in the world why I can't lay claim to just American."

His parents met at Yale. Both of their families were supportive when they started dating but had concerns. Miller's mother became a special-education teacher, and his father was an assistant district attorney in Brooklyn, N.Y., before developing a course for law school students that helps them prepare for essay exams.

Miller grew up in Brooklyn, where, he says, "We had all kinds of people. You're rubbing elbows with just about every race, creed, religion on the subway. It was just not an issue. It wasn't until I got to college [Princeton], where everyone is going through that process of 'Who am I?' and then 'Who are you?' -- that's when people started asking about my ethnicity. Why do you look so exotic? Why are you from Brooklyn, but you don't have an accent? People were eager to pigeonhole me."

The family moved to Sewickley before Miller's senior year in high school.

"My parents had been looking for a while to move out of the city. I have two little sisters, and there were concerns about raising children in an urban environment. There is a certain pace of life in New York City that can be exhausting, and we'd been there for 13 years. They'd heard great things about Pittsburgh and asked me if I would mind leaving high school, and I didn't. I wanted to have the experience of a year in a suburban high school."

The differences were profound.

"My school in Brooklyn had 3,000 kids. It was, of course, overwhelming by sheer numbers but beautifully diverse. Quaker Valley was only about 400 students, tops. So my class rank shot up, which was great."

He also liked the sense of community he found. "Sewickley was an entire town operating as a community, and I found that a very powerful and supportive kind of experience."

He had loved acting since kindergarten and participated in "as many plays and musicals as my parents would let me be in." But he found Princeton so oriented to business and the professions that, he says, "acting seemed like a very scary prospect."

Instead, he majored in English literature and sought to become an entertainment executive. He got an entry-level job at a production company, and he could watch footage each night from the company's projects. That got the acting juices flowing again.

He wound up in the TV series "Dinotopia" and made guest appearances on several other shows. Miller also has a role in the fantasy movie "Underworld," which was shot after "The Human Stain."

When he found out he'd be playing the same character as Anthony Hopkins, he felt honored. "And then I start getting worried. Those are some large shoes to fill. I felt very much since this is my first feature film, it was up to me to tailor my performance to him as much as possible. So I went out and rented every Anthony Hopkins video I could find."

But Hopkins also watched Miller's work in "The Human Stain," which was shot before the veteran actor arrived on the set.

"The flattering thing is that he also tailored to me as well," Miller says. "I see little bits of me in his performance."

Miller also gained confidence working with director Robert Benton, who co-wrote "Bonnie and Clyde" and whose directing credits include "Places in the Heart," "The Late Show" and the Oscar-winning "Kramer vs. Kramer."

"The first day on set I was very nervous, and I was trying something in one of the takes," Miller says. Afterward, Benton said it wasn't working and suggested another approach.

"I tried what he suggested on the next take, and after the take was over he came over and said, 'I was wrong. Go back to what you were doing.'

"I knew I could try and if I failed, I wasn't going to be punished. This was about collaboration and it was about respect."

Miller calls his role in "The Human Stain" a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but he is still apprehensive. Will the role affect his acting opportunities? Will Hollywood try to pigeonhole and stereotype the young actor, just as Coleman Silk feared would happen to him?

"I feel I can attain anything I want to and do anything I want to. I don't sense those kinds of limitations that this character must have endured."

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