When Bellevue native and Broadway performer Paul McGill learned "A Chorus Line" was closing, he lined up five auditions in a single week and started knocking them off like bowling pins.

A movie reinvention of "Fame," the 1980 musical sensation, was among them. He learned his lines, dissected the text a bit, auditioned and made his peace with the idea that he would not get hired.

McGill was, after all, mainly a stage performer who had left Northgate High School at 17 to join "La Cage aux Folles" on Broadway as a "swing" covering for a dozen roles.

He auditioned for the "Fame" role of Kevin, an Iowan whose mother owns a dance studio and who sends him to a performing arts school in New York to become a ballet dancer. "I'm not going to get this, but that's cool," he assumed.

But then the cascade of calls and callbacks started.

"The first one was for the New York casting director, the second for the L.A. casting director and the New York casting director was in there, and then the third was for the director and one of the producers and the L.A. casting director and the New York casting director, so it kept building."

The pyramid widened until a Friday when filmmakers asked McGill to create a two-minute dance "that expresses the style of Kevin and showing his character and your dancing abilities."

And somewhere, in between a five-show weekend for "A Chorus Line," he made up a dance set to "Simply Irresistible" and then performed it. A "Fame" producer told him, "We want you in our movie" so please don't take the job he had been offered in "West Side Story."

McGill, the son of Paul and Shari McGill of Bellevue, rolled the movie dice and will learn if the gamble paid off Sept. 25 when "Fame" opens in theaters. In addition to its young performers, "Fame" stars Bebe Neuwirth, Kelsey Grammer, Charles Dutton, Megan Mullally and Debbie Allen.

McGill, who turns 22 today and lives in Studio City, Calif., has been busy promoting the movie with red-carpet appearances for other films (it's all about being seen in Hollywood), magazine shoots in high, low and dance fashions, making music and workout videos and even traveling to Italy with fellow cast members.

In a way, McGill is the anti-Kevin. In "Fame," Kevin befriends an aspiring actress and a filmmaker who start to get work while he is left "feeling less than," the former Pittsburgher says.

"It's like all high school students really want to be as good or better than their friends, they need to either be with the crowd or be above the crowd, so to be in the back ... he struggles with that. They're his friends but at the same time he wants to do well."

Kevin's story takes a dramatic turn. McGill wants to keep that a surprise, but it's why, no doubt, he says, "This movie is not 'High School Musical.' You could take the music out and it would still be a movie. It doesn't further the plot any more but it's really nice to watch and listen to, so it's more of a movie with music."

McGill, who appeared in the documentary "Man on Wire" as daredevil Philippe Petit in flashbacks (and a "bad wig"), would like to do another movie or TV show. "I think a lot of people know me as a dancer, Broadway performer. In this movie I don't really dance much -- to my benefit. Hopefully, they'll see me as an actor now."

Post-Gazette movie editor Barbara Vancheri can be reached at bvancheri@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1632. She will have a longer report on McGill closer to the opening of "Fame."