Just because that ol' Hollywood publicity machine has revved up into high gear to promote Ryan Phillippe as the latest and greatest Hollywood hunk doesn't mean he's content to sit back and let his looks win him an endless string of cushy teenybopper-friendly roles. Yes, he did look awfully hot when he doffed his shirt in I Know What You Did Last Summer, and, yes, his public relations are being masterminded by the same woman who handles pretty boys Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio. But Phillippe insists that he is primarily motivated by roles that offer him a bit of a challenge. In the disco-period drama 54, for instance, he plays Shane, a young man drawn to the glittery, superficial aspects of celebrity — a pull many a young actor in Phillippe's shoes has experienced intimately, and one that has sidetracked any number of promising careers. Phillippe says he took the part precisely because Shane's philosophy is so antithetical to his own, and the characterization intimidated him for that reason. "This is a guy who digs what he sees when he looks in the mirror," Phillippe told Interview. "He thinks he's hot shit. I by no means feel that way about myself."

The story of how the angel-faced Phillippe (pronounced "Fill-uh-pea") broke into showbiz is the stuff of Hollywood legend. He was having his curly blond locks trimmed at a local barbershop in his hometown of New Castle, Del., when he was approached by a stranger, who was apparently so struck by his photogenic looks that he encouraged the youth to consider a career as an actor, and suggested he contact a friend of his who operated a talent agency in Philadelphia. Although precious little in his background would have engendered a theatrical bent — his father is a chemist, and his mother used to run a daycare in the family home — Phillippe, with Mom in tow, followed the stranger's advice and rather casually went in for a meeting with the agent. So impressed was the talent-spotter by the raw potential he saw that he consented to work with the young neophyte on taming his thick Philly-area accent before sending him off to New York in search of work. A short, if lean, seven months later, the still wet-behind-the-ears aspiring actor landed his first paying gig.

To Phillippe, the larger significance of the job was surely that all-important paycheck, but the role he played on the long-running daytime soap One Life to Live proved a pivotal milestone in cultural terms as well. When Billy Douglas joined the population of the fictional town of Llanview, Penn., in the summer of 1992, he represented the first gay teenager to appear on a sudser, and his three-month-long visitation focused on his struggles to come out of the closet and then weather the townspeople's initially negative reactions. Landing the part was a definite coup for the unknown 17-year-old, and the news coverage generated by the groundbreaking nature of the characterization brought him attention far beyond the steamy realm of daytime drama.

The world of TV offered Phillippe more opportunities for employment, including roles in a Perry Mason Mystery and the made-for-TV movie Deadly Invasion: The Killer Bee Nightmare, before he made his film debut in a small role in director Tony Scott's 1995 nail-biting submarine thriller Crimson Tide. The following year, Phillippe's name inched closer to the top of the credits in both the distinctly cheesy monster-from-outer-space flick Invader and the based-on-a-true-story sailing drama White Squall, which was helmed by Ridley Scott, Tony's older brother. Phillippe came away from the latter project both with critics' praises for his fine performance as a timid high school senior and several important connections in Hollywood's community of young actors. During the five-and-a-half-month-long shoot, he forged tight friendships with teen heartthrobs and fellow cast members Scott Wolf and Ethan Embry.

Phillippe's career hit its stride with appearances in three distinctly different films released in 1997. Promoted as "a Beverly Hills, 90210 episode on acid," Gregg Araki's teen angst flick Nowhere marked the third, and most colorful, entry in the director's "Teen Apocalypse Trilogy" (after Totally F***ed Up and The Doom Generation). What with Shannen Doherty's abduction by aliens and Love Boat alum Lauren Tewes' appearance as "Julie, the Newscaster," the description was apropos. Slightly more mainstream, but still squarely in the indie camp, Little Boy Blue represented Phillippe's first starring vehicle. In it, he played a youth whose father forces him to have sex with his stepmother, played by Nastassja Kinski. Though the film opened to universal derision, several critics did single out Phillippe's performance for its efficacy.

The undisputed success story of the bunch was I Know What You Did Last Summer, in which Phillippe played an arrogant rich kid, who, along with his girlfriend (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and high school friends (Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr.), is menaced by a mysterious and murderous figure who knows their damning secret. Compared to screenwriter Kevin Williamson's earlier horror triumph Scream, Last Summer was decidedly hackneyed, yet once again critics noted that Phillippe turned in a performance that transcended the material. Despite extensive critical drubbing, the film succeeded in drawing audiences to multiplexes in droves. For his part, Phillippe acknowledges the success of the film, but says that, of all his projects, it's the one that excites him least, and he frankly admits that his decision to accept the role was motivated by the twin desires of being seen by a larger audience and receiving a sizable paycheck.

The roles Phillippe has essayed since Last Summer indicate that his inclinations towards artistic integrity are more than just the hip pose of a pretty-boy actor made good. He appeared in the festival fave Homegrown, a quirky marijuana-themed black comedy he followed up with his dramatic turn as Jersey boy turned bartender Shane O'Shea in 54. Set in the world's most famous nightclub circa the hedonistic height of New York's disco era, Studio 54, the sexually charged film traces Shane's sundry sexual entanglements with the likes of Neve Campbell, Salma Hayek, and Sela Ward.

Away from the set, Phillippe enjoys domestic bliss with his actress wife, Reese Witherspoon, their daughter Ava Elizabeth, and his dogs. He appeared opposite Witherspoon in Cruel Intentions, a modern-day remake of Dangerous Liaisons that also starred his I Know What You Did Last Summer girlfriend, Sarah Michelle Gellar. Phillippe went straight from shooting Cruel Intentions to filming Playing by Heart, with only two days rest in between, and, in a radical effort to separate the two characters in his own mind, he dyed his hair blue before showing up on the Playing set for his first day of work. Despite initial resistance, director Willard Carroll acquiesced and the blue hair stayed. The film also features Sean Connery, Gillian Anderson, Anthony Edwards, and Dennis Quaid.