Billy Crudup (Stage Beauty)
Age: 36; Birthplace: Manhasset, New York
"I don't think I realized the difficulty of playing somebody in the midst of an identity crisis," says Billy Crudup of his Stage Beauty character, Ned Kynaston, a Restoration actor who wins fame playing women onstage - until actual women steal his spotlight.
"Often you find some kind of root on a film, because you're working out of order and you need a reference point," he says. "Sometimes it's the way that you speak, sometimes it's another character, sometimes it's a shoe, but there are things that root you and remind you of what you're attempting to accomplish. With Ned, every day I was in a different shoe, literally and figuratively."
Crudup had a five-week rehearsal - his longest since Almost Famous - with director Richard Eyre to perfect, amongst other things Ned's female posturing (a mix of kabuki dance and classic Greek statuary) and voice (a register that wasn't "sending it up").
By the film's finale, in which Ned retakes the stage as Othello, Crudup, too, was ready to embrace his masculinity. "God, it was so frickin' nice to use my voice after a while," he says. Kelly Borgeson