Ryan Phillippe Thought His 'Cruel Intentions' Role Would Make His Parents Disown Him
Ryan Phillippe is opening up about one of his most iconic roles – Sebastian Valmont in Cruel Intentions.
While speaking on the Barstool Sports “KFC Radio” podcast this week, the 46-year-old actor revealed that he was worried how the role would sit with his parents and family, who are very religious.
“I thought my parents were going to disown me,” he explained, and noted that they had not been on good terms before with a role he had played – gay teen Billy Douglas on One Life to Live.
Ryan adds, “I had grown up going to, like, Baptist school and Christian school. When I was a senior in high school, I played the first gay character on a soap opera — first gay teenager ever — and so I was shunned at that point. I mean this was 1992, and I was playing a gay teenager and I was in a Christian school. They weren’t happy about it.”
However, Ryan doesn’t regret taking the role at all.
“I’ve still never played a character like that since,” he says. “I want to get back to playing a character like Sebastian in Cruel Intentions. It was just so fun to be so flippant and sort of like, you know, the emotions are theatrical.”
Ryan also loves seeing the new fans that are popping up and that new iterations could happen.
“It’s cool that it holds up, man, you know, a lot of times to take a movie from a specific point in time that’s supposed to connect with a younger crowd and it just stays. This movie somehow finds new fans all the time,” he added. “You know, they were going to do a series about Cruel Intentions, a TV series a year or so ago. There’s, like, a musical out there that’s really good actually, they put it back in theaters for its 20th anniversary — that only happens [to], like, The Godfather.”
Ryan‘s new series, Big Sky, premieres tonight on ABC.
Last month, Ryan was one of the only celebrities to call out this talk show host.