He cowrote the quirky classics Bottle Rocket and Rushmore. He's qually at home starring in low-budget indies and blockbusters like this week's The Haunting. Meet the newest Hollywood hyphenate - writer-actor Owen Wilson.

By Andrew Johnston

It's a rare and cherished breed - the gifted writer who also happens to be a hell of a screen actor. Most such Hollywood hyphenates first make their names as one or the other: Sam Shepard was already in Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven; Sean Penn had long been a major presence when he penned the indelible screenplay for The Indian Runner. But every now and again, someone establishes himself as a writer-actor simultaneously, as Owen Wilson did in 1996 with Bottle Rocket.
Wilson wrote the quirky comedy with his buddy, director Wes Anderson, and starred in it as Dignan, an ambitious loser who breaks his best friend out of a voluntary mental hospital and crafts as 75-year plan for their lives as criminals. Since then, he and Anderson have achieved even greater cult-indie fame as the creative team behind last year's Rushmore. On his own, meanwhile, Wilson has brought a new twist to the actor part of the actor-writer paradigm by starring in big-budget schlockbusters such as Anaconda, Armageddon, and this week's The Haunting (costarring Liam Neeson and Catherine Zeta-Jones), playing a series of wry wisenheimers amid dopey lines and special effects. "I'm not so much like that," says Wilson of the smart-aleck roles he plays. "But I do find those types of people really funny."
The lanky 30-year-old says this with the same laconic drawl he brings to his on-screen personae, only more sluggishly. Wilson looks to be pooped, his deep blue eyes still rimmed with the effects of flying in from western Canada to take advantage of a rare weekend off from his latest acting gig, Shanghai Noon. In fact, he chose this meeting spot, Time Cafe, specifically for its proximity to the apartment of his girlfriend Sheryl Crow (they've known each other for a while and have been dating since last summer - when, as he says, "I turned on the high beams").
Fans of Wilson's work won't be surprised to learn that, like Rushmore protagonist Max Fischer, he attended a private boys school - and, like Max, got booted. (He was expelled for cheating at geometry, not for emphasizing extracurricular activities at the expense of his studies.) After finishing high school at a military academy, the Dallas native spent a miserable year at the University of Southern California, then transferred to the University of Texas, where he met Anderson in a play-writing class. "He was the only friend I made in Austin in three years there," Wilson remembers, "practically the only person I talked to."
After graduation, Wilson and Anderson moved to Houston and hammered out the script for Bottle Rocket. "We were going to do it guerilla-style, 16mm together enough cash to make the first act as a 15-minute short - starring himself, his brother Luke and their friend Robert Musgrave - to sho prospective investors. One of the people who saw it was screenwriter and Wilson family friend L.M. Kit Carson (Paris, Texas; The Texas Chainsaw Massacre II), who passed it up the Hollywood food chain. Eventually, the short landed in the hands of director James L. Brooks (Terms of Endearment, As Good as It Gets).
Brooks came down to Texas and suggested a staged reading of the script. "They had never read it aloud!" recalls Brooks incredulously. "All the actors lived in the same room, and they had never read it aloud!" Still, he signed on as executive producer, because, as he says, "Nobody sound quite like 'em." He also lined up $5 million for the gang to make its feature debut.
"It was nice, because Jim let us use all the same people," says Wilson. "Luke and I expected that they were going to use Hollywood actors." When Bottle Rocket was savaged by test-screening audiences, Wilson admits that he almost wished they had: "Someone added a category beyond four on his card, which was 'sucked.' It was kind of harsh."
Although the movie didn't last long in theaters, the right people saw it - and loved it. Disney chairman Joe Roth's admiration for Bottle Rocket resulted in the deal for Anderson and Wilson to make Rushmore. Director Michael Bays and producer Jerry Bruchkheimer's high regard for the film led to Wilson's being cast in Armageddon as oil driller Oscar Choi (a part originally written for an Asian actor - "They never changed the name. I kinda liked that," says Wilson). Another Bottle Rocket fan, director Jan De Bont, remember Wilson when it came time to cast The Haunting. "I cannot stop watching him," says De Bont. "He's got such an interesting face, that kind of triple-broken nose... and his eyes. He could play a killer and you'd still like him." De Bont says that he also appreciated Wilson's behind-the-scenes input. "When Owen suggests something, it's not just to create more close-ups for himself."
Of course, De Bont taught Wilson a few things too. Although the actor had worked with special effects on Armageddon, the experience hadn't quite prepared him for a film that depended so heavily on computer animation. "[De Bont would say,] 'Now, the wall is a face, and it's pulsating out - you're supposed to come into the room and be like, Oh, my God, Aaargh! and all hell's breaking loose,'" says Wilson. "And all you see are these bored union guys sort of staring at you." He smiles, his hair tumbling across that oft-fractured nose. "I guess that's where the acting comes in."
Wilson tries branching out a little from his smart-aleck roles in Hampton Fancher's upcoming drama The Minus Man, in which he plays a philosophical serial killer who makes girlfriend Crow one of his victims. But in the upcoming Western Shanghai Noon, he's right back to the big-ass blockbuster-type role - his largest one to date, in fact - playing a sensitive cowboy opposite Jackie Chan. "My character talks about his feelings getting hurt," Wilson explains. "He wonders why cowboys and Indians can't get along."
As the ante rises on Wilson's double life, those close to him can only laugh. "I get the feeling people sometimes kind of think he's selling out," says his brother Luke. "But [movies like Armageddon and The Haunting] are the kinds of movies we'd go to, the kinds of movies that as kids we loved. I like how he juggles both - it's the way that he is." James Brooks is similarly bemused: "For somebody else, it could be they'd forget their purpose. For Owen, that built-in ironic prism in front of his eyes will pull him through all that stuff. I get the biggest kick whenever I hear Owen's new salary, when his price goes up. It's not what he's about, so it's great when it happens to him."
Until recently, Wilson was sharing an apartment in L.A. with his brother and Anderson. Now that Anderson has moved to New York, Owen plans to spend the fall in the city with him writing their next movie, which they hope to shoot here next spring. It's the story of a dysfunctional family of eccentric geniuses, slated to star the two Wilsons as well as Rushmore's Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzman -in other words, another low-key, character-driven comedy from Wilson's writer side. Still, his two careers may yet converge if he and Anderson ever get around to making the action movie about an oceanographer that they've been kicking around. "It'll be our version of an action movie," explains Wilson. "So it'll probably be like Rushmore on the ocean or something."