Ryan Phillippe Matthew Ryan Phillippe , better known as Ryan
Phillippe, is an American actor and director.
After appearing on the soap opera One Life to Live, he came to fame in the late 1990s
starring in a string of films, including I Know What You Did Last Summer, Cruel Intentions,
and 54.
In the 2000s, he appeared in several films, including 2001's Academy Award Best Picture
nominee Gosford Park, 2005's Academy Award-winning ensemble film Crash, and the 2006 war drama
Flags of Our Fathers.
In 2007 he starred in Breach, a movie based on the true story of FBI operative Eric O'Neill,
while in 2008 he headlined Kimberly Peirce's Iraq war film Stop-Loss.
In 2010, he starred as Pulitzer-Prize winning photographer Greg Marinovich in The Bang-Bang
Club.
He was married to actress Reese Witherspoon from 1999 to 2007; together, they have a daughter
and a son.
He also has a daughter from a relationship with actress Alexis Knapp.
Early life Phillippe was born in New Castle, Delaware.
His mother, Susan (née Thomas), ran a day care center in the family's house, and his
father, Richard Phillippe, worked for DuPont.
Phillippe is of part French descent.
He has three sisters.
He attended New Castle Baptist Academy, where he played basketball and soccer, as well as
earned a black belt in Tae Kwon Do; he was also the Yearbook Editor in his senior year.
Career Early career (1992–1999)
Phillippe's acting career began with an appearance in ABC daytime drama One Life to Live.
His character Billy Douglas, whom he played from 1992 to 1993, was the first gay teenager
on a daytime soap opera.
After leaving the show, Phillippe moved to Los Angeles, where he appeared in a number
of small parts in various television series including Matlock, Due South, the TV mini-series
The Secrets of Lake Success, and movies, including the 1995 film Crimson Tide and the 1996 film
White Squall.
He was cast in the 1997 horror film, I Know What You Did Last Summer, which co-starred
Sarah Michelle Gellar, Freddie Prinze, Jr. and Jennifer Love Hewitt.
The film was a success, and led to Phillippe gaining wider renown and being cast in a few
more high-profile films, including 54 in 1998 opposite Neve Campbell, Salma Hayek and Mike
Myers.
In 1999 he starred in Cruel Intentions, a modern retelling of the Choderlos de Laclos
novel, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, which also starred Phillippe's future wife, Reese Witherspoon,
as well as his I Know What You Did Last Summer co-star, Sarah Michelle Gellar.
It was a success among its intended teenage audience, cementing Phillippe's ability to
play characters that require sex appeal.
Phillippe can also be seen in the Marcy Playground music video "Comin' Up From Behind", which
also appears on the film's soundtrack.
Critical success and later work (2000–2009) In the years following, he appeared in the
crime drama The Way of the Gun, starred as a famed software engineer in the thriller
Antitrust, and co-starred in Robert Altman's Gosford Park, which was nominated for the
Oscar for Best Picture.
Subsequently, Phillippe had supporting parts in the films Igby Goes Down (2002) and Crash
(2005), which won the Oscar for Best Picture.
His 2003 film, The I Inside, premiered on cable.
In 2006, Phillippe played real-life Navy corpsman John Bradley in the war film Flags of Our
Fathers, directed by Clint Eastwood and following the journey of the United States Marines who
lifted the flag at the battle of Iwo Jima.
Phillippe has said that the film was the "best experience" of his career because of its "personal
meaning" to him, and that he would have "given life" to fight in World War II, noting that
both of his grandfathers fought in the war.
His performance was positively received by film critic Richard Roeper, who thought it
was Phillippe's best performance to date.
Phillippe's next role was in the thriller Breach, in which he played FBI investigator
Eric O'Neill opposite Chris Cooper.
He has since commented that he believes Cooper to be "the best actor America has to offer".
He then starred in Chaos, in which he plays a police officer, Five Fingers, a drama set
in Morocco, Kimberly Peirce's Iraq war film Stop-Loss, and the futuristic Franklyn.
Newfound success and return to television (2010–2011)
Next up for Phillippe was a rare comedic role as Lt. Dixon Piper in the unsuccessful film
MacGruber, based on the SNL skit of the same name.
It was released in the US and Canada on May 21, 2010.
As part of the film's promotion, Phillippe made his Saturday Night Live hosting debut
on April 17, 2010, along with first-time musical performer Kesha.
Two days later, on April 19, 2010, Phillippe co-hosted WWE Raw with Jonathan Swift and
Charo, also in support of MacGruber.
That same year, Phillippe starred in the Canadian/South African production The Bang-Bang Club, which
tells the real-life story of the Bang-Bang Club, four South African photographers whose
images documented the bloody end of apartheid.
Phillippe stars as Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Greg Marinovich.
Filming for the movie took place in South Africa, beginning in March 2009.
Phillippe described the filming process as "really run-and-gun.
There were no comforts, and I actually appreciate that".
He noted that the experience has impacted him, explaining that "we were shooting during
the day in Soweto, and it was an endless procession of funerals—death is so common.
Kids there have no quality of life.
It has made me want to get more involved in Africa-based charities."
An early cut of the film was shown at Cannes Film Festival in May 2009, with the final
version shown at Cannes in May 2010.
The film officially premiered in September 2010 at the 2010 Toronto International Film
Festival.
The US rights to the movie were picked up by Tribeca Film, which premiered the movie
at the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival and opened the movie in limited release on April 22,
2011.
In the summer of 2010, Phillippe began filming the adaptation of popular crime novel The
Lincoln Lawyer, taking on the role of Louis Roulet, a wealthy Los Angeles playboy accused
of a crime for which his culpability is unclear.
The movie, which also stars Matthew McConaughey, Marisa Tomei, and William H. Macy, opened
on March 18, 2011, and was generally well received by critics, scoring 82% on Rotten
Tomatoes as of late March 2011.
Phillippe filmed his next project, heist action movie Setup, in December 2010 in Grand Rapids,
Michigan.
Also starring Bruce Willis, Jenna Dewan, and 50 Cent, the movie focuses on a group of young
men from Detroit whose attempt at a diamond heist goes awry and brings them into conflict
with a mob boss.
The movie had a straight-to-DVD release on September 20, 2011.
Phillippe next filmed the dramatic dark comedy Revenge for Jolly!, alongside Elijah Wood,
Kristen Wiig, and Adam Brody, in the summer of 2011.
The movie, which tells the story of a man set on finding his dog's murderer, premiered
at the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival.
Phillippe subsequently began work on another movie, Straight A's, in August 2011.
Filmed in Shreveport, Louisiana, the movie will star Phillippe as a man who has been
in and out of rehab for years and is now haunted by his mother's ghost, and will also feature
Anna Paquin and Luke Wilson.
Starting in November 2011, Phillippe spent several months filming a 10-episode arc on
the fifth and final season of the critically acclaimed TV show Damages.
Playing Channing McClaren, a Julian Assange-like character, it was his first regular TV role
since his breakout part on One Life to Live.
The season aired from July to September 2012.
Focus on directing and producing (2012–present) In 2012, Phillippe focused on his directorial
debut, Shreveport, an upcoming indie thriller in which Phillippe will star as a fading film
actor who must devise a creative escape after he is kidnapped and tortured while making
a movie in Shreveport, Louisiana.
In addition to directing, co-producing, and starring in the film, Phillippe also co-wrote
the script with Joe Gossett.
Phillippe has said that the film is based partly on the life experiences of himself
and his friends (including the filming of Straight A's in Shreveport in 2011), but is
partly meant to be "a fun scary movie in the vein of Misery".
Filming took place on location in Shreveport in the fall of 2012, and the movie is slated
for a 2013 release.
In October 2013, Phillippe began filming the thriller Reclaim in Puerto Rico.
The movie will feature Phillippe as an American man who travels to Puerto Rico with his wife
(played by Rachelle Lefevre) to adopt an orphan from Haiti.
After a confrontation with a local (played by John Cusack), the child vanishes.
Phillippe has also been attached to a number of possible future film roles, including Chronicle,
a film to be directed by Jay Alaimo that will see Phillippe, Justin Long, and John Hawkes
in a story about "about two childhood friends who reunite to launch the biggest marijuana
dealership in New York City", and Christopher McQuarrie's The Stanford Prison Experiment,
an upcoming film about the infamous 1971 psychology experiment.
Phillippe, Breckin Meyer, Seth Green, and David E. Siegal run a production company called
Lucid Films.
In 2010, Phillippe and Meyer began "getting a show going for Showtime", serving as executive
producers.
The comedy, Heavy and Rolling, tells the story of a Manhattan towncar driver who assumes
different identities as he moves towards madness.
Phillippe also served as executive producer and narrator on Isolated, a documentary that
follows five surfers as they travel to remote New Guinea in search of untouched waves.
The documentary premiered in January 2013 at the 2013 Santa Barbara International Film
Festival.
Personal life In 1997, Phillippe attended a party given
for actress Reese Witherspoon's 21st birthday.
Upon meeting Witherspoon, Phillippe was reported to have spent all night talking to her, with
Witherspoon telling Phillippe, "I think you're my birthday present."
They started dating and became engaged in December 1998.
The following year, the pair starred in Cruel Intentions together.
Phillippe and Witherspoon married on June 5, 1999, in a small ceremony at Old Wide Awake
Plantation near Charleston, South Carolina, when Witherspoon was six months pregnant.
On September 9, 1999, a daughter named Ava Elizabeth Phillippe, after actress Ava Gardner,
was born.
Their son, Deacon Reese Phillippe, was born on October 23, 2003 and named after Phillippe's
ancestor, Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Deacon Phillippe, a baseball player at the turn of
the 20th century.
On October 30, 2006, Phillippe and Witherspoon released a statement announcing that they
had decided to formally separate.
After more than seven years of marriage, Witherspoon filed for divorce from her husband on November
8, 2006, citing irreconcilable differences as the cause.
In light of the couple's lack of a prenuptial agreement, she requested that the court refuse
to grant spousal support to Phillippe, and asked for joint legal custody and sole physical
custody of the pair's two children.
Phillippe filed for joint physical custody of the children on May 15, 2007, and did not
seek any spousal support.
The couple's marriage officially ended on October 5, 2007, with final divorce arrangements
settled on June 13, 2008, according to court documents.
Phillippe and Witherspoon share joint custody of their children.
Phillippe began dating Australian actress Abbie Cornish in 2007 after meeting on the
set of Stop-Loss.
They split up in February 2010.
Phillippe subsequently dated model/actress Alexis Knapp in the summer of 2010, before
splitting in September 2010.
After the break-up, Knapp discovered that she was pregnant, and gave birth to a daughter,
Kailani Merizalde Phillippe Knapp, on July 1, 2011.
Phillippe was present during the birth.
Awards