Break-up with Reese Witherspoon left me in 'sad, dark place', admits Ryan Phillippe
Ewan McGregor James Bond Kelly Macdonald Nicole Kidman Tom Cruise
Siobhan Synnot
RYAN Phillippe has finally emerged from the break-up of his golden marriage to Reese Witherspoon.
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Daily Record
RYAN Phillippe has finally emerged from the break-up of his golden marriage to Reese Witherspoon.

But the star of new British film Franklyn admits the split left him in "the darkest, saddest place I had ever been".

"There were a good four or five months of not being able to get out of bed. It was the worst time in my life," says the 34-year-old.

Since then, he's worked non-stop on a string of tough, critically-acclaimed movies - but it's clear Ryan's rapidly rising acting profile scarcely makes up for the loss of his marriage.

"It's a really strange time in my life," he says. "I recognise the successes and opportunities I've had recently but it's the last thing on my mind right now."

For most of their marriage, Ryan's career was overshadowed by the rapid rise of Reese, although he was always supportive of his wife in public, and was by her side when she won her Oscar for playing Mrs Johnny Cash in I Walk The Line.

Like Nicole Kidman, whose career came second to the interest in her marriage to superstar Tom Cruise, it took a break-up to find his own movie success.

Ryan and Reese met in 1997 at her 21st birthday party. They went on to co-star in the teen movie Cruel Intentions in 1999, and married the same year when Reese was pregnant with Ava, now nine. Son Deacon, five, followed four years later.

While he was filming the anti-war movie Stop Loss, there were rumours that he had fallen for co-star Abbie Cornish. Around that time Reese filed for divorce, citing "irreconcilable differences" as the reason.

Ryan has always denied accusations that he cheated on his wife with Abbie.

"I'm not a perfect person, but I'm not guilty of a lot of things I have been accused of," he says. "My priority is and always has been the health and safety of my family.

"The solace that I have comes from my children, because even when I feel I'm getting bashed, there are still two little beautiful people who want to cuddle on the couch."

After the couple announced they were divorcing, Ryan didn't work for 18 months.

"It was hard to make work seem important enough to spend my time on," he admits. But gradually he realised that work was a useful escape from the stresses of separation and quickly signed up for four films.

"Now I'm out of the woods and ready to focus and ready to create and excited about that. I feel a lot more OK than I did."

Reese and Ryan have worked hard to stay amicable.

"I think for both Reese and I the focus remains our children," says the Crash star. "I think we have done a really good job at keeping things peaceable and completely focused on their welfare."

At the moment, he says Deacon is into all sorts of cars, trucks and machinery, Transformers and electronics, while Ava is obsessed by Hannah Montana, so dad worked his magic to get Ava tickets to a Miley Cyrus concert.

As for Reese and her new flame, Jake Gyllenhaal, Ryan says he has nothing but respect for the pair of them.

"He's a good dude. I love her and I want her to be happy, and it seems like she is," he says, but admits he avoids seeing pictures of his ex-wife and her new love.

Brit flick Franklyn is his first post-divorce movie, and filming in Britain on the low-budget independent picture allowed him to escape from the Hollywood microscope, while staying in touch with his son and daughter via webcam.

He stars alongside Bond girl Eva Green in a Twilight Zone-style thriller, where he plays a masked detective on the run in a mysterious futuristic world. Originally the role was supposed to be filled by Ewan McGregor.

"It's really like nothing else you've ever seen," he says. "That's the kind of stuff I try to find. It's really original. The closest description I can come up with is Batman meets Magnolia."

Ryan recalls Franklyn as being a "tough shoot" and that the mask made him feel "claustrophobic". But he was able to put his schoolboy fighting training to good use at last.

Ryan is a black belt in Tae Kwon Do and used his skills beating up many of the future city's weird inhabitants But the mask means that no-one knows it's him.

"Everyone thinks it's a stuntman," he laughs. "I'm like, 'No, it's me! I trained my whole life for this'.

"It's really crazy. I have all these fight scenes in this Edwardian costume. I did all of my stunts myself and I have these boots with a hidden heel. I'm doing full-on fight scenes on the rooftops in these boots. It's ridiculous."

Franklyn is Ryan's first attempt at an English accent - although he starred in the Oscar-winning English period drama Gosford Park, the curly haired star played a Scot.

"I had just three lessons for the accent," he reveals "so I was winging it a little bit. But because the character ultimately is revealed to be someone else, it didn't have to be perfect, so I didn't feel that kind of pressure."

He also had some help from Train spotting's Kelly Macdonald, who played a maid in the movie and was happy to give his brogue a once over before the cameras rolled. "I would go over and try out my lines on her, and work out from her response as to whether I'd got it right," he admits.

Fans may rave over Ryan's good looks, blue eyes and impressive body, but the actor has always been serious about his work.

He was discovered by an agent while getting his hair cut when he was just 18. The agent quickly found him work playing a gay teenager on the soap One Life to Live.

Ryan grew up as one of four children in a close-knit family, where his father was a chemical technician at DuPont and his mother ran her own day-care centre. There were no actors in the family - or a drama department at his school.

His first character, Billy Douglas, was American daytime television's first gay teenager, and Ryan broke new ground showing Billy's struggle with coming out issues and his town's anti-gay reactions.

He said: "I was 17 and with a job on a soap opera, so that was a real big deal for us.

"Then within two years I was working on Crimson Tide for Ridley Scott. Right from the start, I've worked steadily."

By the age of 20 he had started his Hollywood career in earnest, mostly as a teen star in such films as I Know What You Did Last Summer and Cruel Intentions, a teenage version of Dangerous Liaisons, starring both Reese and Buffy scream queen Sarah Michelle Gellar.

Since then he has focused on gritty roles in films such as Clint Eastwood's Second World War tale Flags of Our Fathers and Best Film Oscar winner Crash, about race relations.

"Earlier in my career, I would make certain movies and I wasn't incredibly proud of them," he says.

"You go see them, and maybe they'd be fine in an escapist regard, but they didn't last beyond the two hours you spent and the Û10 you paid."

More and more the actor has been using his fame to make interesting choices. The heart-throb roles have been largely left behind.

But after having his marriage scrutinised, Ryan is thinking of stepping behind the cameras.

He said: "I'm really drawn to dark comedy. I love desperation and what can be funny about desperation.

"I'm working on a true-crime comedy script. I am hoping to direct."

Franklyn is out on February 28.