Hype: Rob Brown

by Joshua Mooney

My friends and I got mailed a flyer about a part opposite Sean Connery in some movie," says Rob Brown, the 16-year-old star of Gus Van Sant's Finding Forrester. "And I said, 'Let's go to the audition.'"

So with a practical motive ("My cell phone bill was $300--my mom was like, 'You owe me money.'") and the hope of getting work as an extra, the Bronx kid with no prior acting experience managed to win a leading role opposite Oscar-winners Connery, F. Murray Abraham and Anna Paquin. "I didn't go in with any pressure, like, 'Oh, I want this part,'" he explains, "I just wanted to get in and out of there quickly."

In Finding Forrester, Brown plays a gifted writer and basketball payer from the ghetto who wins a scholarship to an elite Manhattan prop school in a neighborhood that's home to a reclusive writer (Connery) who becomes the boy's unlikely mentor.

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While Brown insists that seeing himself onscreen is "no big deal," he does bristle at the suggestion that six weeks of basketball training with a special coach was the key to his performance as a young sports star. "I play pretty well and I know what Im doing," he says, "I think you'll see I hold my own."

As to the lengthy, intense, head-to-head scenes with Connery that are the film's heart and soul, Brown's only comment is, "Sean seemed like a nice guy," this said with a blasé shrug.

Indeed, Brown's ability to shake off nerves has apparently served him well--he's being called "a natural" and there's even some early Oscar buzz. For all his Zen-like calm, though, he doesn't pretend that his accomplishment was easy: "Acting is awkward--it's awkward all the time," he says. "But it's also fun."

What did you think of Rob Brown in Finding Forrester? Sound off in the Movie Forum. See Rob Brown in the February issue of Movieline, the More Sex Than Usual issue.



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