Gossip Girl’s Chace Crawford returns with new film and TV miniseries

This weekend, his latest movie, Mountain Men, hits Toronto and at the end of the month, you can catch him on CTV and ABC in the new miniseries, Blood and Oil, where he stars opposite Don Johnson.

“Yeah, it’s a crazy time right now, but that’s how it works in this business, doesn’t it?” he laughs over the phone from Park City, Utah, where Blood and Oil is currently filming.

Certainly no two projects could be more different. Mountain Men is an intimate comedy-drama about the relationship between two brothers (Crawford and Tyler Labine, best known for Breaker High and Reaper), while Blood and Oil is a big, steamy prime-time orgy of sex and power and money, destined to bring back memories of Dallas.

But what will surprise and delight Crawford’s many fans who are used to him being suave and sexy, will be the broad physical comedy and down-home situations he gets involved in during Mountain Men.

“To be honest, that’s why I took the picture,” he admits. “It was a chance for me to do something different, something crazy. And it wound up being as much fun as it seemed.”

Written and directed by Cameron Labine (Tyler’s brother), Mountain Men needed a rugged setting and Crawford was a total stranger to the interior of B.C. where the film was shot.

“Yeah, it was kind of a crash course in surviving the Canadian wilderness,” Crawford quips dryly. “I’m a Texas boy by birth and I’d never seen so much ice and snow in my life.

“We were up in Revelstoke, B.C. and we shot there in April, but it started melting, so we kept moving higher and higher up the mountains to make it look more treacherous and then it suddenly froze over again. That took some getting used to.”

Crawford enjoyed working with the Labine brothers because “I had been a fan of Tyler’s work before I got there and I quickly got to love Cameron and the way he directed. He knows what he wants, but he keeps it loose, which is just how I like to work.”

The broodingly handsome Crawford is just 30 now, but he was only 22 when he got cast in Gossip Girl as Nate Archibald, the rich stoner bad boy with a penchant for breaking hearts.

But how did he get from Lubbock, Texas, where he was born in 1985, to the streets of Manhattan?

He chuckles. “I have that really sh—— story that nobody wants to hear. I kind of fell into it by osmosis. You have to understand the culture I grew up in. Lots of parents in Texas keep holding their kids back in kindergarten so they’ll be bigger for football by the time they get to high school. It’s a good thing my folks never did that, because I never topped 5’ll”.

“I never really knew what I wanted to do, to tell you the truth. I liked photography and drawing and painting, but I never thought about acting. Even when I got to Pepperdine (University), surrounded by overachievers, I felt completely lost.”

So Crawford took what he thought would be a year off, to find out what he really wanted to do and everything started changing for him.

“I started taking some acting classes, just for the hell of it. At first, I was like ‘What is this? It’s so weird? It’s gotta be a bunch of crap.’ But then one day it clicked.

“Well, not just one day. I had a handful of watershed moments, a few sort of epiphanies where I got a taste of what real acting was about.

“They had me working with The Meisner Technique,” he says, referring to the acting process developed by actor/teacher Sanford Meisner, “and I learned it’s not about putting on a performance, it’s about getting to the heart of a character.”

So Crawford starting going out for auditions. “And when they sent me out, I got good feedback. People looked me right in the eye and told me I should pursue this, so I did.”

By the time he was 21, his first feature film was released, a bizarre mixture of prep school Gothic and horror shenanigans called The Covenant.

“That was something else, wasn’t it?” he laughs. “Man, that movie was The Craft meets the Backstreet Boys. But we had a blast doing it and I thought, if I had this much fun, this is what I’m doing for the rest of my life.”

But the fun had actually just started. The triumvirate of Josh Schwartz, Stephanie Savage and John Stephens, who had struck West Coast youth gold with The O.C. decided to move to NYC and try it all again with a new series called Gossip Girl.

“When I first heard about it,” admits Crawford, “I knew I had to be in it. I mean, these guys really knew how to work that whole zip code teen drama kind of thing. And there was a built-in fan base with the books. I thought it couldn’t lose.

“And once I read with the girls in the cast, I thought it was a really cool dynamic and I wanted in.”

The producers felt the same way and Crawford joined the team, breaking hearts and reputations for the next four seasons, with his off-screen romances providing as much fodder for the tabloids as his onscreen ones.

“I’m not sure I handled all of that as well I could have. I don’t like attention being called to my private life. People who know me well know that I’m really a loner at heart, but that’s a pretty hard thing to manage when you’re in a show getting all that attention.”

What was the hardest part of it all?

He laughs. “Once the show really took off, these packs of girls would find out where we were shooting in New York and mob the streets outside. I’m not kidding. You try shooting a scene with 300 girls screaming at you. Man, I’m glad that’s over.”

Crawford would rather stick in the present and talk about Blood and Oil, which he has high hopes for.

“We’re on episode 3, about to start episode 4. We had a few bumps at the beginning, with casting changes and stuff, the usual birth pains, but it’s going well now.

“I love shooting on location in Utah. We get the scope of the land, a whole different kind of feel. And I don’t have to shave every day, which is maybe the best of all.”

Crawford feels he’s been “really lucky” so far and is happy to take it one project at a time. “I’m trying to cultivate a leading man quality, so I see who does it best and try to learn from the greats.

“And have fun while I’m doing it.” Of course.

CHACE CRAWFORD’S FIVE FAVOURITE ACTORS

PAUL NEWMAN — He was my favourite. He was so damn smooth, so present. You had to admire him.

WARREN BEATTY — Not only was he such a confident presence on screen, but he was the power behind a lot of fascinating films. That’s a great combination.

DON JOHNSON — I love working with him on Blood and Oil. He’s been there, he knows how to do it and he makes it seem so easy. Which it isn’t.

LEONARDO DICAPRIO — He’s had such a great career, always being true to himself. You have to admire that.

BRAD PITT — I have to admire all the work he’s done in so many different kinds of films and he always manages to ring true.