You can't quite call him a star, but Jesse Metcalfe has made a big impression with fans of 'Desperate Housewives'. As his first film opens, he tells Donald Clarke about Oprah, Nadine Coyle and over-the-top come-ons.
I think the defining moment was when I found myself on The Oprah Winfrey Show," says Jesse Metcalfe, a bronzed entity with fascinatingly uniform teeth. "This is kind of a serious talk show that people who have survived natural disasters appear on. Pulitzer Prize-winning authors have been on. And I am there because I am on some TV show. I did suddenly think: What am I doing here?"
Here's the thing. Many of you will now find yourselves chortling about Metcalfe's good-natured humility. He's Jesse Metcalfe. Of course he's on The Oprah Winfrey Show. A few more will be scratching your heads. Who is this man who dares occupy a couch once bounced on by Tom Cruise?
Metcalfe enjoys a curious kind of fame. Not a Pulitzer Prize-winner, no survivor of an earthquake, he is, rather, that gardener from Desperate Housewives who, given the slightest encouragement, will take off his shirt and negotiate his half-naked form into any available stream of water.
Metcalfe, whose character habitually offers afternoon relief to Eva Longoria's suburban vamp, is, it seems, greatly admired by people attracted to men. Indeed, his first feature film, a high-school comedy entitled John Tucker Must Die, supposes a world where no teenage girl can resist falling in love with him. In his defence, despite being born in 1978, he is passably believable as a school student.
"I didn't find it that challenging to go back to high school," he says. "It still feels like it was yesterday when I was there. You were a simpler person when you were younger. It is easier to turn into a less complex person than a more complex person." Ah, sweet.
I suppose he is good looking after a conventional fashion.
Dark and muscular, with bumpy bits of tissue all over his upper body, he resembles a younger and markedly less simian Pete Sampras. So, this is what the middle-aged, middle-browed ladies of the US fantasise about encountering in their gazebos? Interesting.
"I guess the thing I get most often is some older lady coming up to me and telling me she has a bush she needs trimming," he says wearily. "I have had that said to me about 100 times. It is always funny to see how forward or over the top people will be. It is very odd."
A few months ago the celebrity magazines found another reason to put Metcalfe on their covers. Nadine Coyle, one part of Girls Aloud, the manufactured group it's cool to like, began dating Metcalfe last March. Coyle, a proud daughter of Derry, first bumped into the actor in Australia.
"I was out there hosting these parties and doing some press for Desperate Housewives and early press for John Tucker Must Die. And she was out there doing some shows, and we just met at a bar," he explains.
Had he heard of Girls Aloud? "No. So it wasn't a situation where I knew who she was and she knew who I was. It wasn't like she was this famous girl who I was lusting after. It was just a chance encounter that happens when two normal people are hanging out somewhere." Sadly, Metcalfe has yet to be lured to Derry for carousing and pints. One would like to be there when he finally makes it to the banks of the Foyle.
Born in Connecticut, later a student at New York University, Metcalfe comes across as stunningly American. He plays in a basketball league in Los Angeles. One of his greatest pleasures is driving his classic car.
It is odd to think of him going out with an Ulsterwoman. Aside from anything else, he must have some trouble understanding Coyle's accent. "I think initially I did have a bit of a difficult time," he says. "But when you really like somebody you adapt really quickly. Now I am like her translator. When we are out in LA, ordering coffee or buying clothes, and the sales lady can't understand what she is saying, I have to translate. We laugh about that."
A few unguarded comments made during a recent interview with OK! magazine led some to deduce that the couple were on the point of getting married. This, it appears, is not yet the case. "No. We are not engaged," says Metcalfe, sighing. "These magazines just print what they want and then kind of exaggerate what little truth there is there."
It is clear that he, quite reasonably, doesn't wish to say much more about the relationship. But what else is there to talk about? Metcalfe's career is still a frail, callow creature. Initially intending to become a writer and director, he got sidetracked into a few acting classes while at NYU, then, to his great surprise, triumphed at an audition for a daytime soap opera named, breathlessly, Passions. Five years later, in 2004, he found himself directing his big nipples at Miss Longoria.
What did his nice, middle-class parents make of it all? "My mom doesn't really have a problem with it," he says. "But my grandmother doesn't like it. She will phone me up and say: 'I saw you on TV again. Kissing!' And she is really repulsed by it."
Metcalfe is a decent enough actor. But his appeal does seem to rest on his looks and, more particularly, on the hilly topography of his chest and abdomen. It must be a full-time job keeping those muscles in shape. I can't imagine he has time for much else.
"I just hit the gym a lot," he says. "I probably work out about five times a week. I go jogging. I play basketball. When you are preparing for a role you have to take care of yourself. You have to start watching what you eat and so on. But it's part of my lifestyle. I have been working out since I was a teenager."
But can he still enjoy himself? Is he allowed to drink beer and stay up late? "Oh yeah, totally. Life wouldn't be worth living if you couldn't do those things."
John Tucker Must Die is on general release