Blood Brothers. Amy Rickman
with pumped-up visuals and every known horror cliché.’ It certainly didn’t end up being the serious and noteworthy film that Ian had hoped to make.
After Pulse, Ian’s acting résumé became a little sparse. He was still modelling, of course, and in early 2006 his agency DNA Models named him as one of their Top 10 Male Models. At the same time, he was also concentrating on real estate ventures and he bought himself a beautiful house in Malibu, where he could surf, take walks on the beach and generally get away from it all. ‘I have a beach house in Malibu, so I’ll go there, grab a surfboard or a sea kayak or whatever, and get outta here. The quality of life is so much higher any place you can ski in the morning and surf in the evening – there’s something to be said for that.’
He also decided to try a different challenge: theatre. In October, 2005, Ian joined the cast of the Off-Broadway production Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead, written by Bert V. Royal, which re-imagined the characters from the ‘Peanuts’ comic strip as teenagers. It was a smart, subversive, unauthorised parody that generated shock laughs and had a real message about teenage conformity and homophobia. Ian starred as Matt (if you’re familiar with the comic strips, then he played a grown-up Pigpen) alongside America Ferrera (Ugly Betty) and Eliza Dushku (Buffy the Vampire Slayer). He relished the challenge of live theatre, and although it was tough, he knew he had chosen a great role: ‘The play is so cleverly written and it yields eight really great roles for young actors. Trip Cullman, our director, is the young theatre director to work with in NY. All of these elements including a magnificent cast are all the elements that will hopefully make this play great…’ he wrote on his website. But it didn’t help that he got really sick during the show’s run: ‘I was sick for 16 shows. Two straight weeks, I was deathly ill. And I ate a bag of Ricola [herbal cough drops from Switzerland] per show. ONE BAG.’
He was still exploring, too, and travelling, as getting to know other cultures and experience other ways of life was proving to be a real passion. It’s what attracted him to the Hallmark-produced television movie Marco Polo – The Discovery of the World (2007), in which he was cast as the famous thirteenth-century Venetian explorer himself, who sets off on a landmark journey to China. The film was shot entirely on location in Hengdian World Studios in China, a five-hour drive from Shanghai and just two hours from Hangzhou (renowned as one of the most beautiful places in the world), where the real Marco Polo spent 17 years working for the Emperor Kublai Khan. Ian flew out to China and spent a few of the hottest months of the year there, from June to August of 2006. ‘Places call you,’ observed Ian to USA Today. ‘Usually the Virgin Islands call people. China was calling me … China is this place that had been closed off to Americans like forever. I remember as a kid growing up in the ’80s you always heard, “Russia and China, you’ve got to be careful.” Then you get there and there are these really peaceful people. Shanghai is one of my favourite cities. It blew my mind how beautiful this place is.’
The experience did almost kill him though! The temperatures soared past 38°C every day, and the cast ended up with severe sunburns and heat exhaustion. ‘The humidity was worse than in India,’ said Ian to Bend Weekly magazine. ‘I lost 20 pounds in 8 weeks. I’d recommend going there in late spring, early fall, unless you want to lose some weight.’
As a backpacker and someone who loved adventure, Marco Polo’s spirit really appealed to him: ‘This guy of Anglo-Saxon descent walking through places like Afghanistan, it’s a surprise that he didn’t get killed in his first month. But the thing is, you always know what he did and what he saw, but you never know how he felt about it. He never talked about himself or his feelings, and he never judged anyone, which I think is pretty incredible.’
Ian was a gracious American in a foreign land, and he took the time to get to know some of his Asian colleagues – some of whom were working with an American film crew for the first time. One such actor, Kee Thuan Chye from Penang, Malaysia, played the role of chief mapmaker to Kublai Khan in the film. Kee’s children (who were big Lost fans) were incredibly excited when they found out that their dad was getting to work with Ian. Kee spoke highly of Ian’s generosity to The Star newspaper (a Malaysian English-language publication): ‘I told Ian I couldn’t go home without his autograph [for my children] and he was very pleased to write a personal and lengthy one for them.’ It’s these sorts of kind-hearted acts which demonstrate why Ian is held in such high regard in the acting world – Ian is no diva!
While he was getting to see more of the world, the world in turn was about to see a lot more of him. Tell Me You Love Me was an HBO drama that ran from September 2007 to July 2008, and revolved around three couples with intimacy issues. Variety described it as follows: ‘…makes Sex and the City look like a Saturday morning cartoon.’ It must have been pretty steamy then! Ian was a guest star on six episodes, including one in which he gets completely naked. He described the show as: ‘sexually graphic, but not gratuitous… It’s definitely not what you want your girlfriend’s parents watching.’Yet despite all the sexy scenes, the show never really found its audience and it was subsequently cancelled early into the second season.
Apart from a few other parts in TV movies such as Lost City Raiders and The Tournament, Ian’s career appeared to be on a bit of a downward spiral. The problem was simple: he had gotten cocky. ‘After Lost, I thought I was so cool. I had everything fucking totally thought out and together. And I said, “You know what? I wanna go do independent movies – I want to go to New York, I want to do theatre, I want to travel.” And that’s exactly what I did: I fell off the face of the fucking planet. I thought I was being cool and edgy, and it seemed like something Johnny Depp would have done fifteen years ago. Wrong. Biggest mistake. Except for the fact that I got to grow and be humbled and get my ass kicked,’ he told Nylon magazine.
Of course what he needed was a part with bite to truly make his own. Suddenly, a vampire show came onto his radar with a choice role that he really, really wanted. But it wasn’t The Vampire Diaries…
Damon: It’s not like we all hang out together at the vamp bar and grill. (1.11, ‘Bloodlines’)
Vampires had always held a special sway over Ian. For him, they weren’t just a scary childhood bedtime story, though – his fascination with the undead continued well into adulthood. ‘I was so obsessed with The Lost Boys,’ said Ian. ‘Really one of my favourite vampire movies is Shadow of a Vampire because it was just so not this romanticised, physical, sensual beautiful thing; it was really what I always imagined vampires to be. In that film, you almost feel like what it would be like to be cold and death.’ It was also the actors playing the vampires who fascinated him: ‘Willem Dafoe is on another planet as far as how talented he is.’
Being from New Orleans, of course, helped: ‘There’s a lot of vampire mystique and mythology that resonates [in New Orleans], and I was fascinated by it. I always wanted to play one.’ His mother, Edna, used to keep an Anne Rice book by her bedside for a little night-time reading – vampire worship must run in the family!
And then along came HBO’s True Blood, based on the Sookie Stackhouse series of novels by Charlaine Harris. It was a massive show with a big cast and an ambitious, racy script with a new take on the vampire myth: what if a blood substitute was created that enabled vampires to come out into the open? Would they be accepted into society? It looked set to be fun, sexy and a massive hit, with HBO throwing huge sums behind the show and into the marketing and publicity – even going as far as to sell the drink ‘Tru Blood’ in vending machines across the US. True Blood also had a cast of mostly little-known actors, with the exception of the female lead Sookie Stackhouse, who was played by Oscar-winning actress Anna Paquin (also well-known through her stints as Rogue in the X-Men trilogy). The principal male actors, Stephen Moyer (who played the main vampire, Bill Compton) and Ryan Kwanten (Jason Stackhouse) would go on to receive a massive boost