Dallas Morning News (Feb '99) Paul Walker is the kind of guy who can describe his mother as "totally hot" without the slightest hint of Oedipal anxiety. The 25 year old actor, who has become a regular in Hollywood coming-of-age movies, also seems comfortable with his dad. "He's gassed about seeing me in the movies," he says. "He goes to the premieres and stuff and he sits there and looks at me on the screen and says to himself, 'I know you! You're my scruffy little boy! You're not like that at all!' My dad is totally fun." So much for the angst-ridden young actor. An analyst could go broke waiting for this guy to end up on the couch. Walker exudes health, youth and enthusiasm in two new flicks, "She's All That," which opened Friday, and "Varsity Blues," the No.1 box-office attraction for the last two weeks. But he's not at all impressed by the prospects of joining the "Tinseltown scene," preferring instead to spend his spare time surfing, camping, in Oregon, or snowboarding in Colorado, and Utah. "Some people say that you should go to all the parties, to the nightclubs, the Viper Room, and make contacts," he says. "And I look at them and say, 'You don't want to have contacts with those people.' Look at what happened to River Phoenix (who died in 1993 of a drug overdose outside the Viper Room). If you get caught up in that, it ruins you. Hollywood is garbage."

A few seconds later, however, he's wondering aloud to an interviewer at Dallas' Adolphus Hotel whether he should have said that. "It's the scene that's garbage, not Hollywood, " he clarifies. "The best thing I could do for my career is to stay away from that scene as much as possible, to keep working on my acting." "I'm not ready for a leading man role yet anyway. I don't want the pressure of all those millions of dollars riding on my performance. I'm more comfortable in the back seat right now." It's the kind of comment you might expect from the wide-eyed ne'er-do-well in last year's 'Meet The Deedles', one of Walker's first big roles. And it fits the actor's easygoing, likable portrayal of the West Texas quarterback in 'Varsity Blues,' who befriends the second string rebel, James Van Der Beek (of T.V's "Dawson's Creek"). But such humility is a far cry from Walker's latest on-screen incarnation. In 'She's All That,' he's hateful and conniving - the student who tries to break up budding romance between a once-homely girl, Rachel Leigh Cook, and the highschool stud, Freddie Prinze Jr. (He and Prinze became buds during the shoot). "I wanted to try a different kind of role," Walker says of his character, Dean, in "She's All That'. "I wanted to be the bad guy. I don't want to fall into the teen-idol trap. That's my biggest fear, man. I want to do other stuff, to build up credits, maybe even eventually produce a picture."

Although Walker grew up in California's San Fernando Valley, he says, he and his high school were nothing like the school in the movie. "At least that's what I thought when I read the script. But I was talking to some of my buddies later, and I said I didn't remember having all those cliques in high school, and they said I was totally oblivious, that I was wrong, that there were big time cliques. And maybe they're right." Still, Walker chalks up his obliviousness to being a happy kid in a happy family. "I guess I was popular," he says. "I was involved in sports a lot, and I dated a cheerleader. But I hung out with all sorts of people. I hung out with the nerds too. I liked to play guitar." After graduating from high school, Walker says, he attended "nearly every community college in Southern California" for about two years, until fledgling interest in marine biology collided with the upper level demands of physics and other sciences. "So I dropped out and decided to live large," he says with a laugh. "I bummed around, went surfing a lot and ran up $35,000 in credit card debt. That's when I decided I needed a job." Luckily, he had his California surfer looks - and a familiarity with show business - to fall back on. "When I was a baby, I did Pampers commercials," he says. "My mom and dad never pushed me into acting. But since my mom was a model in L.A., she had contacts and stuff, and she kept getting told that she should try to get me in commercials, so she finally relented. My parents were totally cool about it. He got more acting experience in high school, he says, when he made guest appearances in 1984 in 'Charles in Charge.' 'Highway to Heaven' and 'Who's the Boss?'

But his decision to make a career out of acting didn't come until he experienced the financial difficulties of "living large". "So I got a manager and an agent to help me. They've been great. Within a month, I had a role in 'Pleasantville,'" as Skip, the friend of Reese Witherspoon. So far, he says it's been a blast, especially when he was on the set of 'Varsity Blues' near Austin. He and co-star Scott Caan (Tweeder, the naked cowboy) rented a two room condo during the shoot, "and half the football team and the cheerleaders ended up crashing on our floor. It was the most fun I've had yet doing a movie." Lately, he says, he's been doing a lot of publicity tours. "It can be a little weird," he says, "especially doing all of these interviews with reporters, the cynical ones from New York, where they complain about the timing of the interview and all the work they have to do. They're not there just to talk to you as a performer. They're there to criticize you, too, and judge you as a person. And that's a little hard to get used to. But, yeah, you want them to like you, so you try to get along. Everyone wants to be liked." As for the future, Walker says, he's relatively carefree. "My friends call me 'Vagrant.' I live out of my car. My closet is in the trunk, all arranged and everything, and I just crash at my friends house when I need to." Next up is the Sundance Film Festival in Utah he says, "I've bought a new snowboard and stuff and I hear it's snowing there. I'll see a few movies. I have a few friends who are doing some films. But I'm gonna to play during the days. It's gonna be so cool"

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