‘Lost World’ Actor Leaping Into Stardom

Hollywood is littered with unlikely success stories, but every once in a while comes one that catches the entire industry’s attention.

That honor is currently held by Vince Vaughn, the virtually unknown actor first seen in last fall’s guys-on-the-prowl comedy “Swingers” and who now co-stars in “The Lost World: Jurassic Park.”

The leap from starving artist to big-time player happened faster than usual for the 27-year-old Vaughn, whose lanky 6-foot-4 frame and ordinary-Joe looks don’t exactly scream movie star.

But there’s something about Vaughn that has made casting agents rethink what they look for in a leading man. In a recent interview, “Lost World” director Steven Spielberg described Vaughn as “a new movie star, an American icon-to-be you only find once every six or seven years.” It’s an endorsement any up-and-comer would die for.

Vaughn smiles sheepishly when asked about that quote. “I’ve heard he said that,” he says. “I’m totally flattered…. Of course, he’s obviously an American icon already. But the school’s still out on me.”

He’s right: We still haven’t seen what Vaughn is really capable of doing. In “Swingers,” the comedy made with his other out-of-work actor friends for a measly $250,000, Vaughn admits he simply played an exaggerated version of himself: a fast-talking witster, who had a way with the girls and spent most of his free time tooling around with his unemployed pals. In “The Lost World,” he plays an ecology-minded photographer and must take a back seat to the dinosaurs - just like every other human in the cast.

But you’ll be seeing a lot more of Vaughn soon, and these next few roles will reveal whether the hype is warranted. In “The Locusts,” due in the fall, Vaughn plays a drifter in 1960s rural Kansas who causes trouble for Kate Capshaw and Ashley Judd. Vaughn is now shooting “The Clay Pigeon,” a comedy about a serial killer, then comes the drama, “A Cool Dry Place,” in which he plays an attorney whose wife leaves him.

Vaughn first became interested in acting growing up the Chicago suburb of Lake Forest. “My dad loved Westerns fanatically. He used to watch them with me when I was young, and he’d say to me, ‘Now see, I don’t believe him, Vince. He don’t carry himself right.’ He’d point out stuff like that, so I started watching and observing that way.”

Vaughn dabbled in community theater after an automobile accident kept him from pursuing high school athletics.

After high school, he started performing in Chicago with an improvisational troupe, which led to landing an agent, which led to a couple of national TV commercials. Confident, Vaughn moved to L.A., figuring he was ready to start in movies.

Then came the dry spell. For the next seven years, Vaughn worked sporadically, coming close to landing parts in movies like “Dazed and Confused.”

“I went through an entire year where I didn’t work at all. But I had made a commitment to act - I didn’t go to college - and so I figured I had to stick it out.”

He dabbled in standup comedy. Finally, disgusted with rejection, Vaughn teamed up with his equally broke friend Jon Favreau to co-star in “Swingers.”

“When I did ‘Swingers,”’ he said, “I was so happy, because that was all I ever wanted to do: Tell a story with your friends. We were like kids with a video camera, just screwing around, like when you do it with your friends, playing a gangster, doing a ‘Godfather’ thing.”

Director Doug Lyman sent a copy of the film to Spielberg, hoping the director would grant permission to use a few bars of the “Jaws” theme music in one scene. Spielberg said OK - and he also rang Vaughn’s agent to request a meeting with the actor. “My agent calls and says, ‘Steven Spielberg wants to meet with you,”’ Vaughn says. And I go ‘Yawn, yawn, yawn. I’ve heard it before…. I was totally flattered, of course.”

Vaughn says he bonded nicely with the director on the set of “The Lost World.” “We’d play Sega games, because he does the Sega Gameworks s—t, and I like video games, so he’d be like, ‘Hey Vince, come on!’ and he’d take me on his golf cart, and we’d drive to the Sega thing.”

But aside from Spielberg’s friendship, Vaughn knows the value of appearing in “The Lost World” is that it makes him a valuable commodity in securing financing for the smaller, quirkier movies he yearns to make.

“The same performance I gave in ‘Swingers’ kept me out of a ton of movies,” he says. “They want you to be easily understood, they want what’s easy to accept, and I’ve always liked the off-center stuff. I’m not your traditional leading man, and I don’t like things played that way. To finally have a chance to do these movies is all I want to do right now.”