Source:       Movieline
Issue:           February  2001
Page:          18

January 20, 2001

StephanJenkins

Stephan Jenkins is the lead singer of Third Eye Blind, a band whose debut album went platinum as astonishing four times, so playing a raucous rocker - opposite Mark Wahlberg and Jennifer Aniston - in a movie titled Rock Star shouldn't be much of a stretch.  Coproduced by George Clooney and based on a true story about Judas Priest in a New York Times article, Rock Star is the tale of an ordinary salesman (Whalberg) who plays in a tribute band when suddenly he's asked to become the lead vocalist of the real band; Jenkins is the leader of a rival cover band.  While Rock Star will be his big-screen debut, Hollywood itself is familiar terrain for Jenkins, thanks to his publicly tumultuous, on-again/off-again relationship with Charlize Theron (which, on the day that we speak, appears off.)

Q:  How did you end up in Rock Star?
A: Mark is really why I'm in the movie.  He and I became friends, and he told me he was doing this movie and he wanted me to costar.  I hadn't done a movie before, but just seeing me play live - I thin k people are either actors or they're not.

Q:  Are you an actor?
A: I think so.  In the sense that I'm always animated in situations I'm in and i have a sense of theatre in me.  Animating situations in order to communicate with people is something you do when you're five or six - And I've always done it.

Q:  Do you live the glamorous life?
A:  Yes.  But how are you defining it?

Q:  You're in magazine and on TV and you can get into any party you want.
A: I don't live there.  I'm really comfortable being a rock star, but I'm also comfortable not being a rock star.  I think it's very important to be grounded.

Q:  Are you and Charlize still a couple?
A: [No response]

Q:  Well...are you?
A: [No response]

Q:  Hmmm.  I guess that covers Charlize.  So, which actors in Hollywood do you admire?
A: Malkovich, De Niro, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Cate Blanchett.  Also that Charlize Theron.  I hear good things about her.  I think she's really talented.

Q:  Will you pursue a profession beyond this?
A:  I just wouldn't have the audacity to tell you I really deeply want to act and that I want to do things that people have never seen before.  And I want to make the grandest gestures and smallest nuances.  I would never tell you that there's pain and hope and ache in my life that I wanna funnel through characters.  I would never admit to that, if you know what i'm saying.  That would be too much.

-Dominic Griffin