Your favorite Dead Poet's alive and very well.

"I can get recognized if I choose to," - claims RSL. "Really. I've studied this. Say you see a girl. You look her right in the eye and she'll stop." The handsome actor pauses and smiles slyly. "Of course, what happens next is entirely up to you."

Sitting across from the actor, best known for his work in 1989's Dead Poets Society (in which he plays the aspiring actor turned... well, dead poet), it's easy to see, why Leonard so adept at stopping people in their tracks. Okay, so he may not be mob-scene material right now, but give him time. In a few short months, Leonard'll be wearing shades and begging off autograph hounds with the best of them.

This fall, Leonard is returning to the big screen in a big way in Mr. and Mrs. Bridge (starring as the headstrong son of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward), and in next year's Married to it (with Mary Stuart Masterson and Cybill Shepherd). "Yeah," he kids, "I'm just a twenty-year-old brat, as famous as can be".

It was only a few short years ago Leonard was a "little runt" helping out at a community theater in his hometown of Ridgewood, New Jersey. At fourteen, he found himself on Broadway and in some forgettable films with unforgettable titles (like the classic My Best Friends is a Vampire). His big break came two years ago when director Peter Weir decided to cast a bunch of unknown actors in the extremely popular Dead Poets Society.

The critical acclaim wasn't hard to handle. What didn't come quite as easily to Leonard was giving interviews. "You know what the two must dreaded wards in the English language are?" he asks, not really expecting an answer. "Amusing anecdotes." In other words, we won't see Leonard woofing it up with Arsenio or trading stupid pet tricks with Dave anytime soon. "Yeah, talk shows would be definitely weird," he says. "It's like you're going to sit in that chair and be entertaining or David Letterman will make fun of you. That's the whole point, right? You get made fun of and then go home."

So what makes Leonard's top ten list things to talk about? Acting. Acting. And more acting. And he becomes really animated when the topic turns to Mr. and Mrs. Bridge, a film he is passionate about. "it's essentially a movie about not communicating," he explains. "about a father and son who don't connect. But it's also about a celebration of life, of the miracle of another person just being there. I poured my soul in to it."

What was it like working with Paul Newman? “He terrified me when I was first met him," admits Leonard. "He's a really serious and has a very, very dry sense of humor. You're never sure when he's kidding. Like once while we were on location in Kansas City I went to see Sex, lies and videotapes*. On my way out of the theater I saw him [Newman] sitting in the back row with a baseball cap pulled over his eyes. He looked up at me and said, "Next time I catch you at a movie like this, I'll skin you alive."

Now that's an amusing anecdote. Letterman would love it.

Barbara Stepko.
Seventeen - November 1990
* - Секс, ложь и видео