As the Pushing Daisies alum embarks on his two most high-profile projects to date — AMC’s Halt and Catch Fire and Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy — he refuses to compromise his privacy for viewers’ curiosity.
AMC
Lee Pace is, by his own design, an enigma. Despite appearing in two of the decade's biggest film franchises — The Hobbit and The Twilight Saga — the 35-year-old actor continues to exist amid an aura of mystery, with little known about his life before starring in two critically adored television shows, Wonderfalls and Pushing Daisies (both from creator Bryan Fuller), and his stunning turn in Showtime's 2003 biopic Soldier's Girl, in which he played trans woman Calpernia Addams.
Sitting on the secluded patio of The Four Seasons Hotel's Windows Lounge in Los Angeles, Pace's movie idol good looks are partially hidden behind an unkempt beard and a messy nest of hair, a mask of sort that makes the actor seem even more inscrutable. And he relishes a life far outside of the spotlight, even recently buying 10 acres of land in Upstate New York (tractor included). "I'm trying to be a farmer right now," he says, that beard suddenly seeming perfectly in character. "I've been wanting a tractor for such a long time, and I finally bought this one," he says, grinning and showing off photos with the fervor of a new parent.
Pace's career has zigzagged from indie dramas (A Single Man) to romantic comedies (Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day), and from Oscar contenders (Lincoln) to television period dramas (AMC's Halt and Catch Fire, which launches June 1). But there's still very little information about the actor online — and that's exactly how Pace wants it.
"When you play the king of elves and alien warlords, little me is very uninteresting," says Pace, with a dismissive shrug. "But, at the same time, actors feel this obligation to be transparent, and I truly don't understand the point."
Pace continues, arms flitting back and forth, illustrating every question. "Then it gets into a whole cycle of, Do you like me? Do you like me if I wear this to this premiere? Do you like me if I'm in this magazine? Do you like me if I date this person? Then will you like me? Then will you give me approval? Then will you buy a ticket? I want people to buy a ticket because they're interested in the character and interested in the work and interested in the story."
That predisposition for privacy has fueled endless rumors about Pace's personal life, speculation he dismisses as inherently disruptive to the very reason audiences are attracted to him in the first place. "Who cares about people's personal lives?" says Pace. "I mean, honestly. How are you then able to disappear into a role? Trust me, if I had something interesting to say about myself, I would."
Pace as Calpernia Addams in 2003's Soldier's Girl.
Bachrach/Gottlieb Productions
Those clamoring for details about his life should look no further than his body of work: "To be honest, the characters I play are revealing enough." Case in point: the aforementioned Soldier's Girl, in which Pace played trans soldier Calpernia Addams, who inspired a formal review of Don't Ask, Don't Tell after her lover, Barry Winchell, was murdered in 1999. "I was shocked at how much I saw myself in that character," Pace says. "I worked on transforming myself so much for that role so I assumed I wouldn't recognize myself, but I saw so much more of myself in Calpernia than I ever anticipated. So, I'm already revealing more of myself than I'm comfortable with."
In an era where stars' private lives are fodder for tabloid consumption or soapy reality exploits, Pace's decision to focus on the work allows the audience to be completely immersed in his characters' rich inner lives. Maybe part of that has to do with the fact that the Julliard-trained Pace had the ability to reinvent himself constantly as a child — born in Oklahoma, Pace's life was uprooted to Saudi Arabia when he was around 5 years old (a result of his father's job in the oil industry), before he returned to the U.S. and eventually settled in Texas as a teenager.
That gift of reinvention (or compartmentalization?) carries over into Pace's new 1980s-set AMC drama, Halt and Catch Fire, where he plays Joe McMillan, a brilliant but damaged tech visionary who recruits burnt-out family man Gordon Clark (Argo's Scoot McNairy) and caustic prodigy Cameron Howe (That Awkward Moment's Mackenzie Davis) to reverse-engineer an IBM computer.
Despite Joe's potentially polarizing nature, the show's creators, Chris Rogers and Chris Cantwell, insist that finding someone as charismatic as Pace wasn't a requirement. "While I wouldn't say that we were explicitly searching for someone with 'likability,' it was important to us that we find an actor with a lot of charisma and emotional nuance to play Joe," says Rogers.
Cantwell agrees: "Lee brings a tremendous humanity to the role. In the hands of someone less capable, Joe could easily come across as a sociopathic monster early on in the series. Lee can deftly wield a shark-like persona when needed, but with him we get almost immediately that there is something brewing below the surface."
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