Oliver James is what a girl wants in What A Girl Wants, the Amanda Bynes movie opening Friday.
The young actor plays Ian, a British musician who helps guide Daphne (Ms. Bynes), an American teenager, as she searches London for the father she never met.
It's a low-key, down-to-earth and thoroughly engaging performance, all the more impressive for being Mr. James' film debut.
"I got into acting by mistake," Mr. James, 22, says with a smile in his room at the Crescent Court Hotel during a visit to promote the movie. "I was normal until I was 17."
The "mistake" was a girlfriend who was going to dance school. He applied to a drama school to be near her. The relationship didn't work out, but acting did. He liked it so much he gave up his previous ambition: becoming a race car driver.
The producers of What A Girl Wants offered him an audition based on his picture. And then they called him back to audition again. And again. And again. Two days before his June 1 birthday, he learned he was going to make his film debut.
He was even more startled to discover that he was to perform not only with Amanda Bynes (the teen star of Nickelodeon's The Amanda Show and All That), but with British stage legends Colin Firth (as Daphne's father), Eileen Atkins (as Daphne's grandmother) and Jonathan Pryce (as Daphne's father's adviser).
His very first scene was with Mr. Firth (best known here for the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice and for Bridget Jones's Diary with Renée Zellweger). But Mr. Firth put him at ease right away.
"The World Cup was going on when we were filming and I didn't have a TV in my trailer, so Colin called me in to watch soccer with him. He is very approachable and keen to help – even more charming off screen than on."
From:// The Dallas Morning News
Date:// April 1, 2003
Article By:// Nancy Churnin