Wes Bentley: Back for good... perhaps?

Does the Filipino audience still remember who Wes Bentley is?

He is the actor who in 1999 shot to Hollywood prominence with a star-making turn as a disturbed loner spending his days videotaping either his cheerleader-neighbor or a piece of airborne plastic supermarket bag in Sam Mendes’ Oscar-winning film American Beauty.

In 2002, at a time when he had the makings of a sensitive heartthrob akin to the likes of Matt Damon and Leonardo Di Caprio, Bentley did The Four Feathers with Heath Ledger (who was also breaking out) before he (Bentley) unceremoniously disappeared from movie screens and slipped away unnoticed, unmindful of what it might make of his promising career.

"I am an actor; I am not a movie star," he emphasizes. "I’ve been working here and there. American Beauty was so big and I knew that — to young actors, specially — people like to blow them out or actors like to overexpose themselves and you’re crazy-dumb before you know it. I was really aware of that, so I thought that the smart thing to do was to walk away and take smaller films."

The handsome Bentley, blue eyes and all, met with The Philippine STAR during the junket for Columbia Pictures’ comics action-thriller Ghost Rider in Culver City recently. He was sporting some day wear, which he describes as work wear, and carrying a sling bag as if he’s not an actor but one of the journalists.

"I didn’t really like the way business worked at times and there are times in my mind when I quit and took a couple of years’ break and someone argued that I took too long a break and lucky enough Mark (the director) offered me this break and this really brought me back."

Bentley returns to big league acting after a four-year hiatus that saw him traveling across the US and "at one point living in a farm." He had an emu, a goat, turkeys, horses. "I was doing that for about a year," he says. He also had to deal with some legal issues and stuff with his family and said he "was glad to have the space and time to do that."

But why risk giving up a career with limitless opportunities?

"It was just so much, so quick," he admits. "It wasn’t like I was being chased around the town or anything like that, but business-wise it was bad. I was 19 years old and you see what happens to kids like that — I was on the brink, but it was enough for me. I didn’t want that. I wanted to be 55 and playing characters that moved people, I don’t want to be Wes Bentley in this or that — and it was that close."

"People were changing roles," he reveals. "Like there are characters written for a 42-year-old yet they are coming to me for that role, and I was, ‘That’s not right!’ That’s bad news happening. That means I am becoming a product and I don’t want to be a product!"

But after saying this, he took out an action figure patterned after his character Blackheart in his bag. Everyone laughed at the apparent irony of the situation. Bentley seems to have finally embraced the commercial side of the business he’s in.

"I am 28 and I’ve had a lot of experience. I can handle everything now. Walking away was so great because I got to actually deal with real-life problems where I saw a lot of kids around my age, who are famous actors, and they are missing a huge chunk of something, which is life," he says proudly.

In Ghost Rider, Bentley plays the villainous Blackheart who, in trying to wrest control of hell from his devil father, confronts the Flaming Skull a.k.a. Ghost Rider for a list containing the souls of the most devious characters on earth.

"It’s a weird one because it’s complicated and totally not complicated for the same reason. There are no limits to what he can do," he says of his character. "That presents a problem when you’re a human being because you have so many limits so it’s hard to identify with how am I gonna show that and then at the same time that is easy because it’s, like, limitless; I can just use my imagination. I’ll just do it."

Bentley admits that unlike other actors, he doesn’t put much more than is required of the role towards developing his character. "It’s hard to describe what you do when you’re an actor. I don’t care how many actors get up and explain what they do, it’s just really a difficult thing to do to describe what you’re doing in the moment. No research done, no son of a devil I could really follow around for a day."

"I am not a method actor," he continues. "I don’t like the whole thing about method, and everyone’s got their thing. I am not knocking actors who do that, but I am not that guy. I do not see how you want to live like that character. I come home from work and I just drop everything. I do a scene and I switch it off. I joke around and I go home."

Bentley got married in 2001 and is based in Hollywood, where he is back — for good, perhaps.

Ghost Rider is now showing in theaters.