Ryan Phillippe (Actor)

Ryan Phillippe was born on September 10, 1974 in New Castle, Delaware, to Susan (Thomas), a nurse, and Richard Phillippe, a chemical technician. He has three sisters, Kirsten, Lindsay, and Katelyn, and attended New Castle Baptist Academy. Ryan's acting career began with the soap opera One Life to Live (1968). It was no small role. His character, Billy Douglas, was US daytime television's first gay teenager. Billy struggled with coming out issues and the town's anti-gay reactions. After several other television appearances and he began appearing in movies of his own, Nowhere (1997), White Squall (1996) I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997), Cruel Intentions (1999), Crash (2005), Flags of Our Fathers (2006), and Stop-Loss (2008). Born in Newcastle, Delaware, his father, Richard was a chemist for Dupont and his mother used their home as a children's day centre . he had 3 sisters , 1 older and 2 younger. He met Reese Witherspoon in 1997 at her 21st birthday party and they were together 7 years during which time they had a daughter Ava born in 2000 and son Deacon born 2004. It was seeing Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke that opened his eyes to acting and the thought that he might be an actor. At 15 while getting his hair cut that a woman said to his mother that she had a friend in Philadelphia who had an agency and would very likely be interested in taking him on her book because of how he looked, Within months he was cast in tv commercials then after an audition in New York he got an offer to play a gay teenager in the day time soap One Life to Live in 1992 which lasted a year. He then moved to Los Angeles where got his first break when he was cast as a crew member in White Squall in 1996. Black belt in Tae Kwon Do.

• Turned down the role of Anakin Skywalker, because of the age difference between Natalie Portman and himself.

• Son, Deacon Reese, was named for his distant relative, Charles Louis "Deacon" Phillipe, who pitched and won the first World Series game ever, in 1903, beating Cy Young, as well as for Hall of Fame football player