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Leading Man Actor Alex Burns will not be left out of the genealogy.

Photography Toni Torres

Alex Burns walks into the caf, one hand on his head, looking skeptical. I can see immediately that this wontdo. I wave him down and his face brightens. He sits down in the booth next to me for a minute, then points to one of the patrons. Okay, that guy is sitting on a couch, drinking coffee, and reading. Its 9 pm! He suggests we get out of there. We head down the street to a different corner bistro, and on the way we fall in to talking about the Burns family history. My maternal grandmother just finished our genealogy, he says. I should have brought it to show you. How considerate. The Millspaugh genealogy is, as it turns out, a bit complicated. Its not exactlycomplete. My grandmother spent most of the past 20 years re-searching the German side of the familyunfortunately, she saw fit to leave out anybody remotely undesirable. So, any of my family members who had ever been to jail, anyone that she deemed a miscreant of any ilk got left out of the genealogy altogether. In fact, it is later revealed that the Millspaugh matriarch understands her bloodline to be hopelessly contaminated. Right after she published the genealogy, she had this family reunion in Ponte Vedra, Florida, in the middle of July. Ponte Vedra is near Jacksonvilleits not pleasant in July. So, we all go down there, and at the big dinner, she presents to all of the descendants of the Millspaugh family a framed artists rendition of the family crest. However, she only presented

it as far down the family tree as her own children, because by the time the grandchildren had been born, the Mill-spaugh blood had been diluted to a point where she didnt consider us Millspaughs, really at all, anymore. Young Alex, about 17 at the time, decided to take it upon himself to stand up for the slighted cousins. That wasnt looked upon too kindly by my grandparents generation. But, ul-timately I did get my own copy of the Millspaugh family crest, which hangs on my wall to this day. In Burnss acting career, this pursuit of what he believes is right for him (demonstrated early on under threat of diminished lineage) has helped bridge the qualification gap from struggling to emerging (and on the road to accomplished) actor. This fall Burns takes the lead with a starring role in Sordid Things, a drama by first time director Andrew Bloomenthal, as well as having small role in The Girl in the Park, directed by David Auburn (Proof, The Lake House). Of course, on the journey of an auteur, a healthy ego also helps. The highs of landing bit parts in Thirteen Conversations About One Thing, Van Wilder, and Garden State balance out such times as when, at the begin-ning of his career, the new sitcom he was to star in was dropped a week after he relocated to Los Angeles. Burns remains philosophical about the process. I think if the first thing I had ever done had gone on to become wildly successful, it would have engendered an even grander sense of entitlement than I already possess,

Photography Toni TorresStyling Allan Kennedy

with sprinkles of megalomania. I mean, in the background noise I already hear people screaming my name, so you can imagine if that were actually true to even a tiny extent, how out of hand everything would have gotten. I am trying to get to a place where I can be humble but can also be very confident.

Growing up, it was perhaps a struggle with humility, among other things, that led to Burnss tour of various boarding schools in his parents native Massachusettsthe Eagle Brook School for Boys, and Andover (where it was politely suggested he take a medical leave of absence after his first year there). Upon completion of his senior year of high school back in New York where he was born and raised, Burns again returned to the Bay State for a year at Northeastern University. Everyone was a jock, he laments, explaining why he left after his freshman year. He muses that he could have faced a similar fate had he been raised in Boston instead of Brooklyn Heights. Id be a beer-guzzling frat boy, you know what I mean? Or a State Trooper. Theres definitely a part of me that identifies with authoritarianism, and I could totally see myself in the field of law enforcement or the military. Thank God Im too old for all that at this point. I mention that theres no threat of him getting drafted, and his answer is surprising. No, what I mean is that Im too old to enlist at this point. Every once in awhile, whenever Im feeling overwhelmed with the career choices that Ive made in my life, when I feel like Im not getting anywhere, or Im certainly not getting there fast enoughI immediately think, I should give it all up and enlist in the Marines. It seems a rather extreme antidote to restlessness, and when thats pointed out to him, he answers, a bit tongue-in-cheek, Well, Im extreme in nature. Its all or nothing, a lot of the time. I ask if the thought of military service has crossed his mind recently, and half-joking, he says he thinks about it almost every day. Burns is, as he puts it, staring down the barrel at 30, and has of late given in to some serious reflection. This is due in part to changes in his life that he will only hint at but that seem to have given him pause over the past few months.

"Dont get me wrong. I love my life, I love what I do, Im very happy with the moderate success that I have had up to this point. But at the same time I think that when I started acting, I was 19, and I had this boundless naive optimism that was fueled by ignorance. I often wonder: if I had any idea what I was getting myself into, would I have

stuck around this long? Because now at this point I look at my life and I think, Shit, all my fucking eggs are in this one basket. While many of his high school friends went on to Ivy League schools and six-figure salaries, after his freshman year of college, a friend offered Burns $1,000 to do a photo shoot, which led to a modeling career. I spent the next three or four years traveling all over the worldI lived in Milan, Paris, I went to Japanand lived off some-one elses dime, essentially.

Burns is tall, his good looks emphasized by his charm, and anyone in his company is especially rewarded when he cracks a smilewhich is rare: he is a deadpan comic. In fact, news of his past modeling career might surprise any-one whos gotten to know him a bit. Okay, the conversa-tion wasnt great a lot of the time, he cracks, But, that led me into actingand I did actually audition for Zoolander. At the time of the audition, Burns had yet to do a feature film, and his rsum consisted of one credit, which his then-agent had seen fit to print up in six-point type on the back of his headshot. For the entire audition, Ben Stiller just made fun of the fact that I had nothing on my rsum, yet you needed a microscope to read what it was. Ive had a lot of auditions, but there are a couple standouts for how off the rails they went. How pear-shaped they went. Ul-timately I thought that, because I had male modeling expe-rience and Ben Stiller made fun of my rsum, I should automatically be in the movie, but no. Not so. No love for the kid. With two films coming out this fall, Hollywood seems to be showing Alex Burns a little more love, and I suspect his future looks far less pear-shaped. When asked if his family was proud of him, he admits they are all very supportive, though perhaps given to speculation about when he is go-ing to get a real job. Most everyone else in my family is like a bean-counter, at least, theyre all kind of white collar business people. He pauses. And if there were any blue-collar, they all got left out of the genealogy.

Jess Holl