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Scientology's Influence

By James Mottram Empire Online 2000

It's going to be a red-hot summer for Giovanni Ribisi Already acclaimed for his parts in Saving Private Ryan and Tom Hanks' That Thing You Do!, rising star Giovanni Ribisi looks set this Summer to fulfill his potential and impress his name on crowds of movie-goers. Having ridden such flops as The Mod Squad and The Other Sister, which he made with old friend Juliette Lewis, the 25 year-old actor can be seen in a glut of high-profile pictures over the coming months. Starring alongside Ben Affleck and Private Ryan co-star Vin Diesel, Ribisi takes the lead in this week's Boiler Room, first-timer Ben Younger's stocks'n'shares drama. Ribisi's vocal talents, meanwhile, can soon be heard narrating Sofia Coppola's highly-anticipated directorial debut, The Virgin Suicides. But for Ribisi - touted last year by Vanity Fair in their annual Hollywood issue as one to watch - the film that is likely to send him skyward is Jerry Bruckheimer's car-theft blockbuster Gone In Sixty Seconds, which opens in the UK in early August.

"There's a lot of action, a lot of car chases, and a lot of great cars in it," he revealed. "For me, the movie is more about the relationship between the two brothers [played by him and Nic Cage]. That's basically my job. We got a stuntman to do the action. There were certain parts where I got to drive through a dealership window and onto Wiltshire Boulevard. That was pretty crazy. I was in an $80,000 Porsche and I bottled out the radiator. I kinda felt a little bad about that, but, hey, what can you do?"