No! - Fehr
B.C.'s Brendan Fehr stays clear of sex, drugs and alcohol David Spaner, Staff
Reporter The Province

Brendan Fehr may resemble David Duchovny physically but in other ways he
appears more like . . . Pat Boone.

Even before Fehr left town to find TV stardom in The WB series Roswell, he
was drawing comparisons to The X-Files' Duchovny.

"I think I definitely bear a resemblance. I won't deny that," says the
22-year-old Fehr. "We both spent time in Vancouver and we're both kind of on
a sci-fi show."

That takes care of the Duchovny connection. The connection to Pat Boone --
the singer famous for his religious devotion to clean living -- arose when
Fehr recently told Movieline magazine that he didn't indulge in sex, drugs or
alcohol.

"That's just common sense to me," he says on the Los Angeles set of Roswell.
"To me, there's no point in doing any of those things. I think it's obviously
a healthier way to be. I'm not here to impress anyone with how I live my
life. I'm here to impress them with what I do on screen."

Ever been tempted?

"Not enough to try," he says. "I was curious what kind of drunk you would be
-- the horny kind, the violent kind or the funny kind. I can be horny on my
own and the other two we can leave up to everyone's imaginations."

- - -

Brendan Fehr is not your run of the mill movie star from Vancouver.

Besides being inordinately sober, he has never had the obsession with the
movies that other actors have. He was always more interested in sports,
although he says: "Every kid dreams of doing an action movie, driving a fast
car, getting the girl."

Born in New Westminster, Fehr grew up in Winnipeg, where he was raised by his
mom, a case manager at the Stony Mountain Correctional Institute. He came out
to Vancouver to attend a wedding in the summer of 1997.

"I was just putzing around," he admits.

At the urging of friends, he visited the Look Talent Agency looking for
modelling work and met his future manager, Jim Sheasgreen.

"He had just come back from lunch," says Fehr. "He took a look at me and for
whatever reason thought that I could be on television."

Fehr was dispatched to his first audition, for a small role on Breaker High.

"I went on it and totally I didn't know what to expect. It was just a
terrible audition. They liked the way I looked enough that they thought I
could slide through."

He had wanted to be a math teacher and planned to study education at the
University of Manitoba but instead decided to give acting in Vancouver a try
for a month.

"My mom flew down and we made the decision: 'If we're going to stay a month,
let's stay six.' I just started working."

And the jobs didn't let up. On TV, there were a couple of Millenniums, a
Night Man, movies of the week, commercials, a New Addams Family. At the
movies: Disturbing Behavior, Final Destination.

"I was averaging about a job a month."

- - -

"They're using their powers to try to stop someone from hurting them," a crew
member whispers to me during the shooting of Roswell episode No. 20.

Fehr and his companions have discovered a body in a morgue played by L.A.'s
creepy Sybil Brand Institute, an abandoned women's prison. A wind machine
blows back Fehr's hair and jean jacket as he raises a hand and hollers: "What
are you doing here?"

Roswell is an edgy series in which Fehr is a descendant of an alien who
arrived in 1947. That was the year the actual town of Roswell, N.M., was the
site of a reported landing that has long preoccupied UFO aficionados.

During a break in shooting, Fehr says his character "finds out about his past
and embraces his whole alienhood."

The last of 22 episodes will air May 22 on VTV (the show runs Mondays at 8
p.m.) and whether the series is renewed for next season won't be known before
mid-May.

Fehr's been living in the Hancock Park section of L.A., near Paramount
studios, where Roswell is shot.

"There's a lot of people here from Canada in general, especially from Toronto
and Vancouver."

When Fehr pines for Canada, however, he's not thinking about Toronto
streetlife or Vancouver scenery.

"I don't care if it (L.A.) is hot, cold, flat or mountainous,but it's nothing
like home -- which I consider actually Winnipeg. That's where a lot of my
family is. That's where my best friends are."

He says Winnipeg is not impressed by his newfound celebrity.

"I don't think they pay much attention to it, which is good . . . to them,
it's just one more thing to make fun of me, to laugh at."

As for the future, he's looking to do movies. But Fehr realizes show-biz is
no sure thing and he's as refreshingly open about his profession as he is
about his lifestyle.

"Some days, you wake up and you think you could go and clean up at the
Oscars. Other days, you wake up and think you'll never land another gig once
this is up. I may turn out to really suck beyond this character. I may be a
flavour of the month and my month might already be up.

"I'm looking forward to giving it a shot and see what happens."

When he won the Roswell role, he took it in stride, Canadian-
style.