Actor Alan Ruck, 29, worried some about portraying 17-year-old Cameron Frye, the rich, unhappy, unpopular best friend of the title character in
”Ferris Bueller`s Day Off.”
Then he decided that, for a guy like Cameron, who spends the movie in a state of panic over his friend`s exploits and nursing a death-grip case of the flu, it didn`t make that much difference.
”I worried about that a lot–but then I thought, the hell with it,”
Ruck said, sounding as timid and uncertain as the character he portrays. He was in Princeton, N.J., where he is rehearsing a play.
”I was worried that I`d be 10 years out of step, and I wouldn`t know anything about what was cool, what was hip, all that junk.
”But when I was going to high school, I didn`t know any of that stuff then, either. So I just thought, well, hell–I`ll just be me. The character, he`s such a loner that he really wouldn`t give a damn about that stuff anyway. He`d feel guilty that he didn`t know it, but that`s it.”
Ruck, who lives in New York with his wife, actress Claudia Stefany, was not surprised to find himself cast young. ”No, because, really, when I was 18, I sort of looked 12,” he said. ”Maybe it`s a genetic imbalance.”
It was suggested that his youthful looks might be to his advantage during Hollywood`s obsession with the teenager. ”Now watch–it will die out,” said Ruck.
Director John Hughes has been quoted as saying that he identified more closely with Cameron than with the suave, smooth Ferris Bueller (Matthew Broderick), who outwits all the adults in his life with enviable ease. Ruck thinks others also will feel a kinship with Cameron.
”There aren`t too many people like Ferris, who can really cut loose, just do all the impulsive stuff,” he said. ”I don`t think there are that many. Which is why people like that are celebrated–they`ve got a lot of chutzpah.”
Ruck, who is not particularly easy to put at ease, said he felt comfortable working with Hughes. ”John`s funny, you know–it`s almost like having a stand-up comic for a director,” he said. ”When we`d be on the set and somebody would make a joke, he`d pick up on it and expand on it, and almost make it into a scene. He`s very quick, very bright.
”What I think he does very well is, he doesn`t talk down to kids in his scripts. (Their lives) are not treated like Andy Hardy. Maybe he condescends to the parents, but I don`t think it`s done maliciously.
”(High school) is just something that he really has a feel for. It was a time in his life when he was very vulnerable. And since then, for some reason, he`s been possessed by it, or obsessed by it, and he just has a really good ear for the way kids talk.”
Ruck apologized for the blandness of his success story.
”I grew up in Cleveland and started doing plays in high school,” he said. ”And I went to the University of Illinois, and I majored in drama. And after school, I went up to Chicago, because I didn`t really know anybody in New York or Los Angeles, and I knew people who were doing plays in Chicago.
”So I went up there, and I knocked around a little bit. And I guess about a year after I was out of school, I got my first job. And, I don`t know . . . what does my bio say?”
Ruck`s studio biography traces his career in a less effacing manner. He made his Broadway debut in 1985 in Neil Simon`s ”Biloxi Blues” with
”Ferris” co-star Broderick. Along with work at some of the country`s most notable regional theaters, including Wisdom Bridge Theatre in Chicago, Ruck`s credits include the films ”Class” and ”Hard Knocks” and some television films.
He came to Hughes` attention when he read for the part of Bender, the tough kid in ”The Breakfast Club.” The role went to Judd Nelson, but Hughes remembered Ruck.
Ruck hopes to make more movies, but he doesn`t plan to move to Hollywood any time soon. ”I don`t think I want to live out there–it`s scary,” he confessed.
He also hopes casting directors will begin to realize his post-high school potential. ”I imagine I could get a job as a college kid, and move on from there,” he said, sounding somewhat skeptical. ”I`ll probably slowly creep up.”
Then he added, as Alan Ruck would, ”I`m sorry I didn`t have anything else to say.”
