Elle
By Candice Bauney
April 2008
 
Lee Pace jump-started his career by playing the opposite sex, literally. Now the actor has embraced his potential as a leading man, proving his Paul Newman-ish good looks don't have to get in the way of good acting.
NAME: Lee Pace
AGE: 29
WHY NOW: After first flooring critics with his portrayal of a transgendered woman in 2003's Showtime movie Soldier's Girl, the Julliard grad has flipped the script, morphing into pure heartthrob - without dumbing dowen the work. Last fall, he broke out as Ned, an adorable pie maker who can resurrect the dead with a single touch (and off them again with another) in ABC's Pushing Daisies. Now he's tackling the big screen, lending his trademark allure - and 6'3" frame - to the leading-man category as Amy Adams' suitor in the chick flick-meets-period caper Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day. And this month he's bedridden (fine by us), playing an injured stuntman in the fantasy indie The Fall.
WHY HE'LL LAST: Because even in Robert De Niro's The Good Shepherd, in which Pace played a supporting role loosely based on former CIA director Richard Helms, he stood out among the pack of Big Serious Actors - Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie, Alec Baldwin - delivering the film's most memorable line: "I remember a senator once asked me, 'When we talk about the CIA, why we never use the word the infront of it?' And I asked him, 'Do you put the word the in front of God?' "
HOLLYWOOD BY WAY OF ARABIA?: Born in Chickasha, Oklahoma, Pace spent part of his childhood in Saudi Arabia, where his father worked in the oil business. "We lived on an American compound, so, you know, it's a lot more like Texas then you ever want to think it is."
PARENTAL FORBEARANCE: "I brought them to the premiere [of Soldier's Girl]. I was sitting next to my dad and there were scenes I had to take off my top. Watching a sex scene with your parents that you're in - palying a woman - is mortifying."
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