By SEAN DALY Special to the Daily Press
LOS ANGELES — He once romanced Drew Barrymore and Gwyneth Paltrow, but these days Luke Wilson says he is perfectly happy being single and proud to remain close pals with both of his exes.
“Drew is one of my best friends,” the lanky native Texan boasts, after re-teaming with his former flame for the upcoming sequel “Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle.”
“The fact that she hired me for the first movie when we were no longer dating and were not even necessarily getting along all that well says a lot to me,” he said. “I wouldn’t hire anybody I had been going out with.”
Sure, Luke, but would you put the moves on her co-star, Cameron Diaz?
“I always think... ‘Gosh, I wonder what it would be like to kiss her,’” the star of “Home Fries,” “Legally Blonde,” and “The Royal Tenenbaums” told Cosmopolitan.com last fall, adding: “Some of the most interesting friendships are between people who are attracted to each other but can’t act on it.”
The one relationship Wilson has continued to cultivate over the years is with his brothers, Owen, 34, and Andrew, 38. They grew up together in a middle-class suburb of Dallas and attended the prestigious St. Mark’s School, where Wilson still holds several all-time records in track and field. Their father, Robert, worked as an advertising executive; mother Laura, was a photographer.
“I remember being in our teens and our dad saying we should find some other friends,” the actor shares with a laugh.
Wilson, who appears this month along with Will Ferrell and Vince Vaughn in the new campus comedy “Old School,” is a disarming, yet mostly private person. He admits to having many quirky habits — like constantly chewing on toothpicks and always picking the third newspaper in a stack at the newsstand.
“Once I was in an airport getting ready to fly and there was only one newspaper, so I didn’t take it because there wasn’t one underneath it,” he remembers.
As 6 p.m. approaches, the 31 year-old actor is polishing off a quart of fresh squeezed orange juice in his high rise hotel suite and enjoying a spectacular Southern California sunset. From his balcony you can almost see Santa Monica, where Wilson shared a house with Owen for more than two years before finally buying a place of his own a few months ago. They are still best friends, he says, and often compete in friendly games of ping pong or H-O-R-S-E.
“Luke and Owen are very similar,” notes pal Ben Stiller. “They have their own unique connection that even I don’t completely understand.”
The two brothers also have been known to indulge in a casual wager, Wilson admits.
“We bet dinner on whose movie will make more money at the box office,” he said.
So far, Owen is off to a big lead. His martial arts comedy “Shanghai Knights,” co-starring Jackie Chan, opened No. 2 at the box office last weekend, earning just under $20 million.
“Old School” — a raucous comedy about a trio of thirty-something buddies who try to recapture their college days by starting their own off-campus fraternity — opens Feb. 21.
“These are guys who are at the point in their lives when they have to choose what path they are going to take,” director Todd Phillips explains. “In a nutshell, it is responsibility versus irresponsibility.”
Or, as Wilson simply puts it: “It’s a lot like “Animal House.”
Wilson’s collegiate experience was not. He entered Occidental College in Pasadena as a star at both track and football, but quickly lost interest in sports after enrolling in a playwriting class. An admittedly shy young man, Wilson studied English and art history and maintained “an eclectic group” of friends, but always avoided participating in fraternity life.
“There seemed to be a mentality among the frat guys to do everything the same: Wear your jeans the same, wear the same kind of coat, wear the same backwards baseball cap,” he explains. “I knew that just didn’t appeal to me.”
Wilson eventually transferred to Texas Christian University (he lasted six weeks) and then to Southern Methodist University, but quit school before completing his degree to work with his two brothers and director Wes Anderson on the quirky independent movie “Bottle Rocket.” All four teamed up again last year on “The Royal Tenenbaums.”
“There is a lot of potential for Luke,” Anderson believes. “There is a gentleness about him that comes across clearly. He’s someone who can be soft-spoken, good natured and really sweet tempered.”
It’s seeing his name in print — particularly the gossip pages — that isn’t quite as exciting. That made Wilson’s six-month relationship with Paltrow a constant struggle with the media. The two actors met on the set of “The Royal Tenenbaums,” in early 2001 and shared one of their first dates enjoying a performance by Sheryl Crow at The Cutting Room on West 26th Street.
In November, Wilson attended a memorial service for Paltrow’s father, Bruce, who died suddenly of a heart attack. The rest of their relationship, past and present, he prefers to keep private.
“It has always been my personal feeling that unless you are married, there is something that is not very dignified about talking about who you are dating,” he explains. “I mean, I am just as interested in who Jack Nicholson is seeing as everybody else. I don’t fault people for it, I just don’t put myself out there.” (Sean Daly is a free-lance writer living in Santa Monica and is president of Showtime Entertainment.)
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on February 15, 2003. Read the original PDF.