Dj Qualls - actor - Brief Article

Interview, August, 2000 by Martha Frankel

HE'S NOT YOUR USUAL OVERNIGHT SUCCESS. BUT THAT'S THE POINT

Imagine the love child of Gomer Pyle and Olive Oyl, and you get some idea of what DJ Qualls looks like in his recent screen debut, Road Trip. As Kyle, a sheltered, skittish virgin, Quails was an embarrassment of body parts that didn't seem to fit together. So it's been quite a surprise--to Hollywood industry types and to anyone who happened to see this sophomoric movie--that the virtually untrained, unheard-of twenty-one-year-old stole the comedy from its much more good-looking and conventional stars. Since then everyone's been calling-including Barry Sonnenfeld, who just cast him in Big Trouble with Tim Allen, Rene Russo, Janeane Garofalo and Katie Holmes. And, this fall, he appears in Cherry Falls, a teen slasher movie about virgin killers.

Growing up in middle Tennessee, Qualls says he had one goal: to get the hell out. Attending the University of London was his ticket, and he got his degree in three years. The first of the family to graduate college? "I'm the first to graduate high school!" he says. "My brother dropped out, and my nineteen-year-old sister dropped out, and now she has two kids and works in a ballpoint pen factory two towns from where we grew up."

Qualls certainly escaped middle Tennessee, but he may have a couple more road trips to go before reaching the Hollywood state of mind. A couch is the only piece of furniture in his Santa Monica, California, apartment. "I still can't bring myself to spend money," he says.

Martha Frankel s a freelance writer In New York. DJ Qualls, who's as funny off-screen as on, wears s jacket and shirt by Prada Sport. stylist: Michael Holdaway. Grooming: Jeff Judd/Artists.