"Go back to China, bitch."
The line is ingrained in College junior Gary Lundy's mind as "the meanest thing I've ever said in my life."
But it wasn't even Lundy who said it. At least, not the real Lundy.
The real Lundy is smiling and compassionate, dressed in jeans and a tight navy blue T-shirt, while the Lundy who appears in the 2001 fantasy film Donnie Darko as one of the main character's friends wears a school uniform and spouts profanity.
"I said it like 30 times to this poor, overweight Chinese girl," Lundy recalls about filming the scene. "And it was so horrible."
"I saw that movie twice in theaters and when it came to that line, I cringed. I just remember sinking in my chair... I felt like I should leave or something at that point."
In fact, the character he plays in Darko is so unlike himself that Lundy's younger cousin was alarmed by the Gary he saw on-screen.
"I think he was really frightened by me because he was really young when he saw it and I was smoking cigarettes and cussing and yelling at people and stuff like that," he says.
But despite the cruelty of his first on-screen role, Lundy's real-life, easygoing persona -- and modesty about his acting accomplishments -- are almost as much of an asset to his career as his acting is.
"Gary's great. He's hilarious... a lot of fun to be around," says College senior Corey Pierson, the undergraduate chairman of Mask and Wig, Penn's all-male comedy troupe that Lundy performs with. "He doesn't make a big deal out of the talent that he has... he doesn't have a big head."
Amidst a sea of demanding, over-indulged actors, Lundy is down-to-earth, even jaded, about many aspects of the profession -- and decidedly turned off by the coddling that film actors receive.
"I've never had sympathy for any actor that complains about anything, because if you're working... it's just such a pampered, ridiculous profession. Ultimately, I put in probably a good solid hour and a half of work [on Darko], yet I was paid to be sitting in a trailer all day eating catered food."
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@DP Article 2003:With a father who's a lawyer, a former school-teacher mother and an older brother getting a degree in accounting, acting sure isn't in Lundy's genes.
Yet he beat out many other young hopefuls to be cast in Darko, and more recently as the star of the new independent romantic comedy Burning Annie, which is currently awaiting distribution.
So where did his talent come from?
The second of three sons in Los Angeles, Lundy will be 22 in December. But, unlike most of the Hollywood crowd, he has spent only about a third of those years acting.
Though interested in film from a young age, Lundy did not start acting seriously until he entered ninth grade at the Harvard Westlake School, where he was eventually spotted by a talent agent during his junior year in a production of Brigadoon.
But once landing a manager, Lundy says, his location certainly contributed to his success, since auditions were usually a 20-minute drive from his home -- maximum.
"I would have had no idea where to begin if I didn't live in L.A.," he says.
After high school and Darko, Lundy left Los Angeles for Indiana University, where he spent his freshman year majoring in theater arts before switching schools and majors.
"I took one theater class and then decided it was just horrible," says Lundy, now an art history major at Penn.
Lundy suspects one reason he lacks appreciation for acting classes is that he's never had a particular way of going about his roles.
"I don't have a really methodical approach to acting.... I have no idea what I do. I feel like sometimes I've done a really bad job in things because I do nothing, and then sometimes I've done just some bizarre thing that works really well."
But despite his lack of formal training, Lundy is no stranger to theater at Penn, having joined Mask and Wig the year he transferred.
"It's one of the more fun things I've ever done in terms of performing arts. It has defined my college experience. I spend so much time with everybody in it... that I can't imagine Penn without it. It sort of is Penn, for me."
In fact, Lundy is so close with the Mask and Wiggers that they did not hold it against him when, in January 2002, he had to fly out of Philadelphia to begin shooting Burning Annie two nights before their spring show opened -- leaving them scrambling for a replacement.
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Because of his role in Darko, Lundy seems, in some ways, to be living the life of a celebrity -- at Penn, at least.
While the movie was nearly ignored when it first came to select theaters in September 2001, it has since gained a cult following, which baffles Lundy.
"I feel like some people get really die-hard about it. They'll just come up to me in a coffee shop or a bookstore and sit down and just explain [their interpretation of the] movie and be like, 'Is that right?' They'll give me this huge explanation and I'll just be like, 'Sure, I guess.' They might be right, I have no theories on it."
And, according to Lundy, not even the writer/director of the film can point to a "correct" interpretation of Darko's ambiguous ending.
But though some would consider him a "movie star," Lundy remains modest, grounded and even moderately discontent with his acting career thus far.
"I'm nowhere near where I'd like to be at all," he says. "Truthfully, where I am right now is really cool in terms of the Penn community, but if I went back to L.A., I think people would just laugh at me."
However, Lundy does not take his accomplishments lightly.
"I have been lucky with stuff," he says. "I think you just have to come to terms that it's a brutal business, and it's sort of upsetting in that way. I'm okay with it."
After he graduates from Penn -- where he is a year behind due to unapproved transfer credits and a semester off to shoot Burning Annie -- Lundy plans to return to L.A. to pursue an acting career, with a fall-back plan of teaching.
But, according to College senior Bradford Hodgson -- Mask and Wig's undergraduate head writer -- Lundy won't have to worry about falling back on anything.
According to Hodgson, Lundy's "natural talent," combined with the footholds he has already established in the acting world, make his success almost predictable.
"Out of everybody I know, I think he has the best chance of actually making it big someday," Hodgson says. "He's just damn good at what he does."
