ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: You portray yourself as having no ambition for TV. But then what do you have ambition for?
ROBERT SEAN LEONARD: I want to know everything there is to know about Lewis and Clark. And I want to do the Sunday crossword in less than an hour. I want to be the best dad in the world. I want to play Richard II, and I want to win another Tony award. I can be very shallow about ambition. This play Tom Stoppard wrote, Coast of Utopia, I'd seen it in London three years ago, and I just knew I was gonna do it. And when I did House, one of the things I thought about was, damn it, Utopia's gonna happen. At some point Lincoln Center's gonna do it, and I'm gonna be tied [to House]. And that's what happened. I had my Neil Diamond moment of sitting on the beach with a tear in my eye. I went to see it and saw Billy Crudup and Ethan and Martha Plimpton, and for me that was like...it's like when you're watching the Yankees, and Andy Pettitte's shoulder's out, that look in his eye when he's seeing them winning or losing, that's how I felt. ''Boy, I should be up there! If this isn't my sandbox, I don't know what is.'' No, I'm very ambitious about certain things. But I know too much to be ambitious about stardom. I don't want to be Ryan Phillippe or Reese Witherspoon. That's hard f---ing work. Reese Witherspoon works her ass off. And she goes to things and has photo shoots and she has a publicist and a production company and meeting with writers. They work those people, they really work. They're not just pampered princesses or princes. I ain't got it in me.
How close are you to doing the Sunday crossword puzzle in under an hour?
Nowhere near. My dad does it. I've done the Sunday crossword, but I look up and it's dark out. I think, well, dammit, did I really need to spend nine hours doing this? I could have gone for a walk, or finished the book I was reading. Anything over an hour for me I think is a little indulgent and a little bit obsessive. I like to do a puzzle. I like it to be tough, but more than an hour, I feel, what am I doing? My dad has told me my whole life, that the more you do it, the better you get. I have not found that to be the case. If you give me an hour I'll get a third of it done, but that's it. I've never improved. You're as smart as you are, I guess.
If Dead Poets was made today, do you think you and your fellow castmates would've been turned into teen idols?
Yes. They certainly would have tried to. We were miraculously left alone after that movie. They really focused on Robin. It was a blessing. We really found our own way. A publicist? I never even thought of getting a publicist. It was a different time. The teen movies I grew up with, one of my favorites was The Last American Virgin, remember that? It was one of my favorites. It was this girl Diane Franklin, oh my God, she was the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen. She was one of my biggest crushes when I was little. But she plays this girl, and this Jon Cryer-y kind of guy likes her, and there's the good-looking jerk who ends up getting her pregnant, and our hero pays for her abortion, and she stays at his house while she gets better, and at the end of the movie she gets back with the jerk. It's so great, because the movie ends and he loses her. After the abortion, she ends up back with the jerk. Oh! I love that movie. It's so beautifully right on. I love those.
But Diane Franklin? She never became famous. I don't know what changed it. Maybe it was John Hughes. But something changed. Molly Ringwald? Fast Times at Ridgemont High: those people didn't really appear again for three or four, or five or seven more years. Jennifer Jason Leigh, talk about the tortoise and the hare. She would pop up now and again, and no one even really knew her name until 15 years later. Sean Penn, yeah, but Judge Reinhold. Yeah, it was a different time. There was a difference between movie stars and people in movies. Jackie Earle Haley, whatever. There were people in movies, and then there was Cary Grant. I do think it's sort of a shame. I remember I once did a movie that Ethan Hawke directed called Chelsea Walls. Kris Kristofferson was in it, and Ethan and I would just fall at his feet. One time we were looking at a poster, I won't say who it was, he was a very famous young actor at the time, it was a big poster, and Kris said [He mimics Kristofferson's deep, raspy voice], ''Who the hell is that?'' I said it was blah blah. He didn't know who he was. Kris went, ''Huh. Where are all the men?'' I went, God, you're right.
NEXT PAGE: ''I just exist in New York and I'm just happy. When I got back, I got on the 3rd Avenue bus, rode it all the way up[town], and then took the 2nd Avenue back down.''
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